Leaderboard

I may not live in Oklahoma, but man losing a weather legend like Gary England sucks. My condolences are with his family and everyone at KWTV.

Apologies for hijacking this post, but @bennettmonk, please stop with your irritating reactions; there was nothing funny about this post. You make no comments here. I don't know how else to bring sunlight to this, but these inappropriate reactions must stop, and I have all interactions with them blocked, but for some reason, their reactions cannot be blocked from view no matter what I try, and it's needless notification junk/noise if you're never going to do more than react and not contribute.

Update Abilene Christian University (ACU) has allowed KTXS to utilize its facilities to help set up a temporary newsroom on campus. https://ktxs.com/news/abilene/abilene-christian-university-opens-doors-to-ktxs-after-severe-storm-damages-station

The news broke during their 10pm newscast, so nothing was planned (but there will be tomorrow). This one hurts badly. The weather community will mourn greatly. He, Tom Skilling, and James Spann have changed the game forever, and Gary will be missed for generations to come.

The move from fully physical sets to video walls allows for more variation of looks and could be more cost-effective in the long run. And they give a sense of realism as opposed to a truly virtual setup with chroma keying.

They used to be massive draws for viewership. Both GMA and Today drew pretty big artists for the release of their albums, part of their tours, etc. That said, the shows have changed so much that the concert series feels somewhat out of place these days. I recognize 2-3 artists from GMA’s announced line up. Today’s line up is a ton of has-beens.

While I'm happy for the desk, oh man the rest looks low budget... I'm holding out hope that those cut outs are temporary just for this ad...

Terry Moran speaks out. His next act: Substack. https://www.threads.com/@terrymoranjournalist/post/DKxy6ESxpE5?xmt=AQF0ykug5We3Dt7vnmPlx8Y0bvCm3z9dglgIDg2ee2ij0g

The new one? The Disney Company. As for the Concerts, it probably wouldn't be bad to eliminate them, at least as a weekly thing. They used to be a big ratings grabber because they used to get big names and well-knowns every week. Now, it seems to be mostly up-and-comers and lesser-knowns. It was partly a way to keep viewers tuned in during the Summer and especially to pull them in on Fridays. It made the sponsor, the network, and the corporation (GE, Comcast, Disney) happy. It made them money, as did the artists and bands. While the shows are still profitable, they are not as profitable as they once were and certainly don't get the ratings they once did, even when they go with a well-known artist.

Since San Antonio is already set up for WXLV's newscasts, and if KTXS has transitioned to the anchorless model, it's basically some cut-ins that can be recorded and sent to wherever the newscast is being produced from. Does KTXS have their own master control or is it hubbed? The ACU setup is likely for their newsgathering crews to work out of while their building is either repaired or relocated to a new permanent facility.

This is not a one time thing anymore, CBS is going to replace all sets with AR/VR at their owned and operated stations, including newcomer WUPA. Just a theory, I sure hope that physical sets still exist and stay around for a few more years. If CBS is successful in reducing operating losses to the point where it's making more of a profit for the shareholders, just imagine what other broadcast or entertainment companies will do with VR/AR.

Paul Deanno just announced KCAL finally gutted the old CBSLA studio and it’s now the 6th station in the O&O group to get the AR/VR set and will debut tomorrow.

It's a good open but my goodness is it long

Looks like ABC is taking notes from 20th's former cousin in the news space. Please don't attack me. I had to say it.

Repeat :

Curious to know if she will still be doing the local cut ins on the days that she’s also handling the national weather.

How would this apply to stations that are in the host City?

Maybe so, maybe not. Some of the biggest costs with these conventions aren't the travel costs, it's renting space in the arena to work and do live shots. Some networks are charging their affiliates (including O&Os) thousands of dollars a day to use their workspaces.

Jack Doles sports director/anchor of Wood TV sports has gone to a ton of Olympic games winter & summer and does a live shot at 6PM or a tape segment as well about the local athletes competing at the games. I'm guessing he'll be going to Paris for the games the only one he didn't do was Salt Lake City someone else from a sister TV station from LIN went to Salt Lake City in 2002 from Austin TX TV station.

I think some will be union shops while others will not become union shops as TV station owners will fight tooth & nail to not have a union shop.

I'm going to guess that the station handles the airline and hotel reservations?

Regarding costs, I tend to think the people who have access to the P&L info and are responsible on up the chain have that info and balance costs vs benefits. And they would also better know any data that indicates if there is a return on investment. Even if “flexing muscles” is a motivation, so be it. It’s a business and that’s part of the game. Im sure there are close calls that go either way, and sometimes there are factors none of us know the situational specifics about.

