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By mayoral proclamation, today is Tom Skilling Day in Chicago, in honor of his 72nd birthday & next week's retirement.

If this is a benefit of a group product, and that is a big IF, then it is an inadvertent benefit. To say a New Yorker who goes to LA will be drawn to KABC because they share a lower third with WABC is probably overstating the impact of graphics. The real driver for a group package is cost savings. Plain and simple. In ABC's case, it is one package for eight stations. Fox and NBC have been doing it for years. Not only do you save on development but there are downstream savings because topical graphics can be shared. KABC, KGO, and KFSN are probably all sharing flooding graphics for intros, display monitors, etc. Exactly! The network news division (save Sunday Morning and 60 Minutes) is in last place. Many of their local stations (save KDKA and WCCO) were laggards in their markets. So why not reimagine the branding to try to help both? But again, this is an excellent cost savings for the CBS group. And as NYCNewsJunkie rightfully points out, it gave them a comprehensive streaming approach for the first time.

True. I see both sides. I agree with the idea of identifying a similar product via aesthetics through several markets. Not to drift off topic but, comparing the more successful ABC O&Os vs CBS O&OS...I don't mind duplicating a look just with added personal touches like KWY doing green instead of the standard CBS blue and white. I know the argument is a similar look for content sharing but the audience does not care if WCBS takes a KYW green graphic. The issue becomes when stations sound like a bland corporate carbon copy and not locally authentic. Look at WCBS with its pharmacy jingle ringtone open and clean corporate feel which doesn't match the vibe of a gritty intense city like New York. In contrast, even though WABC is one of ABC's many Eyewitness News copies, it still feels locally authentic to NYC with its diverse set of long-tenured reporters and its "flashier" (as some have said) format.

Oh, absolutely, nobody notices. As long as the headlines are legible, and the graphics don’t distract from delivering info, nobody gives a crap. I have to agree with this though. WABC didn’t originate the Eyewitness News format (even their logo isn’t original), and yet it has always taken on the identity of the city/region it serves. Most of it is due to the long-tenured anchors/reporters and the longevity/viability of the format, but I do think building around a local identity plays a role too. Much of that would be lost if we woke up tomorrow and found ourselves watching “ABC News New York.” To be fair though, the CBS O&Os were in a different situation than the ABC O&Os. When a lot of those stations are either dead last and/or lacked a local identity to begin with, their approach makes some sense. And full credit to them for beating the other network O&Os when it comes to streaming, and for finally patching up the embarrassment that was their Detroit outlet.

The thing is: who actually notices? For all the complaints about common elements, how many viewers are actually going to be in two markets with common designs, and happen to watch the stations in question, and happen to pay that kind of attention, and actually care? Effectively no one. Nobody cares if WABC and KABC, for instance, have common design elements. A few people like us on message boards aren’t representative of the public at large.

The thing is, when I travel to another market, it doesn’t matter to the bottom line. I’m not measured, I’m not sold as an audience to the advertisers unless I happen to be in an AirBnB or something similar with a set-top box sending metrics. Even then, it’s near microscopic levels that don’t move the needle. Maybe in a market like Honolulu you can get enough as buys from tourism related businesses to get a revenue stream by being the most popular news program for tourists checking the weather. Or they just use their phones. Likewise, moving among two markets that both have a group with a similar graphics package is going to be a fraction of a fraction. The cost savings are going to be your driver, and an opportunity if desired to connect to the parent brand more deeply…while saving some cash along the way. I totally get brand consistency as a corporate value. And if we’re talking McDonald’s, heck yeah that gets a direct benefit since your cash spends the same. And that Target bullseye logo is going to draw shoppers everywhere. If anything, it’s mostly a net win for the groups to be consistent because of the cost savings. Of course there are potential pitfalls—like, I don’t know, messing with WPVI’s theme music. That might be the third rail you don’t touch, lol. I loathe that color green KYW has adopted (and the slogan) but hey, if it works for them, great. Can’t please everyone, and I recognize it as a personal taste issue. I like blue shades, others may want to barf at them. All good in the end.

