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As a spry 134-year-old crackpot, I am still personally offended and outraged that those whippersnappers Huntley and Brinkley replaced the beloved Camel News Caravan. Even more than Actions and Eyewitnesses, we want our news delivered on drab sets in glorious black-and-white by chain-smoking anchors. That's the sort of tradition that will bring The Kids These Days back to broadcast television in droves.

They been stuck in 2nd since 2009 overall and third in the demo… they have nothing to lose.

Really good point you said there. It might have not gotten KSHB out of 4th place but it did lead to an better community support of the station.

Branding is important in every industry, but there is such a thing as overthinking it. Of what viewers we still have, I think all they really care about other than the news content is that the branding isn't distracting. I think all that most viewers care about is that the news content is of quality, that the anchors and reporters look decent, that the lighting in the studio is crisp, and that the newscast isn't riddled with production errors. Viewers no longer care or have any attachment to anachronistic branding devices. I'll never forget a conversation I had with two acquaintances in Los Angeles a few years ago. They were musicians and did not watch television and thought that "KTLA," "Eyewitness News," and "Good Day LA" were all the same station, and they assumed that local TV news was still stuck in those 70s-era trappings.

I'll back this up with a line I heard repeated in research presentations at TV stations across the country under multiple ownership groups in an era when viewership was higher than it currently is: The most reliable viewers in the key demographics stations target watch one or two quarter hours of a newscast a week, across all stations and all dayparts. I am sure that time spent watching has only decreased since I last heard a research presentation just before 2020 turned all 2020.

If stations have these "fans" who are concerned about their branding, music, and graphics, then it stands to reason that the less popular (at least around here) newscast formats we've seen lately also have fans. Somebody's watching Scrippscasts, somebody is watching Tegna stations. Maybe that's because they like what they see. If viewers "cared about tradition" the way some of us like to think, we wouldn't be seeing 45% of the news audience disappearing into thin air.

At Scripps, nothing is trapped in amber. It's a virtue and sometimes a vice. Television stations are like any other business, especially given that they are facing the biggest change in consumption habits in their history. Scripps knows this. Their hometown headquarters station is feeling it. John Kiesewetter got these figures from Cincinnati: Scripps has very good values, usually, in journalism. They probably have the most value-driven approach to news operations of any major operator (aside from Sinclair, where the values are not beliefs about journalism but often about national politics). The broader problem is that tools originally conceived to make the process of assembling newscasts, or building out news extensions, are turning into tools to reduce headcount, which seems to be causing morale issues at some stations. Ion Media has done okay, but national advertising has been soft. There's a story there. Scripps has higher exposure to the national advertising sector than its peers, and that has been an underperformer because digital has been cleaning TV's clock as advertisers that are not political rethink and retrench their budgets. A decision this big is not done without studying the market. At some point, TV news cannot go on doing the same old things. You would have to assume, and I'd want to hear about this, that research was conducted. Perhaps people identified the Action News brand with an older style of newscast or one that didn't appeal to them. Perhaps adding "Detroit" was seen as necessary for SEO reasons. That said, if "7 News Detroit" is installed without a brand proposition or other points of differentiation from its competitors, then it will get lost in the sea.

I hate to break it to you but all three major stations in Detroit will have now rebranded at least once. It happens. Folks in this market seem to like the hype of WDIV and absolutely nothing 7 has tried seems to work. They have been stuck in second since 2009 and there for 22 of the last 28 years. Even though their newscasts are really well put together now they spent years in the doldrums quality wise and never really followed the format to begin with even in the 1970’s. Their newscasts weren’t so different from KABC or WABC or WLS that we should say they reinvented the ABC local news wheel. It’s not the tradition it is in Philly or something either. If it means better graphic elements and a new voiceover and maybe talent opens and a new style that’s probably a positive on aggregate. Their focus is gonna be on using 7 and Channel 7… they don’t even have a slogan anymore. I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

Just move KGBT-TV to the KVEO tower. It's easy to tell them that they are moving transmitters, I think. Or is it difficult, I have no idea. Also, it was only acquired by Nexstar because of the failed Tribune-Sinclair merger

This has Weigel, the CBS indies and the Fox Plus stations written all over it, along with Scripps just going by a raw eyeball of where it would air in NFL markets (Green Bay it'll likely be WACY for sure, likely KMCI for Kansas City, WCIU for Chicago and WMLW for Milwaukee).

To my knowledge she has not been on air since then. I noticed on the website Dana Tyler's bio was scrapped, so it has undergone some updates. Notably, Elaine Quijano and Craig Allen are not listed on the website.