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Since the ICE raids started days before and there were no new substantive developments; I agree with them that it didn't warrant much more than a mention. And the following day, they presented a more comprehensive piece regarding the raids. I appreciate their measured approach when it comes to 'the news of the day.' Giving viewers the same tired rundown of stories, just like everyone else, hasn't worked. If there was ever a time to re-invent the wheel, it's now. I'm not sure they will ever be #1 (or even #2), but they're fully capable of being the most competitive #3 there is. The question is, will that be enough for them???

According to the NY Post, the ‘stodgy’ new CBS Evening News anchors received a modest viewership bump for their premier. The broadcast had 5.2 million viewers, a +14% spike from Norah's 2024 average. What I find laughable is the article's extremely negative viewpoint. (I'm laughing, but I'm not surprised because this is the Post, after all) My favorite quote is from the nameless former TV executive who doesn't think "audiences have the capacity to absorb a reporting-led show with lots of segments." Yes, our attention spans have shortened, but not everyone needs the news to be quick hits served with extra flash like Entertainment Tonight. That show has the attention span of a fly. Not bashing ET. There's a place for that, and there's a place for the new CBS Evening News. It is hilarious that people say, "Try something different to stand out," and then, when someone does that, they get bashed for not looking like everyone else. If you want a typical newscast, two broadcast networks offer typical news of the day presentation.

99.99% of what he posts is negative about something. Lord knows who actually said what. Most of the feedback seems to be positive. It's a different approach and it stands out. Will there be changes and adjustments? Im sure there will be. But it stands out from the rest and that is what they're going for

Well, it is FTVLive… CBS could do 100% what Uncle Walter did during his time and still complain.

Not sure what to make of those comments or if they’re from real people. Comments I’ve read have been mostly positive. Some have grown accustomed to getting a recounting of events instead of being told what the implications of said events are. It’s something that will take a minute to get used to. Like others have said, CBS is on the right track. They just have to keep going and block out the noise.

It’s nitpicking (or criticism) I’m sure they expected. Can’t please everyone. Likely a case of perception versus reality. DuBois sits on the left (traditionally the dominant side), intros the first story, gets the last word, etc. It’s a balancing act that’s going to take time to get right. And if they don’t, that’s fine too. It’s the substance that matters.

I wouldn't mind if they did a singular tease for their lead. Something out of NBC's playbook... Critics are also chiming in, like us Variety magazine likened the show to PBS NewsHour https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/cbs-evening-news-format-change-john-dickerson-maurice-dubois-1236288061/

Finally! CBS is being CBS. Instead of trying to copy and beat NBC and ABC, they are compiling a broadcast that fits CBS's ethos. It has the feel, pacing, and in-depth storytelling that is the hallmark of CBS News. I don't know how it will do long term in the ratings, but I applaud them for going their own way. Even the minimalistic graphics is refreshing. (Yes, I hate how the other two label everything as BREAKING NEWS.) But this also feels very CBS. 60 Minutes doesn't use lower thirds at all. They make it a point to incorporate the person's ID into the script. Every version of their morning show used to be a poor imitation of TODAY and Good Morning America. Remember their 5th Ave. streetside studio? It always felt like they were going against the grain, trying to be something that was unnatural for their organization. Until they stopped the cooking segments, concerts, Halloween parties, etc., that the others do well and focused on good storytelling and smart conversation. It hasn't set the ratings on fire, but they are doing something different, which works for them. Now, they appear to have embraced their DNA in the evenings by assembling one heck of a smart newscast.

Would be great to see Jim jump to MSNBC and replace Andrea Mitchell at 12pm.

Sadly we have too many defending what he did, calling it what it wasn't including Elise Stefanik. The press needs to find its morals and call it out.

Lester Holt is on NBC now with a special report. WCBS’ Kristine Johnson was anchoring CBS coverage (on streaming at least).

