Weeters

This is what a forward-looking news organization looks, sounds, and feels like. I'm sure there will be people upset that the "Westinghouse channel numbers" and "iconic" other cruft disappears, but these stations existed before that stuff came around, and will exist after. Most of these stations never had a firm "logo" for their first 20 years of existence and they did just fine, without "confusing" anyone. Most of these logos have outlived several generations of logos at major brands. I'm still not sure why it's seen as important for a local television station in Baltimore or Pittsburgh or wherever to keep the same logo forever, while major companies like United Airlines or Hyatt Hotels get to update theirs just about every decade. TV has this bad history of treating viewers like they are absolute idiots. "Oh, we can't change anything because someone out there might get 'confused'." If someone told me RJ Fletcher's speech in UHF about the "pea-brained yokels" watching TV in his market was based on real worlds said by a real TV station GM, I would not be that surprised. There's nothing wrong with a little nostalgia, but it can't get in the way of progress. When a station branded as "TV 7" in 1954, that's because that's where it was. On TV. On Channel 7. That was it. The first signs this branding didn't work in the modern era came in the late 90's when every "ABC 7" and "NBC 4" was fighting for a relevant web domains. Then came Social Media. If I go on Twitter right now and search for "ABC 7" this is what comes up: Talk about "Confusing viewers" when the first one offers no way of identifying which station it is, and looks identical to the rest of the ABC7s there. No, most viewers do not know offhand how to differentiate between the different Circle 7s out there. There is no confusing where these CBS stations are located. I don't buy into these stations "losing" any "local flavor" with this branding, because locality is baked into the heart of it. You can be any one of a bunch of "CBS 2s" out there, but there's "only one" CBS News Chicago.

My understanding is the consolidation to Techwood is benefitting from the new age of Work from Home being normalized. A lot of those jobs don't necessarily need to be done from in the office. I would imagine a lot of the move to Techwood is going to involve reclaiming existing space that's been emptied by people in that campus going fully remote, vs. the expansion they originally talked about.

CNN is leaving CNN Center in the next 3 years from what I understand. Yes, the Atlanta operations (what's left) are moving back to Techwood. I don't suspect they'll have anything quite as grand as the set they have at CNN Center. It would surprise me if they build out a full studio once they're fully back at Techwood. Speaking of moving, a user on the Eyes of a Generation Facebook page is reporting that CNN is moving their LA bureau from its longtime Sunset Ave home to the old KNBC facility on the old NBC lot, that's now owned by WBD.

A recent statement, made on YouTube by Studio31 Media Archive, misrepresents a situation that developed on Sunday November 20th due to a breakdown in communication from myself to the TVNewsTalk staff. During the evening of Thursday November 17th, I was informed by several concerned community members that the operator of the Studio31 Media Archive account, TVNewsTalk user "sanewsguy", had posted (or "doxxed") the professional LinkedIn of another member of The News Center Discord. This took place on a third-party Discord server, unaffiliated with this site or The News Center. At that time, I brought it to the attention of both TVNewsTalk staff and the staff of The News Center. Given that this had taken place outside of either platform, no action was taken and the staff of both platforms elected to continue to monitor the situation. Three days later, on Sunday November 20th, discussion of this matter was renewed by members of our Forum Staff, without my presence. One member of Staff elected to issue a ban to sanewsguy's TVNewsTalk account for Privacy Violations. This was done without my authorization, as I had failed to explicitly communicate that I did not wish for him to be banned. My reasoning to not issue a ban was to monitor the situation and see if additional people were "doxxed". None were. It was later communicated to me that sanewsguy had apologized for posting the link, however the link was not deleted until after the ban was issued. Upon the issuing of the ban on the Forum, our integration plugin kicked sanewsguy's Discord account from The News Center. This function of the plugin was set up by design, to make sure anyone causing trouble on the forums was also removed from Discord. This is not made clear on the UI used by Forum Staff. The News Center Discord admin, @ChesapeakeTV, had also elected not to ban sanewsguy at that time, and rightfully objected to the integration kicking him. When I became aware of this, I immediately reversed the ban and attempted to reach out to sanewsguy over Discord to apologize and to inform him that the falsely-issued ban was removed. My message was responded to by "Clyde", Discord's system message bot, informing me that I was not able to message that Discord account. I had another user in the third-party Discord server relay the message on my behalf. I also sent it as a Direct Message on TVNewsTalk. The claims made in Studio31 Media Archives' YouTube statement, namely that he was "not given an opportunity to say goodbye", are completely and utterly false. There are currently no restrictions to his TVNewsTalk account, nor to his Discord account on The News Center. These claims are misleading to the community, and mischaracterize his own decision not to return to TVNewsTalk/The News Center into one where he was not given a choice, which is thoroughly incorrect. I accept 100% of the blame for the fact the ban was issued. I had failed to explicitly communicate my intentions not to ban him to our Staff. I cannot, however, stand idly by as my reputation, the reputation of this site, and the reputation of other community leaders gets dragged through the mud, by a manufactured narrative that attempts to further drive a wedge into our community, and conveniently omits the reprehensible action that led to this situation. -Weeters

