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On top of all of this, Scripps is still launching its new graphics for its stations and has other plans in the works for 2026 so there is no way that they will give up the company to Sinclair without a fight, even with their financial problems.

At one time Scripps was the largest. 30 years ago, their deal with ABC in the throes of the New World-Fox deal set off other sub-deals like Westinghouse and CBS (after WJZ getting spurned by ABC in favor of WMAR) and even the market swaps caused by that deal alone. It's tragic to see what has become of the company that Edward Willis Scripps founded almost 150 years ago. What was once a beacon of journalism has morphed into a bungled series of assets on life support after over-extending themselves over and over, while doubling down in the worst ways possible.

Scripps responds:

To be fair, it was NBC that decided to brand as NBC10 Boston because of their position on cable. I doubt most people would get the two stations confused with one another. WJAR has historical precedent as well as having an actual full power license of its own. The only reason WBTS has full power coverage is because they have a channel share agreement with WGBX. But, knowing Sinclair, nothing would surprise me concerning moving feeds around between stations in a single market.

Don't give them any ideas! Hence my wondering.

And this is what it looks like when there are two people's names on the screen at the same time. Yes, the bug bar has been raised a few pixels. Not only does it take up way too much space, but now seeing the picture below the bar makes it look like a mistake. Either stretch the bar all the way to the bottom, or crop the left and right sides (similar to the CNN ticker). In my scanning of coverage the last few day, I've seen multiple instances where they used the wrong show's lower-thirds. Most of the time, it's most noticeable when a white box appears when it should be blue, but you can also see it when the banner first appears and displays the show's title. I saw The 11th Hour over the weekend, Way Too Early during Morning Joe (at least that's the same ugly color scheme), and The 11th Hour again during Katy Tur Reports. I know this is super nerdy but this is the only place to dump my nerdy observations.

This is almost certainly the biggest "MSNBC Shakeup" in the network's entire history.

The breaking news title cards are really nice. I wish the lower thirds used that same gloss and shine instead of being flat. Overall the graphics are pretty good, better than CNN. The studios look great, and retain much of the MSNBC look. The L3s are a decent B-. The name ID L3s are unique concept. Not the best, not the worst. The MSNOW logo needs to be more creative. Overall not a bad rebrand after leaving NBC. i'm not a modern MSNBC fan, but it's hard to think the brand that I've known my entire life is no more. Growing up and seeing msnbc on the MSN homepage was nostalgic.

My asessment.... Walter Cronkite leaving was the impetus. But Dan Rather was a capable anchor with a broadcast just as good as the competition. Someone had to be third place so I suppose it was just his lot. Bob Schiffer was excellent, and I think he should've stayed on until his retirement in 2015. Katie Couric introduced too much soft news and formatting changes like commentary which probably turned viewers off. Scott Pelly was too stiff and he did not have enough personality for the evening news versus a straight laced program like 60 Minutes. Jeff Glor wasn't really given a chance, and he wasn't a household name. I suppose people found him plain and unremarkable so they didn't tune in. Nora O'Donnell was good in the mornings but like Katie, CBS overestimated her popularity translating from mornings to evenings. Nora could also come off as snotty and biased at times. Maurice and John are capable anchors. John however is overused and frequently miscast in anchor positions all over the network. They have the best and most high-quality show of the big three broadcasts. However, David Muir and (at the time) Lester Holt had been well established with audiences for over 10 years. They are also are bigger names. CBS' constant reshuffling of their evening news (and morning) product with less popular talent perhaps made it hard to retain an audience. Then there are the other factors like decline in traditional viewership, the 1994 realignments etc.. Long story short, right now, CBS is the best of the big networks in terms of journalistic quality but they just can't seem to get it right in the mornings or evenings.