I wonder if this is in advance of the rumors of some affiliates carrying an extra hour of Daily

Morning Express on CNN would be a square peg in a round hole. There's a reason it co-existed with the flagship. They want to do a show on CNN that has panels and politics, and that is the polar opposite of everything HLN was airing. IF 'Morning Express' and its former anchor were brought to CNN, it would be in name only, and Robin Meade would be terribly miscast.

Fubo has filed an antitrust lawsuit to stop this joint venture project from happening.

Five weeks and a day is a notable shift. I guess they didn't have enough content ready to merit sticking to the original date.

I think there’s a difference between stations sharing a group graphics package and stations taking on the identity of the national network news division. The former is nothing to scoff at imo. The latter is far more noticeable.

I’m all about a mandate if it prevents stations from the on-air presentation WABC had in place for a long time.

Say it louder for CBS to hear.

Not to make this a list thread, but NBC O&O's also use their live bug similarly with the location. They've done this with the last couple of packages. So it is out there, and I do like their application of it minus the live tab on the L3.

some have suggested they should end since something bad will happen with a million people in unsecured areas like a Boston police commissioner and some pundits

Yeah the new ABC O&O mandate has an element like this for bugs. I actually like it, it’s pretty utilitarian.

I've always HATED live bug "tabs" on the L3. You can blame TEGNA for originating that crap. In this case, it's redundant and it's somewhat overlapping the time/temp bug.

I was nervous when she said "now some personal news," I thought she was leaving NBC News entirely. Glad to here she is commiting to the successful 'noon'-ish newscast. Her announcement:

Kate Snow announced this evening she will be leaving “Nightly” Sunday next week to focus more on “Daily.”

Geraldo Still at Large.

I'm not saying I necessarily disagree with some of the points Rosanna made. But, she (as usual) drifts into editorialization. Sanctuary "Trap" for example is a loaded title. "This is coming to a city near you, unfortunately" which she said, is also another iffy statement. That's fine for Fox News Channel, but very slippery for her already compromised 'neutral image' role on GDNY.

Nexstar is opening the Nexstar Weather Center based in Dallas. Its job is to serve as a "relief hub" for its small/medium markets that have had stubborn openings for weekend meteorologists and allow the any full-time staff to take time off (as in several of these markets meteorologists are working 6-7 days a week). No word on a launch date (presumably later this year). These weather segments would be forecast and produced out of Dallas then sent out to that individual market. Multiple ways to think about this. One could argue if Nexstar has the time and resources to create an entirely new hub to provide relief for its small market meteorologists, it could also use those resources to make those weekend weather/MMJ jobs (which is what the vast majority of them are), more appealing to college grads or sub-3 year professionals. However, it also shows the struggles of small markets to hire anyone out of school since now top-50 markets are more than willing to do that themselves. Would you work in Lubbock, TX out of college, or Norfolk, VA?

And they're even using Antenna TV's Facebook page to plug their latest washed-up host. Last I checked, Geraldo was not a classic sitcom. An 80s and 90s talk show, but not something Antenna TV carries. Good old Nexstar....

Or it was something of its time that complemented what HLN did at the time. It lasted longer than HLN in that incarnation, great. It was complimentary to that network, and to what was being done over on CNN. But times change, viewing patterns change, corporate owners change, technology changes, audiences change…and the show reached the end of its purpose for the company.