To be fair, Nexstar recently agreed to an affiliation agreement with CBS that removed the affiliation from WJMN. I wouldn't expect this to be some kind of New World-esque mass re-alignment. Gray has clearly prepped for the possibility of losing CBS on WANF and only on WANF. Just because it might work in Atlanta right now doesn't mean they are prepared to do it elsewhere... at this time. Nobody expected CBS to re-launch news in Detroit, either. Once they have that spun up, they have a formula for doing it elsewhere. There's cost involved with building out a news operation, yes, but it's nothing like it was 10-20 years ago, which is definitely a driving factor in CBS choosing to re-launch news in Detroit. You no longer need a fleet of $250,000 a pop ENG trucks and $20,000 ENG cameras. You don't need a huge studio facility, especially considering what CBS is doing in Detroit with the whole "Neighborhood News" concept. WBXI didn't re-enter the CBS fold until 2019 though, so they haven't had a whole lot of time to use that as leverage.

The only use CBS has had for WUPA since it came back into the O&O portfolio was using it as a negotiation tactic with WGCL. Every affiliation agreement negotiation until now had the threat of CBS saying that, despite their "best efforts" they weren't "able to come to a satisfactory agreement with WGCL" and will be moving CBS to WUPA. Yeah, Paramount is going to pull this "we have no plans to launch news on our standalone CW stations..." right now because saying otherwise would likely breach the affiliation agreement contracts they already have in those markets. CBSViacom/Paramount/etc has been more than transparent with their plans for local stations moving forward, mainly via all the PR they're putting out for Detroit. It should surprise no one if they finally pull the trigger in Atlanta and move CBS to WUPA (and, honestly, in Tampa and Seattle as well). Gray seems to be able to see the writing on the wall, and has prepared a new brand devoid of any CBS branding, one that may very well be set up to "borrow" a lot of CBS' new initiatives before CBS has the chance to set them up locally. The ball is in Gray's possession now. CBS can either continue the affiliation agreement with Gray calling the shots (so to speak) or they can try to launch their own newsroom that will be seen as "copying" what Atlanta News First already did. Unless Nexstar decides that minority stake in ownership means CBS doesn't need to pay affiliation fees, there is no incentive for CBS to continue to keep their CW stations affiliated with the network.

