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I clicked on this wanting to hate it- but I don't. Their logic for taking "The" out of the logo is sound, they're using a color palate that stands out in the field, and is a fresh coat of paint that actually looks decent given what Nexstar seems to be going for. Keep in mind that green/white have been the primary colors for CW since its launch in 06. That said, the programming has to back up the refresh. The logo revamp is to show they're superhero network anymore, which is fine; but for your first major rebrand in 18 years (and that whole viewership drop in 2023 thing), you need to have programming and content to back it up. I have to admit that their sports coverage wasn't terrible- announcers for the Barstool Sports Bowl made me keep watching on their own.

I hate this package. The way the theme music has been chopped up and abrubtly cut off on some or quickly turned off. It doesnt even feel like COX anymore. They were always still the best at news opens and the correct timings and flow of the opens with the music and graphics. There were never rushed and they always had proper opens. Not these rushed anchor introduced 2 second opens most stations use today. These are just awful. IMO complete downgrade.

EDIT 1/16/24: WAFB has moved to GrayONE as of Noon on 1/16/24. Put WAFB/Baton Rouge on the clock for GreyONE - this new logo just popped up on their website: Previous logo, in place for decades with the CBS eye logo added along the way:

I guess Nexstar didn't want a repeat of the WADL mess, hence no Mission this time. Apparently the Londens were far more amenable to such a deal than Kevin Adell.

Any market that has to deal with a significant amount of severe weather/tornadoes/hurricanes, I can see at most 6. Have 2 in-studio, and instead of using reporters/mmjs, use the other 4 out in the field for reports, so they can give first-hand meteorological reports of damages, etc and fill-ins... I don't know why stations all of a sudden had a need to have a different meteorologist for each damn newscast of the day... No wonder they are starting mets at $15k a year.. there's no work

I think five is sufficient. Four main on-air ones plus a fifth as a behind-the-scenes producer/fill-in.

If one of them had to move to weekend evenings, I’d go with Toni. Michelle’s been on weekend mornings for what feels like forever. I’m surprised they ended up hiring a new weekend anchor instead of sticking with Michelle and Toni though.

Or at least moving Michelle or Toni to weekend evenings to be with Joe.

I'm surprised they're not keeping Toni Yates with Michelle. I thought they were a great pair. Yes I've been wondering this as well. Hasn't been on since Nov 28th.

It looks like the new WNJU studio is being using by MSNBC this week.

Working at WABC as an intern helps. Congrats to Sandra. We've certainly had old late 90s weekends with Bill and Sandra working so much on weekdays.

From this press release, It's official. After 25 years on the weekends, Sandra Bookman is moving to the Noon show. Also announced, former KTLA reporter/anchor Pedro Rivera will anchor Weekend Mornings, beginning February 3rd.

KOLD has the GrayOne graphics and went with red.

The Oklahoma City Thunder and Griffin Media have announced a deal to televise a package of eight Friday night games over-the-air on KSBI in Oklahoma City and KOTV-DT3 (which otherwise runs KOTV news simulcasts and rebroadcasts) in Tulsa through the end of the 2023–24 regular season, starting with a January 26 away game against the New Orleans Pelicans. The games will also air regionally on Gray's KSCW (CW)/Wichita and KSWO-DT3 (MeTV)/Lawton–Wichita Falls and Morgan Murphy's KOAM-KFJX/Joplin (the linked story doesn't specify which station will air the games in that market, whether only on CW affiliate KFJX-DT2 or alternating between both stations' CBS, Fox and CW feeds). The team's main broadcaster, Bally Sports Oklahoma, will carry the Thunder's other remaining regionally exclusive game broadcasts during the remainder of the season.

Especially since the Baltimore stations thoroughly cover this part of Maryland in the local news… Whatever happened to “significantly viewed” status?

A courtesy…to who? It’s not a courtesy to anyone.

MLB has arranged carriage of games on regular cable TV (usually on the spare channel on cable systems carrying news or filler content), and it's only a gametime broadcast rather than wrapped around wobbly Jenga content to create a 24/7 'regional sports network' that's anything but (if that was true, legend's tennis and poker would not have a home). You're paying the same cost for Bally anyways, so it might as well go to a quality game broadcast than countless fishing and poker shows.

Not a good move from a fan prospective. The MLB does better than Bally's when it comes to producing the broadcasts, but their pay to watch structure has been a pain for DBacks and Padres fans. Rockies fans will experience the same thing. It's just as bad as Bally Sports. But with Baseball, TV deals have to become more expensive so teams can build up a higher player salary. The Dodgers are able to build a super team because of their TV deal with Spectrum. The MLB at some point needs to enforce a salary cap if they don't want to lose fans. That way, teams can cut an easier deal with local TV stations so games will be a more available to watch on TV. And it will be more competitive across the league so teams like the Dodgers don't reach the World Series every year.