You would think Sinclair would be 'all-in' on this new "ARC" concept, but nineteen days later...KUNS is still KUNS, referring to an affiliation it no longer has, while their website for Univision Seattle, along with the domain name, remains up as a dead site, which Sinclair has refused to transfer to Weigel, and the move to KVOS was a short footnote at the end of a newscast that most Spanish viewers already tuned out of because of that betrayal. There's not even an ARC Seattle section up on KOMO's website at all; its only presence on the entire web (behind several other results for 'ARC Seattle') is a low-viewed YouTube playlist on KOMO. Not even its own channel, but a playlist of videos. For all intents and purposes for the web, channel 51 in Seattle no longer exists, along with the CW in Seattle; they were better off just keeping it on Comet for all the lack of effort they put into this all. Meanwhile, the Fox renewal that was seemingly less controversial this time (as in no oddball Ion backup plan) reads to me as Fox just not seeing them as any competition to speak of at all for right-wing news. They don't even consider them competition at all.

Hardly anything since Fox News gets away with literally everything.

How does this clown continue to scam viewers?

From what I understand, the SNL cameras were an NBC tradition. All of the O&Os get equipment from 30 Rock as NBC replaces it over time.

With all due respect, this reads like a typical Scotty Jones “tHiS iS tEgNa” old-man-yelling-at-cloud post which got his blog banned from this forum’s Discord server in the first place. PROVE to me with ratings data that the station was “trashed” because it’s Doing Things Different And That Is Bad, otherwise it’s just conjecture. My 69-year old mother watches all the local news (with divided preferences to WKYC and WJW) and she doesn’t care about the ownership of either. Whenever I see people, including some who live in other parts of the freaking country and would never want to see Cleveland, go on their typical “WKYC ruined themselves with that logo…” or “when they call themselves ‘channel 3’, I’ll care about them”, it comes off as ill-informed and silly and makes the TV hobbyist community look out of touch. (“No, it’s the children who are wrong!”) The cold hard truth is that the vast majority of television news viewers are 25–54 female; the demographics here and on Discord do not match up with that in any way. It’s for a variety of reasons but it’s not like we’re doing anything to make either platform all that more palatable to them.

It's going to be a fine. There is a 0% chance that any political party, despite how loud they pander to their base, is going to force one of the largest owners of a dying medium to break up.

The second transmitter is probably irrelevant, especially since WICD is pretty much a total satellite of WICS now with no original content other than ids and maybe some ads. The "Code Red" is just worthless fear-mongering, that worsens the relationship between the viewer and the meteorologists. It puts an undue burden on the meteorologists to hype up a weather event that may not live up to its potential harm, and can make the viewer less-trusting of them when it fizzles out or isn't the "eye candy" that it was hyped up to be. And in the era of pissed-off viewers venting on stations for cutting into their programming, it only makes it worse when they have to. I'm just waiting for Boris to chime in on this, bonus points if he brings up the "terrorism alerts" that were used during the 9/11 era.... Here's the bottom line (see what I did there?) JUST LET THE METEOROLOGISTS DO THEIR JOB!!! They know the weather (at least the good ones do), and work in the best interest of their viewers to provide usable forecasts and potentially life-saving information. While it's not technically required, most stations that can put out a forecast will be on-air covering a life-threatening weather event for the affected viewers, or at the very least, have the warning up on the screen through maps, graphics, or at the very least, and EAS alert.

13.3 million would run the KENV Elko news operation for how many decades?

Apples and oranges though. The network newscasts are under no pretense of being local.

Personally, I expect newscast output to be on WBFF levels, but as far as staffing, it will make the infamous WCBS 1996 massacre look tame.

A sad day at KXAS. Bobbie Wygant, who was a lifestyle/entertainment reporter, host, and even commercial pitch person back to the station's earliest days as WBAP, has passed. Bobbie had her own daytime midday show called Dateline for many years. She participated in the local Jerry Lewis telethon segments for several of the years that KXAS carried the telethon. She had a longer presence in Dallas-Fort Worth media than anyone else. Bobbie was 97, and will be missed. https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/trailblazing-nbc-5-reporter-bobbie-wygant-dies-at-97/3466101/ https://www.bobbiewygant.com

The L3 one is what they’ve previously used… new one I was referencing is upper left corner. Kinda redundant they had both on, but it was breaking news- bigger focuses for them in the moment.