Leaderboard

I wonder if it makes sense to have local news on at 10pm, run national news at 10:30pm (perhaps ABC News Live Prime, NBC Top Story, CBS Daily Report), and have the late night talk shows come on at 11pm. I also think this would be an opportunity for the central and mountain time zones to have the same airing times from 8 to 10 PM, and let them program the 7 PM hour with syndicated fare.

Let's just take a moment to celebrate how far CBS has come aesthetically. That newsroom looks great and I love the brown accents on the graphics package. It reminds me of Katie Couric era CBS Evening News. I would argue CBS News now has the best sets of big 3 broadcast networks. I don't recall WCBS or CBS making a formal on air announcement of John and Maurice taking over CBSEN. The OG press release also described Margaret Brennan as leading the political coverage whenever news breaks. I'm curious to see how this dynamic will play.

Except the condition of license, per the NJ Congressional delegation, was not removed, despite the move to UHF for digital TV. Sadly, NJ still is limited in tv news coverage with Fox in violation of that condition. That is for lawyers to argue, not us. When their license is up again, watch for some noise from NJ's Congressional delegation and other groups. Sadly, I see Ch. 9 as a waste of airspace today. Full of Family Feud reruns and judge shows, plus NBCU content that MyTV broadcasts and can be found elsewhere. Lots of other choices that are more interesting.

John Dickerson said goodbye to "The Daily Report" on CBS 24/7 yesterday. As expected, he will be preparing for the CBS Evening News. I don't understand how they said he would be doing both anchor roles. (The Daily Report and the CBS Evening News). I noticed that Dick Brennan is doing the 5pm news on WCBS and he doesn't say he's filling in for Maurice like he normally does.

Yes, it's been awhile. Was it announced? His social media is quiet.

The conditions that existed 40-plus years ago exist no more. WWOR-TV technically is a UHF station now, and has been since 6/12/2009. And the Secaucus studio is long gone. The FCC doesn't regulate content or anything else for that matter anymore, thus why they didn't apply pressure on Fox when WWOR first replaced its traditional newscast with Chasing New Jersey/Chasing News and why they did nothing when that show went away altogether in spite of protest by New Jersey electeds. Though it doesn't matter much in this era, it's about time to return WWOR's license back to New York City proper. And let Fox rebrand it to "Fox 5 Plus". I'd like to see it happen

Norah's current set is great. After the NYC relocation I would either hope for a recreation of Nora's DC set, something like this photo, or that virtual media wall set on CBS 24/7. Honestly the 24/7 set might be more unique since the CBSEN has tried everything at this point.

A little history. For many years, WOR's owner, RKO General, had broadcast license renewal issues with the FCC due to many concerns with the parent company and its practices.. Meanwhile, NJ senators had a rule passed in Congress that any commercial station that would relocate to a state without a VHF TV station would get immediate renewal from the FCC. NJ's only VHF station had switched to public tv status much earlier (now WNET). The intent was to have a broadcast station much more NJ focus than the NY/PHL stations that cover a few, not exclusively NJ stories. RKO General saw this as a way out of their mess for WOR. The FCC first agreed, and put in place the requirement that WOR would need to have a news product and focus more on NJ than NY. The station moved, set up a news department and some local programming (e.g. 9 Broadcast Plaza) but in the end it did not prevent the FCC from yanking the licenses. Once sold, it became WWOR and each subsequent owner was required by the FCC to maintain the NJ focus as part of their license. Then came Fox, who bought WWOR, moved most of its operations into WNYW Fox 5, then watered down the unique newscast, then cancelled it, first replacing it with Chasing NJ at a late night hour, then dropping all news. Subsequently, all operations were moved to NYC. Only recently has any news reappeared on WWOR, a tape repeat of the 6 pm news on Fox5, not a unique fresh newscast. The news broadcasts due to sports on Fox5 that have recently showed up on WWOR are Fox5 news (branding and content). For those reasons, critics are correct in that Fox is not meeting the conditions of WWOR's license.

It seems like they air the live newscast at its regular time on MY9, and then air a repeat on FOX5 after the sporting event has concluded. Last night, they aired the 10:00 news on MY9 and then repeated it with "previously recorded" on the screen after the Padres vs. Dodgers game. On Monday, the 5:00 and 6:00 newscasts are listed for MY9 due to the NLCS.

I am a democrat and I have always told my other friends who hate on Fox about their journalism and how they can turn it on when they really need to. Example, they called the Election before anyone else did. Yes, the political director was kicked out of the building for telling the truth. But anyway, yes, they do have the chops for a big news story but now with every story having some intertwined political side, they lost their way. So no. It’s not news.

Devin Scillian is retiring from WDIV on December 13th.