Having seen the entire graphics package and the sets for MsNOW. It was a lost opportunity to do something new and fresh. But instead same old same old. I knew it wasnt going to be anything fresh when I saw that (Youtube/FAST start up opinion channel" style logo. They claimed they were now unrestrained by NBC News and had more freedom to do what they want. Well it seems they didnt know how to exercise this new found freedom. Certainly was a lost opportunity. Boring graphic layout. Clunky. As much as I didnt like SkyNews Graphics completely they have grown on me. They are well thought out and clean. And have proven to be dynamic and have been given more dynamic refresh recently. They could have done something a bit like SkyNews or something. I thought MsNow would have done something more different. Yawn. And dont get me started on the awful set graphics. Horrible. ITs seems like they used all the ideas so it just looks messy. (and yes I know the sets are temporary) But they couuld have really made themselves looks completely different than anything seen on US telly. Ohh Well.

Pure Gordon Gekko stuff right here.

John Oliver is a treasure

NBCSN is up and running. Looking at the first 24 hours it's mostly shows that are on NBC Sports' FAST channel, with the only unique content tonight being the Milwaukee Bucks-Cleveland Cavaliers game.

I wonder if the 10 percent rule still applies. Once a stake reaches that, IIRC, it's considered ownership under current FCC rules. Sinclair is just buying enough to stay under the radar ..for now...

Is this 15px gap between the lower border and the bottom strap intentional or just a technical glitch? The gap has been there ever since Velshi on Saturday: During recorded programmes (e.g Morning Joe: Weekend, The Briefing with Jen Psaki: Weekend etc...), the gap doesn't exist; However, there is a gap between the lower thirds and the strap:

You weren’t wrong about your idea about the bottom bar turning burgundy for Morning Joe. Because that’s what it is for the show.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Sinclair has brought a stake in Scripps and wants to buy the company.

Exactly. CBS News is being used as a sacrifice. It just doesn't make sense for some far right MAGA viewer or anyone who watches FOX News Channel all day to switch to CBS News. The FNC audience is extremely loyal and CBS can try all they want but it just doesn't make any sense for this audience to seek out CBS unless FNC does something to push them away (and even then. Newsmax would be more likely to get these viewers than CBS). FNC is extremely well funded and has significant resources, and is extremely right wing and makes no effort to hide this, while CBS News is trying to cover up and downplay their shift to right wing propaganda. All Skydance is doing is hurting the few successful programs CBS News has. 60 Minutes is no longer credible. Local newscasts from CBS owned stations in left wing markets like LA, New York, Boston, Chicago, etc is no longer credible and just being associated with a right wing news operation is going to hurt local news ratings for every station CBS has in left wing markets. On top of this, they are making massive cuts to their news operations. If they really wanted to compete with a right wing 24/7 powerhouse they wouldn't have gutted their 24/7 streaming news service and cancelled multiple shows. They don't even want to spend the money to produce a live weekend morning newscast for the network.

You would think, I mean PIX had a 3pm followed by the eastern feed but cancelled its newscast in favor for CBS Evening News Plus. Now that it’s over, we now have a full hour of Hot Bench at 3. No more eastern feed.

It would be suicide to move what is WJAR to 6, or to change its call letters. WJAR historically is the dominant station in RI. Dead air often beat Ch. 12 and 6 combined. It is one of NBC's oldest affiliates going back to radio and started using the three toned chime that is synonymous with NBC today. It's a long heritage and habit in RI despite Sinclair's attempts to destroy the station. I assume Disney isn't too happy with this move, but they have no where to go. The Providence market is the future. All anglo commercial stations (not including ION), are now owned by Nexstar and Sinclair. Welcome to the future if both companies get their way with a compliant FCC. RI viewers are the losers.

It also looks like the bar will turn black for primetime programming, if The Weekend Primetime was any indication last night. In general it looks like a mix between the previous MSNBC graphics, CBC News (with the behavior of names/titles being separate from the L3), and a sports studio show (where I see centered text like this a lot more often)

Breaking news graphics turn red and black, with the "bug bar" also turning black. I'm still not sure how they decide where to put people's names/titles.

Byron Allen saw the reaction to the 20 ads on-screen for the "NBA Finals Presented by YouTube TV" and decided he could be even more obnoxious today as the sponsor/broadcaster for the CIAA football championship.

They should change the calls to WHNE, because the love is certainly gone. Also they could've finally settled the NBC Boston channel confusion on channel 10 by just moving to 6.1 and 6.2, but we're talking about Sinclair, who just loves to bungle things as of late.