Interestingly Americans viewers tune-in in droves for 60 Minutes and CBS Sunday Morning, but the rest of the news division output is meant to be different? I dont agree. The alignment of the all the CBS news programmes to a similar cerebral, more thoughtful, calmer tone suits me. Miss the old days of Brokaw, Jennings and Rather. I dont hate NBC News as a news division but Nightly News has become headache inducing with the story presentation and tone. ITs disappointing frankly. The bulletpoint style of reading a story is wildly annoying frankly

I believe those are real comments. I'm not nearly as negative on the new show as those comments are, but I get the criticism and share some of it. On Monday, the lead story on CBS's competitors and pretty much every other major national news outlet was the ICE raids. CBS reduced it to barely more than a 10 second mention. Instead, they led with Margaret Brennan on Deepsake as a debrief segment with nothing more than talk and some slick fullscreens. They didn't roll a frame of video or sound until almost four minutes in when they were onto the second story. After watching the first two days, it seems like they're not really chasing the news of the day anymore in favor of fewer, longer enterprise stories. That's a fundamentally different strategy from anything CBS has done before. I'd argue that the Pelley era did the best job of balancing both. It's not a bad program. But is it the newscast of record with news from today? I'm not sure that it is. This is a great show for news junkies and anyone who's already read the major headlines online all day long. I'm not sure if it's a great show for someone who's too busy to keep up with the news and wants to watch a recap of it at dinnertime, and I think most broadcast viewers are probably the latter.

Not super shocking when watching the broadcast. The set is so bareboned but I think that’s one of the strengths. I haven’t watched WNT in years but isn’t their set also just a desk and a massive video wall?

WJZ Eyewitness News 1980 (Reupload) WMAR 5:30 News Snippet 1980 (Reupload) WTTG The Ten o'clock News 1980 WBAL Action News 1980

I believe during Scott Pelley era (2011-2016), they use the original 1987 open as bumper break, alongside the variations of 1987 theme.

Maybe they could use the original 1987 version of the open? InShot_20250128_185232423.mp4

Guess I’ll add also. Watching it, it felt more like something from the BBC. The fact they didn’t have a “breaking news” cyron up speaks volume to what they want with this newscast. I think the tease being gone is just something they are testing and we will probably see it back, but will be short to just two or three stories. We will probably see changes happen in the next few months before something more permanent happens. Let’s hope CBS doesn’t mess up anything else.

I’m late to watching the full broadcast but I echo everything that’s been said here. This is really impressively done and one of the best iterations of CBSEN that they’ve created since before Katie Couric’s time. The clean visual look, the depth of the reports and the pacing was really a 10/10. And once again, that 1987 theme is a classic. Just really well done. I haven’t said that about CBS News in a very long time.

I don't know if this was already posted, but CBS is showing Hollywood Squares at 2 pm ET rather than The Price is Right. This fills the gap between The Talk's cancellation and Beyond the Gates' premier.

Reading on the comments online, the viewers liked the new format.

I feel the same way about all opinion "news" channels, especially FNC and MSNBC (here lately, new news is no news).

CBS has the strongest Evening News, Political Affairs, and morning shows and News Magazine journalistically speaking. I still don't understand why they/Paramount seem to be struggling much more than NBC and ABC. Hopefully people give this a chance.

I've seen opens, and now a montage from Archiva on YouTube. I have to give it a solid A-. I thought seeing no tease, no BREAKING NEWS stingers, and weather coverage (regardless if it was significant or not) was refreshing. This is night one so I'll take what I've seen with a grain of salt because it doesn't mean it'll be consistent every night. However, I do think CBS has finally found a working formula and I hope it sticks. CBS deserves to be #1 again every night, but it'll take a bit more tweaking and many more viewers to lure them all back in. For now, night one gives me a solid A- impression.

KCRG news promos 1970s:

CBS hasn't done this in 30+ years. It didn't work after nearly a year the first time, we'll see how it goes the second time around.

WIBW News 13 1991 WFLX FOX 29 ten o'clock News promo 1991 WFSB Eyewitness News 1993

End of an era. Remembering the team of Dennis, Julie, Mark and Bill.