Denver now has 3 union TV stations all with NABET-CWA. KCNC [CBS] (since 9/95) *Engineering* KWGN [The CW] (since 3/24) *Assignment Desk* *Production* KDVR/KFCT [FOX] (since 3/24) *Assignment Desk* *Production* *Nexstar Media Group Master Control Hub* And maybe some of the Denver/Boulder Radio Stations??

Yo, what exactly has Gray Television done that would provoke CBS to leave WANF?? Everyone keeps saying this. I don't get it. If CBS wanted to move to 69, they'd have done so back in 2006 or a long time ago. There is a reason why they sold 69 only to regain it coincidentally just after merging with Viacom. If things went South with the CW, they'll just either run an independent, do something else we don't expect them to do with 69 or sell 69 into a duopoly with one of the other stations and MAYBE get something back. But I don't even see any reason why they'd dump the CW as long as they still have that small ownership stake. Otherwise, they'd have dumped the full 100 in Nexstar's lap. To say nothing of just how badly Gray could screw CBS up if CBS really tried to pull its programming from 46. Remember, there are many more CBS stations owned by Gray. By this logic, WTTV should still be the CW affiliate and WBXI should be CBS.

Also: This is going to dovetail well with CBS having the rights to Big Ten Football this season. Big Ten on Saturday, NFL on Sunday ... maybe they can get some traction for the station with a slick-looking newscast.

1. I love talent with great/interesting voices. Everybody sounds like high school kids these days! Love interesting talent like Milton Lewis. Lively, entertaining--nothing wrong with that whatsoever. Why bore people to death with a bunch of milquetoast stiffs? It's the local news. It's not really as serious as some people pretend it should be. 2. Wow, a demonstration that actually looks like it could be organic. Can't remember the last time I saw something like that on TV. Now it's predominantly all rent-a-mobs. 3. With the Atlanta rumors, maybe they should have held on to some of those CW stations they previously divested. Like Providence, Columbus and Indianapolis. CBS News Providence? CBS News Indianapolis?

Speaking of, when does WWJ plan to begin offering regular weekend newscasts? For that matter, when will production of WKBD’s 10:00 p.m. newscast be transferred from KTVT to the in-house operation?

It’s a staggered approach then launching all newscast like station in 1995 with new news departments did. They trying to be new kids on the block but hitting the ground running, try to catch up with the pace of the D.

That’s currently streaming-only but the legal ID tag suggests it might be added very soon. Their 4pm news launches next Monday. With The Drew Barrymore Show’s modular setup, the other half will be moved to 9:30 a.m. Also I’m watching the stream and they’ve added Detroit Now on WKBD…

They still have to launch a 4pm news; it’s possible this was a talent audition.

I also like Amyre as an anchor - I remember her time at WLIO in Lima. Plus, she clearly has a Detroit connection. I hope she continues to have a role as primary fill-in - even after (presumably - I’m speculating) Sandra Ali joins from WDIV.

That so beautiful, WXYZ Detroit Glenda and Diana Lewis did a Mother’s Day show in 2004.

Amyre Sr. is African American. https://alumni.med.wayne.edu/makupson

The entire 7pm streaming hour today was a WGPR/WKBD reunion, with Amyre Jr. interviewing her mother and former director Ken Bryant.

There is one roundabout tie to channel 33 in the 33/40 gaggle of frequencies. WSES (the former WCFT "33") on actual channel 36 and virtual channel 33 is one of the ATSC 3.0 stations serving Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, and it carries the 17.2 feed of 58.1 in 3.0. So.....yeah. Then again, for damaged goods like WWJ, best to simulcast a streaming service called "CBS Detroit" as opposed to starting a news department on CBS 62. Maybe the 62 carries a little extra baggage because of the movie UHF? But moreso by the desperate moves to keep CBS in Detroit at the time, even preparing to pipe in adjacent affiliates and resulting in ABC buying stations in Toledo and Flint at the time because of the fear of losing WXYZ (which never happened) If you think about it, the fear of WXYZ going CBS really set the ball rolling for a lot of the secondary affiliation switches because of the Fox/New World deal. That forced Scripps to go all in with ABC, which caused Westinghouse to go all in with CBS, which caused the swap in Philadelphia, and so on....

I think it's necessary to reference @Myron Falwell's post from the KCAL thread as it's extremely relevant to the ongoing channel number discussion. Long story short, look at Birmingham's WBMA, which brands as "ABC 33/40". It has not transmitted on the Channel 33 satellite since 2014, and is now regulated to the .2 on 40. WBMA's own low-power signal was on 58, which is also what their Virtual Channel is, but they didn't brand with any mention of 58 at all. What they do have is this mess, none of which have anything to do with the 33 in their brand, and And yet everyone still figures out where to watch James Spann when there's a tornado. In the words of one of our favorite media bloggers: JUST SAYING...