For some reason, I thought The Weekend was an evening show and that it seemed like an odd choice for when to have the switchover. Meanwhile, the website has switched over. It's visually similar to how it looked as msnbc.com except for the branding changes, but the URL has changed to www.ms.now. More importantly, Taboola is gone! Or maybe it just needs to be manually updated -- which I hope never happens. Suggestion for the moderators: This seems like a really good time to split off these last several post (starting with Geoffrey's post about the new graphics) into a new thread and lock this one.

And WLNE is still going to be owned by Standard Media... correct? While "totally separate" from Sinclair in terms of their other semi-relater sidecars, it seems like these deals don't smell quite right. In the eyes of the FCC, everything else is a non-licensed asset and can move to WJAR and Sinclair. And given "ABC 6" and their place in the market, their presence is so minimal it doesn't raise any alarms about market share either.

The logo included in the release is familiar but if you have a sharp enough eye, it's actually quite different from the previous iteration. Obviously the Peacock is now the 2023 incarnation but the lettering has been shrunken a bit to match the style of the main network logo and the font itself is now NBC Tinker (the previous version used Gotham).

What?

And the reality is, the new ownership has no motivation to make CBS, especially the news division, succeed. Bari Weiss may have said she wants CBS out of third place, but she’s the latest in a line of people who have wanted that but will never get the means to achieve it. (IMHO the audience the new ownership wants has been gone for so long and has so many other options for right wing news that have always been conservative that having them come home to an old school mainstream outlet with a new lens on the world is just a fantasy.) The Skydance purchase of Paramount was the equivalent of buying a bundle of random totaled cars from a junk yard. The successful divisions are newer vehicles that were totaled for insurance purposes because modern cars get totaled after the smallest crash because of modern safety systems. But those totaled cars still have lightly used parts that are useful and profitable. CBS is a 1997 GEO Metro that somehow stayed on the road until it got rear ended and totaled out of its misery a few weeks ago. And the news division is the crushed trunk. Their realistic goal: strip out the catalytic converter for a little cash and sell the rest at a loss so they can get the tax write off.

Gifted link here. The revived NBCSN launches Monday: https://www.wsj.com/business/media/nbcu-new-sports-channel-76ece6e7?st=BEJeQf&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink edit: As part of the press release, it says that it is expected to include MLB games in a soon to be announced contract (apparently the former ESPN package which includes Sunday Night and Wild Card games but not the Netflix-bound Home Run Derby): https://www.nbcuniversal.com/article/nbcuniversal-launch-new-nbc-sports-network-next-monday-november-17 And one more bit of news. USA Network has a deal with the new Pac-12, which includes 22 football games a year, 50 men's basketball games a year, the men's basketball tournament and 5-10 womens' basketball games a year: https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/versant-usa-sports-pac-12-rights-deal-1236580835/

Nah, it looks almost exactly like WKRC's 90's/2000's logo.

Couldn’t have said it better about CBSN/CBS News 24/7. I quite enjoyed Anne-Marie & Vlad each weekday morning, but now that they have gone to solo anchors and a AR/VR set, outside of ‘The Daily Report’, it’s unwatchable. As I have said before, the busy background is distracting.

Yea, but I think it could be good 'cause of the fact that St. Joesph, MO only (for a long time) have one TV station airing local newscasts which is KQTV. (Personally, KTAJ-TV is a lot more of a Kansas City station.)

I can't even remember the last time outside of severe weather coverage and Way Too Early the last time I saw any forecasts on MSNBC to speak of. I'm shocked they even put out PR about this.

MS NOW and CNBC will use AccuWeather for weather coverage.

Let’s not forget that Oprah was on most bigger market ABC affiliates starting in the mid-1980s, and that audience then kept the tv on the same channel.

