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In the scheme of things, losing a heritage brand to a corporate one these days is just another letdown of what local TV has become. And Scripps' rollout of stripped-down playlists of packages masquerading as newscasts take even more out of it. I dont know what Scripps has up their sleeve for their soon-to-be independents, but from what they've been putting out, it's a far cry from ever being able to be a dominant player in TV.

FCC order is here (it boggles the mind that some websites paywall documents that can be found in two minutes) It feels like the FCC is doing a case of malicious compliance by allowing the sale under these conditions. And I love it.

Surprise! The FCC approved the $75 million sale of WADL to Mission Broadcasting earlier today. But there's a catch: Nexstar is legally prohibited from directly being involved in Mission's operations of the station. I'd argue this is much worse for Nexstar than the WPIX decision, because Mission is incapable of operating a television station by themselves. Moreover, the $75M price tag does not include WADL's current facilities, all of which were retained by Kevin Adell.

So now we know Perry was that one superdonor that saved TVNewsCheck from oblivion. Sure helps to have influential people in your back pocket, doesn't it, Harry?

I think the hyper-fixation on brand and music changes being some kind of driver for viewers to "get upset" and stop watching the station is kind of absurd, when you consider all the other things that can change in a TV news broadcast that the station really doesn't have much control over. Talent is a more important draw for viewers than music and brands, and retirements don't often move the ratings needle much. WPVI didn't see a massive ratings drop after Jim Gardner left, despite his status in the market. The same is looking true at WGN after Tom Skilling left, and I can't imagine a music change or branding would actually lead people to change the channel permanently. It's not 1996 anymore. I'd also like to point out that a lot of these old 90's era "people were MAD!!!" claims come from newspaper columnists at the time. We cannot know for certain what they embellished on to make their column more interesting. "People were upset" that a station changed their branding the same way people get upset that Judge Judy was interrupted for severe weather. This doesn't mean the whole market was "rioting in the streets" like people around these parts like to think would happen if WPVI modernized MCTYW. On that subject, the 1996 orchestral MCTYW was arguably just bad and was an abrupt, noticeable change. WPVI has been using new cuts of MCTYW from different composers for years at this point (there have been some new ones since the graphics debut!) and I have a hunch nobody but people involved with this community have noticed, largely because they don't sound as wildly different as the orchestral package did.

Thank God that mostly (See KSHB) didn't happen in Kansas City. Yea, I agree. They could call it 7 News. I mean, come on, it's an DETROIT station.

No eye here.

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.

Even though this was kind of an "emergency" rebranding, that was a purposeful little nod to the site's history. That, and the fact that the media we talk about is growing beyond "TV" in the traditional sense. I think there's something wonky going on with the caching (we're behind Cloudflare now, something else I've wanted to do for a while) that is causing this, I'm going to look into it further.

General reminder that the "Action News" trademark is owned by Cox (and "Eyewitness News" is owned by CBS!) and stations have to pay to use them. Why should Scripps keep paying for a brand name for a format that hasn't been properly used in decades? I know folks have a weird affinity for these two brands, but come on. This is, by far, a better logo than some of the other Scripps rebrands over the past few years. Why should they pay Cox for this name? Why should they pay Nexstar for The CW? These are all competitors. People love to think talent at these stations treat each other like this is Anchorman, and while that's not true, there's no good reason to give your competition money for a tired old brand or a second-rate network affiliation.

Bumping this thread after almost 2 years, but one of the new Hearst-ers in WZVN got the WMUR Hearst package and Hearst Classic theme music today.

Thank you for bringing us back! Even though I"m done with TV (for now), this site is still a daily one for me to keep up with what's going on in the crazy world of TV.

It wouldn't surprise me to see Morgan Murphy move ABC and/or CW to WJMN. It's a far better station to be broadcasting on than both WBKP and WBUP. Also, merging news staffs would be a benefit, since WBKP and WBUP don't have that much to begin with.

Henry Jessel has editorialized about WPIX; the short of it is 'how dare the FCC actually enforce its market cap rules instead of brushing them aside like they did under 45 and GWB and they should be PAYING Nexstar to run the market's lowest-rated news operation, which cannot survive any other way. Also Jessica Rosenworcel should be giving a medal to Perry Sook for trying to save wireline TV with NewsNation and saving the CW, rather than fining him', which is certainly...a view.

Setting aside Nexstar/Mission for a moment, technology and generational shifts result in fewer eyes on all kinds of news sources. The pie has been sliced into far smaller portions, and consolidation didn’t cause that.

I don't mind the "7 News" branding at all; direct and to the point, though the 'Detroit' suffix just adds clumsiness to the branding just because all the other stations in the market append 'Detroit' to their branding. Nobody is thinking it's a Southfield station despite it being based there. And 'Action', at least for Detroit, is long out of date for a station that sticks to the studio or grabs either pool feeds, municipal-provided video, or freelance video from 'Hank's Discount Detroit Crime and Traffic Videos'. '7' and '7 News' is simple, and this reminds me of WTMJ under Scripps deciding to add on 'News' to their news branding (i.e. the clumsy 'TMJ4 News Today') because some out-of-town researcher found the one guy who thought 'TMJ4 Live at 10' wasn't a news broadcast and needed it literally spelled out in the title. It's just a pointless 'crouton' word that adds word salad to intros; leave 'Detroit' for the ID small type or for the slogan instead.

Must just not be listening close enough. They're on some of the stinger transition animations.

TL:DR: We ain't in the 1960s anymore Y'all. New York isn't in flames because WPIX isnt sold off yet. Okay, so, I mentioned the Nexstar WPIX type of controversy on April 1st (and no, what I said wasn't a joke) The FCC focusing on WPIX, a station which is only in the crosshair because of an LMA with Nexstar and not focusing on, well, I don't know... LOCAL news being taking AWAY in some rural areas (Wyoming) makes it looks like the broadcasting and ESPECIALLY the Television Broadcasting world seems to be semi-stuck in 1964. its like the ONLY Nexstar can do is to CANCEL the news department and sell it off to Sinclair and not compete in the market. Like, I've heard good stuff about KMBC's owners but not about WDAF? Like, should I explain that KMBC back in the day REMOVED an anchor because of her age in the 1980s under Metromedia ownership, then she sued Channel 9 only to lose after winning once because it's previous ownership was acquired by News Corp.? I said this on the same day: "Oh yea, since everybody is forgetting this, if Nexstar and/or Mission Broadcasting doesn't want to sell WPIX, they can sell any other stations to meet the cap/quota on Television stations." I do think Nexstar knew about this and sold off WJMN to Sullivan's Landing LLC to NOT get in anymore trouble. (Like if that helped). Sometimes, the Broadcasting Universe makes me confused. I'm NOT saying Nexstar is doing an good job, nor is the FCC but focusing on other problems like WPIX's ownership and not on how local news may be affected negatively be ownership changes are stuff that get me confused. As what Megatron did say, it's not the 60s hence why I said that time period. WLBT ain't under investigation in 2024 so why should any one else now? BTW, the length is a bit too much buti just want to say that really I still don't understand.