I don't know what OTA viewership is now percentage-wise. I know cable penetration is way down. I'm sure some of that has gone to OTT, but you would have to think that OTA viewership has also grown. Look at it this way, Detroit has something like 1.9 million households in its DMA, not counting Canada, Toledo, Flint, Cleveland and wherever Detroit signals go. The old number was 10% for OTA and it has to be a minimum of 20% these days. That's a market of almost 400,000 people. That's comparable to Charleston-Huntington and Omaha. Yes, I would say that's important.

The bitter part is that WGPR-TV has a legacy. It was merely erased from channel 62 in 1994 when CBS was forced to buy the station under duress and is now confined to a museum.

KVUE and KXAN are two UHFs that repeatedly beat KTBC, the biggest bust of all the New World—Fox stations.

The audience who've been around will cling to a channel #. They will see the # in the logo, because people only remember the abstract. They sure move The Young and The Restless around in San Diego. Wasn't it just a decade ago they moved to 11am?

Sinclair thought it was important enough to petition the FCC to let them keep virtual Channel 3 for whatever signal they ended up being on in Las Vegas. I think CBS could probably make the same case and just buy the virtual channel number from whoever has that channel 3 signal. Or buy the station, take the channel number and then sell it back to whoever owns it. Lots of ways to skin this cat.

Plus when you have 2,3,4 and 7 as your big 4 just in a short turn... it works out for the viewer and CBS as well. It get rid of your 62 problem and also solves a major issue CBS has in that market in Detroit: Visibility of your product. It's literally the Boston NBC 10 situation but in a situation where it makes perfect sense for them to do it in this case and it is a gain for everyone.

Think of it this way: you're sitting in your Laz-Z-Boy watching whatever channel. You're bored of it and you start flipping through other channels. Think of all the crap out there you have to flip through, all the infomercials, all the Mexican channels, all the preacher creatures, all the diginets and all the LPTVs with crap programming. And don't forget Canadian TV! Wouldn't it be nice to have good real estate right next to Fox and NBC? Wouldn't it be nice to just have to punch the number "3" on your remote to get to CBS?

Everybody says that, but it's about marketing. McDonald's, Wendy's and Burger King generally locate near each other for a reason. The channel dial is real estate no matter what newfangled ideas people have these days. OTA parity is being right there with channels 2 and 4, instead of having to flip through dozens of stations to get to 62.

WWJ has one of the biggest signals of any full-service television station in Michigan and they have good cable placement. They don’t need a superfluous LPTV. They just need investment. Weigel has “CBS 58” Milwaukee and “ABC 57” South Bend and you don’t see them being embarrassed about those numbers because they invested in the stations and have tried. CBS never did that with WWJ for a garden variety of reasons, and wound up making “62” a tainted brand by negligence and inaction.

Nice to see 2 old Philly news Stalwarts teaming up in Detroit

WWJ is simulcasting the streaming service CBS News Detroit, which will ultimately be in operation from 4am to 11:30pm every day. The original and current plans are to offer up to 40 hours of simulcasts a week on channel 62 (and presumably WKBD can also simulcast in other hours. Supply chain shortages delayed everything and resulted in a soft launch so a presence of some sort could be had for the February sweeps. Even with just a 6 and 11, it’s still far more local news than anything CBS has ever done with the station and the most local news output on 62 since labor unrest shuttered Big City News on WGPR in 1991. This brings up a point @Weeters has raised before and I agree with. It’s 2023. What good is it to identify your news operation with EWN or Action News, which date back to 1959 and 1970, respectively? Plus “CBS 62” has long been a negative and a liability and an embarrassment for the network—they were basically forced into buying an obscure indie from the Free Mason that was the first-ever Black-owned TV station in the mainland, and because of continued upheaval at the network and it’s corporate parents, couldn’t do anything with it.

Nice breakthrough set look and great use of a masthead banner for an iconic and authoritative 2 shot. Has a KTSP vibe from decades back but smaller scale. Would rather they had warmer elements - the black/white/grey/concrete is harsh on the eyes and even makes you feel cold. Fixable quickly with paint and flooring or picking up some of the wood cues from the desk. I get CBS is a black logo but sometimes this gets too literal. Agree the talent selection is uniquely Detroit and not in a forced hipster way.

The 6pm show

https://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/television/2023/01/23/detroits-cbs-affiliate-wwj-tv-news-broadcasts/69830403007/ Can't believe Ronnie Duncan is still bouncing around. What's with nobody there owning a necktie?