I agree entirely with TVLurker that the lack of consistent talent has hurt CBS News. Constant reimagining, rebranding, and relaunching morning and evening news products has been a disastrous approach. Why CBS blows up and relaunches "a new era" every few years, NBC and ABC make tweaks to evolve their shows. However, I think the 1995 affiliation switch gets overplayed. Indeed, it mattered then and in the immediate years that followed. But CBS primetime was able to ascend to the top of the network pile. Same for daytime. I believe the problem with CBS News is CBS News. The culture was set during Cronkite and never changed. There's no doubt that CBS News has an excellent pedigree. But NBC wasn't exactly asleep at the switch in the early days with Huntly and Brinkly, plus the Today Show. NBC News has continued to evolve as its audience has evolved. Heck, the early days of ABC News were a non-factor on the national stage. It wasn't until Roone Arledge envisioned newscasters as "stars" that they started to gain traction. In the 1980s and 1990s, NBC and ABC invested in their on-air presentation, including sets, music, graphics, etc.. Television is, after all, a visual medium. Meanwhile, the culture of CBS News seems perpetually stuck in the Cronkite days. "We don't need to invest in our on-air presentation because we are CBS. Walter Cronkite worked here, damnit! Our reporting is the star." That worked in the 50s, 60s, and 70s when the picture quality was poor and Americans had two or three choices for news. And when CBS does invest, it doesn't feel like they are being innovative. They seem to deploy technology as a means to cut costs. Take a look at the green screen studios they are installing at their local stations. To me, this is just a way to cut the costs of building physical sets. Other people are using these types of sets, but they are usually employed as a next-level storytelling tool. CBS is putting entire newscasts into a virtual environment, which doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than to say "we are the first to have a virtual studio!" By the way, WCBS was the first to have a virtual studio. See what good it did them. They had it in the late 90s. If you don't remember, look it up. It was over-the-top ugly.

I believe that after Cronkite left and Rather took over, that was the beginning of their woes. The transition period was alright and ratings were stable but around the beginning of the 80s was when the cracks started to show not only for CBS News but for CBS as a whole. CBS in the 80s and 90s was a whirlwind of mismanagement and terrible business decisions. CBS became both too big to fail and too complacent, making decisions that not only affected the CBS network but the company as a whole. They started to sell off a large amount of assets to other companies in a futile attempt to drive up cash flow, it kept them stable throughout the 80s but the 90s would see significant declines for CBS as a whole. Despite CBS having some stable programming like Dallas and 60 Minutes for example, CBS could not keep up with ABC and NBC which combined had more stability and better programming throughout all their divisions. The most notable example of CBS' decline has to be the year of 1995 when CBS lost stations that defected to FOX. It was the climax of a buildup that not only involved some stations defecting from CBS but also the loss of value that a CBS affiliation once gave a station. FOX as a whole took advantage by not only getting NFC rights for the NFL but by cutting a deal with New World which while involving some ABC and NBC stations, hit CBS the hardest. Most of the new CBS stations were UHF stations which to this day are still struggling to get a foothold in their respective markets, while some stations were VHF, very few of said stations were upgrades when compared to their previous stations; especially KYW which despite the lower channel number didn't have the prestige or notability that WCAU has/had. And not much needs to be mentioned about the disastrous and misguided 1995 season. While CBS has been more stable in terms of entertainment and sports programming, their news division has fallen from stability to constant disarray. Their attempts to compete in the morning show space dominated by Today and GMA has always been mostly lackluster but the loss of Rather and inability to replace Rather is still seen as a sore spot for CBS. CBS has gone through several iterations of formats and hosts for programs not named 60 Minutes and CBS Sunday Morning. The list of previous hosts for the CBS Evening News is longer than NBC and ABC's respective Evening news programs combined. In addition, no host since Rather has been able to provide stability for the CBS Evening News. While Scott Pelly's version of the CBS Evening News was the best since Rather, the ratings and monetary performance of said program pales in comparison to the Rather era where despite being 3rd, advertisers were able to rely on it for it's consistency and familiarity. CBS News brass has no faith in the show to give the host a chance to establish their tenue and because of that, nobody really sees the CBS Evening News as legitimate competition. And if the CBS Evening News isn't reliable than why watch CBS Mornings as well? The only bright spot is 60 Minutes and CBS Sunday Morning and that is telling of itself. I honestly don't think we're getting another Cronkite or Rather and I feel like the glory days past, present and future of CBS News are long gone. They'll be lucky if they make it to see the 2030s and that's me being optimistic.