KTVU Meteorologist Bill Martin to retire after 33 years. https://www.ktvu.com/news/ktvu-meteorologist-bill-martin-retire-after-33-years

I guess an instagram post is worse than your lead anchor getting an OWI and pulling a “do you know who I am?!” with the cops… but that’s Jessie Garcia’s leadership style for you.

And of course it was because Dan O'Donnell threw another temper tantrum about 'free speech for me but not for thee'. These stations just have to stop listening to these cranks because the only thing they're good for these days is outrage. I didn't even know she had an Instagram account, so this was her personal one, not anything connected with the station. Godawful situation that should have been a quiet suspension at the very most, and our X-obsessed man is a private citizen with no government power. She should not have been fired, and these news orgs are turning 'balanced views journalism', meant to deal with little things like football lights at the high school stadium and road expansions through neighborhoods, into a punchline.

It absolutely was; the air quotes was me being facetious/poking fun of how the media isn’t really calling it what it is

It wasn’t a gesture. It was a Nazi salute. Let’s call it what it was.

Legendary Chicago journalist Jim Williams is entering semi-retirement so Thursday is his last day full-time at WBBM. https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10233713025183879&id=1127803631

I can’t help but wonder if people are taking too big a risk of not wearing a mask at all times. Just because you may not be directly near a fire doesn’t mean the air is safe to breathe in. It would be a different story if it rained at some point to cleanse the air. Plus, I saw a reporter from KTLA touching burnt debris with his bare hands. I can understand getting caught up in the moment, if you will, but people really need to be careful.

After 35 years, RTV6 Chief Meteorologist Kevin Gregory is retiring. His last day will be at the end of February. Once he leaves, this will mark the first time since 1972 that a Gregory has not been one Indianapolis TV. His dad Bob Gregory was the long time chief meteorologist at WTHR. https://www.wrtv.com/wrtvs-kevin-gregory-announces-his-retirement-after-35-years-on-air