With the Comics Unleashed reruns on CBS set to end later this month with the premiere of After Midnight, I have to think the owners and managers of some affiliates must be quietly relieved -- specifically, anyone who owns or runs a CBS affiliate in a market where Allen Media owns a competing station. Sure, the episodes are all over a decade old and yes, we're talking about the 12:30am ET time slot, but the show was hosted by the guy who now owns a station that directly competes with them. At the very least, it must have been a bit weird.

Those blue/yellow/orange stripes remind me so much of MARTA's (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) logo...

The major issue I have with the editorial is it focuses too much on all these Big Four issues, when the major problem are these subfarm broadcasters like H2/Edge/DTV America, along with Coastal and WRNN that should be operating stations in the local interest, but instead have bought out stations to turn into subchannel farms of absolute low-effort IPTV crap run by the same kinds of people who have made the Internet an advertising hellscape. Or with Coastal and Sinclair, have completely garbage newscasts recorded during studio downtime that are viewer-repellant. Edge Spectrum has been tolling out CP's for nearly 6-8 years with no intention of actually broadcasting, while H2 has wound down networks for filler crap like Timeless TV and Vision Latina and absolutely refused to be competitive. Even Tegna, Scripps and Sinclair are complicit with this, as outside Ion the rest of their channels are reality glurge only there for advertising slots, and instead of multiple networks like Twist dying because there's nobody watching, they're being replaced with more things nobody is watching. There should be a local broadcaster running these stations, and the religious broadcasters should be serving their community. They aren't, and the FCC is at least trying something. I understand the justification being the Main Studio Rule repeal, but there should be some kind of local programming on these stations, and not just 'I called some NPO to drone 20 minutes about their stuff, we're good' malicious compliance. There are YouTubers in those communities that could probably fulfill those guidelines better in themselves. Just stop consolidating and racing to the bottom, broadcasters. You see what happened to radio; don't try to even venture near that result.

Sorry to revive an older thread, but was going through some old news clips on an old hard drive and ran across WJLA's weather team in 2012 - They had 13 weather people on staff: - Chief Meterologist: Doug Hill - Senior Meteorologist: Bob Ryan - Meteorologists: Adam Caskey, Alex Liggett, Brian van de Graaf, Devon Lucie, Eileen Whelan, Jacqui Jeras, Ryan Miller, Steve Rudin - Forecaster: Dave Zahren - Weathercasters: Chad Merrill, Mike Stinneford IIRC, Devon Lucie was pretty much NewsChannel 8, and I think the 2 weathercasters were tied to WTOP (longtime weather partner), as they didn't list "ABC7" in their titles... Regardless, that's a lot on staff... Jim

Given Weigel once ran Univision on WCIU, this is a bit of a full circle deal.

KOMO anchor Steve McCarron, who's been tapped to helm a new morning program on KUNS using the ARC brand (running from 8:00-10:00 a.m.) when that station switches to The CW on New Year's Day, answered this on X/Twitter: BTW, it looks like Weigel's KVOS will be taking over for KUNS as Seattle's Univision affiliate.

1) Since it's staying around, it's gonna take a while to forget that this network name was last associated with home design, cooking and DIY shows. 2) That logo looks like one of a 90s haircare brand. Considering it's new strategy, while not bad, it's a bit too on-the-nose IMO. haha

Dabl rebranded/relaunched as a Black-focused comedy network a day earlier than the linked schedule indicated, switching formats at 6:00 a.m. ET today (December 29) with two back-to-back airings of The Parkers. This is the new logo: (Also, this Dabl discussion should probably be moved to the Paramount thread in "Corporate Chat".)

And here comes the crybabying defense squad. Hilarious that they think that allowing local monopolies would make them "compete better", rather than, y'know, just making the situation worse. How's iHeartMedia doing right now?

I watched all of em and liked em but One on One, Moesha and The Parkers were the best.

They've used a production cut for pre-recorded headlines for a while (I was there in the mid and late 2010's). They were using it when I was there. The previous news director thought Inergy wasn't urgent enough, so they added The Rock. Apparently, they've added the production track to it. It sounds like they've taken that cut and put it into their music computer. It was literally a computer they opened the track on and played through VLC or Windows Media Player.