I think with CBS you have to differentiate between close 3rd and a distant third. There in the latter during Rather era they were a close or strong 3rd. They just haven’t regained that momentum.

If I recall, MS NOW said the new location was a “summer camp” until they found a permanent space. Stupid idea: Why doesn’t Versant think of moving in ABC’s old place in Times Square. I have to think Disney left all the electronics in there. Then again, the odds probably favor the World’s largest Shake Shack coming into that spot.

The studios are really nice! I will admit I really, really liked the old MS supers more (top 3 all time supers for me). With the new pkg, I think the supers look better left justified. If I could change one thing, it would be the bottom bar. The Reports logo is in color and looks nice down there. But all the other shows today it was just a white background with black text or inverted. It would look better (IMO) with a custom background for each show or at least put the logo in color. Example: for The Weekend, I think the white background is fine but the logo should be colored like a blue or purple to match their graphics. Velishi’s could be a green/blue, Morning Joe could be burgundy, etc etc.

I'm not sure it was adjusted up so much as the black bar below was removed, exposing a tiny bit of the picture below. Alex Witt Reports had a new look, as expected. It looks like the newscasts (as opposed to opinion oriented shows) will use blue lower-thirds. I don't like how most of the headline texts appear squished.

I don't know why KCBS didn't launch a newscast at 3 PM followed by the CBS Evening News from the eastern feed. It would match KABC and KNBC in a large news block from 3 PM to 7 PM (in the latter's case, until 7:30 PM).

First look at the new graphics as of 7 a.m. I like the idea of a "bug bar"... reminds me of the one "msnbc" had, except that one was at the top of the screen, but there's a lot of wasted space there. Maybe they'll have stocks there during the week, but then I'd have expected weather there on a weekend. It's very low on the screen. Otherwise, looks like they're keeping The Weekend's look and I imagine most shows will keep their designs as well. Maybe something new for the "[insert anchor name] Reports" shows since those were based around the MSNBC logo and peacock. The lower-third text is centered when the box is centered, but left-aligned when it moves to the left to make room for the promo box. But the name/title is left-aligned even when the box is centered. The name/title element is too far away when there's no "New This Morning" tab.

This one really was a major fumble. CBS had the chance to redo everything and improve. But instead, they fell flat. Yes, the early days were mainly prerecorded, but it helped them. Once more live programming started, they improved. But, they didn’t really do anything else. I was one of the people calling for CBSN to rename to CBS News Network and let stations broadcast it OTA. Have programming more in line with foreign broadcasters; newscast and programming from LA, Chicago, Dallas, London, and Sydney. Allow stations to air the network overnight during weekends. Now? They are just trying to remind people they exist.

I agree with a lot of what has already been said. I'll add this: Dan Rather talked about it a bit in his Emmy Television Academy interview a few years ago. One little nugget I found interesting is when he talks about Nielsen changing its method of recording ratings in the 1980s to a diary system, which harmed CBS in a way. He rambles quite a bit in the interview, but it's a very interesting watch if you ever have the time. https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/interviews/dan-rather?chapter=14&clip=5106&full=true#full-interview Toward the ~7:00 mark in that clip, he also talks about a confluence of other issues facing CBS beginning in the 1980s. ABC had finally become a strong competitor at that point, and there was a lot more pressure for network news divisions to become profitable rather than remain loss leaders. CNN proved that television news could become a product on its own rather than just a costly public service. Also, the period of Laurence Tisch as CEO of CBS was pretty brutal with a lot of cost cutting and huge layoffs. I think all of that, plus the 1994/1995 affiliation realignment and loss of the NFL really hurt CBS. Once you're at the bottom of the pack, it's really had to affect change internally. A more recent and overlooked (in my opinion) example of CBS fumbling things is CBSN. CBS beat everybody to the punch in doing streaming news more than a decade ago, but they completely squandered their lead in that space. NBC and ABC have far more compelling and comprehensive streaming products now. I think Fox's Live Now even gets more eyeballs than CBSN (or whatever it's called now) at a fraction of the production cost.