This constant debate is getting nowhere. The gaslighting and ad hominem attacks aren't constructive. Both "sides" here are making compelling points, but some are less rooted in the reality of the situation than others. Folks, we can sit here and scream about "market research" and "freedom to brand as they want" until we're all blue in the face, but that doesn't change the material facts being offered up at this point in time. Every station (with the exception of KCBS/KCAL, using a modified variant) has adopted the "CBS News [location]" co-brand, which is, in essence, the dominant brand in the graphics. Most, but not all of the stations, have also begun verbally using only the "CBS News [location]" brand, with the co-brand being regulated to nothing more than an image on the screen. If there was truly as much freedom being offered to the stations as some claim, I cannot imagine a world where every single station has adopted the same exact branding strategy with minimal to no variation. The rumored KYW co-brand is the first one that seems to have been designed for the branding scheme developed here, however even it is confined to the co-brand box. Either every station is on-board with the strategy CBS has developed (likely!) or there's now a real "CBS Mandate" that they stick to the one size fits all "cram your co-brand in this square" strategy. Otherwise, I'd suspect we'd be seeing stuff like this or this. "Brand equity" and "market research" is just a snapshot of consumer sentiment at one point in time. Many of these stations, with a few exceptions, are only visually co-branding. KTVT may still show the old CBS11 logo in their bug and certain graphics, but every single on-air mention, every promo, every reference to what the station is, calls it "CBS Texas". What's that mean for "brand equity"? It means that, over time, more and more people will connect "CBS Texas" to the station than the "CBS11" brand. This could happen six months from now, or maybe six years from now. Who knows! In the case of KTVT, the SVP of Brand Strategy and Development for the CBS O&O group is on record as saying "I think it was a no-brainer that while you’re trying to make a position around CBS New[s] Texas, that [the CBS11 logo] remained.” A very interesting choice of words, as "while you're trying to make a position around CBS New[s] Texas" seems to imply that the CBS11 logo will stick around as they build up the CBS News Texas brand, but not forever. Yes, older generations are going to refer to these stations however they damn well please until they ultimately depart this mortal plane. I still have family members that call WITI "TV6" despite the fact they haven't branded as such for almost thirty years. WITI smartly used the long-dormant "brand equity" for the TV6 brand on their Antenna TV channel, which appeals to those same people. This same demographic has also long aged out of the demographic these stations are largely trying to appeal to on their primary channel. All of this, all of it, is at the whim of a few managers at each station and a few people at corporate. The understanding is that the News Director at KCBS/KCAL fought for the "KCAL News" brand. What happens if he leaves? What if viewership and impressions decline? Whoever comes in next could easily blow up the whole branding strategy and decide to brand as "CBS News Los Angeles" in an attempt to change things up. To claim any of this is "permanent" is disregarding how this industry has worked for the past 40+ years. Nothing is permanent in this industry. There's been graphics packages that have lasted less than a year (some that have never even launched!), sets that get re-worked within months of debuting (look at what became of the very expensive WBBM Streetside Studio set...), brands like "Ei8ht is News" that lasted all of a handful of months. NewsNation launched with a bright "WGN America" plexiglass panel on the front of the desk. Surely, someone at Nexstar knew that the channel would be renamed "NewsNation" in the future, yet they paid for that WGN America panel anyways. @Myron Falwellis free to have his own opinion as to when this will happen, so is everyone else. I'm a bit more conservative with my guesses, I think it could take some stations years to move away from their co-brand, and I think a handful (KCAL, maybe WBZ) could keep their co-brands indefinitely (though the co-brand box is super awkward for a long-term brand.) Fighting about it isn't constructive. It doesn't have any effect on anybody's day-to-day life, unless you're in one of the aforementioned positions making these decisions. My opinion? Folks, we're not in 1995 anymore. The local broadcast TV industry has long resisted necessary changes, and we're now on the precipice of needing to do some once "unthinkable" things for it to remain viable. People who actually work in it were telling me 6 years ago that they expect it to utterly collapse by 2030, and that was before we had a global pandemic that showed these companies that you can have your reporters file packages out of their home and pipe in newscasts from the other side of the continent. Nothing lasts forever, and that includes retrans fees (which, I should add, largely became a "thing" when stations started seeing ad revenue fall off a cliff) and political ad dollars. At some point, the proverbial gravy train is going to come off the tracks. These station owners, large and small, are going to have to cut costs more than they already have, and that could come in the form of working with the networks to have more national news programming with local opt-outs (Similar to how the BBC handles regions, which the US morning shows kind of already do, and NBC News Daily does precisely) or the companies will just opt to do it themselves (Nexstar is in a position to do this with NewsNation, Scripps with Scripps News, etc. Why pay for a network news service when you already have your own?) The "CBS News [location]" strategy accounts for this while also giving each station a unique brand, which is more important in the digital age than ever before. There are a lot of "CBS 2"s out there, but only one "CBS New York"/"CBS Chicago"/"CBS Los Angeles". If the local media landscape looks the same in 2033 as it does now, some terrible mistakes were made.

Well I didnt realize how much of the set was actually screens. It turns out the only part that is real, is the wooden header and the desk. Everything else we see is just graphics on the screens. Even the floor behind the anchor desk is a big screen. Even the coloured lighting on the floor is just graphics. The entire back of the set is all screens and the "Set" can be changed to look like anything instantly. Its the cheapest and easiest way to change the set to look like anything. They dont even have to change the floor. Its literally all screens. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/gabriel-almanzar-aa177141_thrilled-to-reveal-the-new-cbs-evening-news-activity-7290079729657757697-o3yd

It's official. Jim Acosta is leaving CNN. https://deadline.com/2025/01/jim-acosta-leaves-cnn-1236270468/

It was inevitable.

WISN-AM morning host Jay Weber was suspended for posting something far worse during the election.

WDJT parts ways with meteorologist Sam Kuffel after series of posts criticizing Elon Musk’s “gesture” at the inauguration