The only local TV news broadcaster that might be “good” is the Disney O&O group. Those stations are typically number one in the ratings and have a Disney-backed budget to make things happen. But, as we learned this year from CEO Bob Iger, Disney may eventually get out of linear television. And I’m sure the likes of Perry Sook and Byron Allen will be ready to make an offer. TV news has always been about the money, especially local TV news, regardless of the owners. It’s just that some companies are more open about it, like Nexstar and Sinclair. The other companies — like Gray, Scripps, Tegna, Cox, Graham, Allen, etc. — are all watching the bottom line just as much.

Someone actually created an ESPN graphics overlay and tried to sync up the Wyoming radio feed to drown out the "noise" from the actual game.

I tried to watch this game, which was on their app last year, it was dreadful. Here are some of the highlights ... Standards and practices (if they even have one) will have their work cut out for them. Expect Perry Sook's swear jar to be overflowing...

For GR most likely it'll replace WXSP's primetime with CW rather than being on a sub of WOOD or WOTV, of course. And here the CW should've been on WXSP in the first place to begin with. ETA - B+C says WOTV will carry it and cede ABC (likely a misreading), but the Nexstar PR doesn't clarify which station among the three will carry it. Another ETA - WXSP's translator network is the ATSC 3.0 lighthouse though, so I do agree with TB that it seems WOTV-DT2 is likely to carry it just because they have room for another 1080i sub and Dabl is easy to dump.

With the runaway costs of programming, much of the blame lies with the content providers (station owners).

Given that Fox has historically had more rigid branding conventions than the other major networks (the only ones to deviate from using network-centric branding including WSVN, KHON, WDRB and KVRR), I think culling network references from Gray’s Fox affiliates would be much harder to implement. ABC has apparently been requiring affiliates to include the “circle” logo into their station logos, making it also unclear whether they can pull network branding.

I heard this from a colleague who works at an NBC Gray affiliate. It's not an NBC thing. It's a "Gray" thing. Eventually all stations will be removing their affliliation from their logos. The reasoning is to distance the stations from the affiliates and to separate itself from the fake news movement that the national media gets. Basically it's so people trust the LOCAL news and to take on their own branding and identity.

Since the only realistic choice was Sinclair (no way current era Cox would pay to add it to PCNC and KDKA+ isn't quite developed yet), it was the best choice, though hopefully that plain-Jane NESN template is gussied up a bit by next season.

Breaking news! Binghamton’s WBNG has officially launched GrayONE. And this one was way needed. A small market like that really deserves recognition. You can watch the official confirming video on (what else?) Studio 31 Media Archive on YouTube.

If you put it one way or another, you could see on one end that Tegna has good production values, but on another, you get an annoying news theme (C Clarity) that “all stations HAVE to use”. I’ve seen stations like KYTX (on their morning show called “Morning Y’all”) use other themes for stuff. Totally weird.

WCBS actually had The People's Court at 4pm before Judy's return to Channel 2 in 2006 (after 7 years on WNBC). Before that newscast ended completely in 2003, it was truncated to a half-hour at 4:30pm. Filling that first half hour in Jan. 2002 was the Weakest Link. And that got replaced the following fall by Millionaire.

I wonder what it would be like if Hearst and/or Graham owned a lot of small market stations as well though. Combined, they have only one station in markets below #100.

From what I have heard, Hearst and Graham run their stations well. Also they don't own as many stations when compared to Gray, Nexstar, or Sinclair, which allows them to invest in the quality of their stations.

It aired at 4pm for a long time on some stations, including WBBM; like Inside Edition they push out editions every half hour with updates if needed up to a certain time.

I'm glad to see Dr Phil reruns dipping into the archives and not just playing episodes from the last 4 to 5 years. They were even doing so when the show was making new episodes. Similarly, I also like that Judge Mathis had a flashback case segment within newly released episodes. l know long running sydicated shows have an aversion to "dated" episodes but they are cool to see.

Technically, Sox Entertainment (don’t know how new to the distribution game it is) is the one distributing it. Seems odd that Amazon didn’t assert syndication rights to Judy Justice through MGM.

Judy Justice is headed for syndication next fall.

Feels like a mix of elements of the SNF look with the aesthetic of the old graphics (particularly the gloss and the blue-grey color from before).

New graphics for NBC's Notre Dame (and I assume B1G) broadcasts. Looks like an evolution of the SNF look. Same font used.

Well, the one thing people watch local news for more than anything these days is for the weather. Even with that in mind, 7 or 8 mets on staff seems like overkill; but then again I'm not the one hunkered down in the weather center during a EF5.

I’m guessing they’re bringing in either students or grads from Mississippi State’s program - I know in the past it’s been one of the best broadcast meteorology programs in the country. Jim