After getting a chance to see this on-air, this is a huge downgrade from the way the set was originally lit. They're just blasting light all over the place and it is all very flat. Nothing "pops" anymore, and that makes it look extremely fake, like the talent is standing in front of a chroma key image of the set. It's also creating a lot of shadows on the talent and I'd be surprised if they weren't protesting this "upgrade" internally. Compare that to when the set was new... I get what they are trying to go for, the set being "brighter" and and "more welcoming" than the dark wood tones of the original design, but just blasting light everywhere cheapens the look overall. There used to be breakup patterns and other lighting tricks applied to the upper wooden portion of the set because it makes it look more visually interesting. Don't get me wrong, there was obviously a lot of work and attention that went into this, and it's certainly not bad, but something about it just feels off and feels "cheap".

Back in the studio. Quite a few of the old fluorescent fixtures are still there, but with new diffusion on them, along with some new lights scattered around. (Also, look closely at the screens in those pics... Are they chroma keying in a fake monitor for the Storm Chaser live shot????)

The news desk is sacred, and the main anchors should be chained to it. Having a "personal life" is not allowed.

Word on the street is that the ongoing supply chain/chip shortage issue has impacted the ability to get new equipment.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Chj8v2VuCqi/ Just new lights. Temporary set is the old "Everyday Health" set (a sponsored segment that used to air at the end of the midday news iirc) in Studio D. The lighting in Studio A was already mostly LED and fluorescent, but the fixtures date to the installation of that set back in 2012, so they're probably about due for replacement.

They won't push NewsNation on the affiliates. Why? Because that's not the best use of NewsNation. As I've said a few times on the Discord, the best use for NewsNation to Nexstar is to dump existing affiliations on their owned stations in favor of reformatting NewsNation programming to run OTA. With NBC and ABC moving entertainment programming to their streaming services, it's just a matter of time until companies like Nexstar question why they're paying Comcast, Paramount, and Disney big $$$ for basically a bunch of national news programming and a big nightly ad for Disney+/Peacock/Paramount+, when Nexstar already produces national news programming. "Ohhhhh! But..." you say. Tell me, would anyone actually notice if Nexstar replaced the latest flop that CBS has on in the morning with Mornings in America? The CW fits into that plan by providing general entertainment on their duopoly stations, .2s, or by selling the affiliation off and collecting money from other stations in the market.

Since they were nice and credited us: NewscastStudio has confirmed the split is for WNBC/WNJU.

FIST FIRST on TVNewsTalk... The TVNewsTalk On Your Side I-Team Investigators have obtained building plans that appear to show NBC is in the process of renovating and dividing Studio 3B (last major use was NBC Nightly News/Rock Center up until 2017). The plans show two similar looking studios (however, the plans are marked "Scenic Fabrication by others, shown as reference for coordination purposes only") named as "3B-1" and "3B-2". The plans appear to show a 360 degree track camera in each, possibly similar to what BBC News uses. Could these be for WNBC and WNJU once Telemundo moves to 30 Rock? DEVELOPING...

Keep in mind, the era a lot of these are coming from was when it was still entirely possible for a station's in-house graphics department to create an entire news graphics package on their own. It wouldn't surprise me at all if that's where a lot of these unknown ones came from, especially the larger stations (i.e. WPIX and WGN) You see a lot of TVbD knockoffs because a lot of stations looked at their work and went "we can do that ourselves for much less". You don't see it much anymore because most stations barely have a graphics department, and unless you really like working in local TV, most decent designers jump ship to different lines of work.

We were discussing NewsNation in the Discord the other day, and I went browsing through Nexstar's latest Annual Report to see what mentions of NewsNation they make in it. One thing did jump out at me, in a mention of how much money they've saved cutting syndicated programming and other types of rights (emphasis mine): Dropping syndicated programming and other shows from NewsNation through 2021 saved them $17.5 million dollars. They now control all of that ad inventory, on programming they are paying much less for than what it replaced (hell, dropping syndicated programming very likely paid for the NewsNation programming outright.) This is an important part of the NewsNation strategy, the same strategy the local stations use when they drop an hour of Judge Judy for more local news. The "ratings" might not be as good, but if they're now paying $4,000 an hour to program NewsNation Prime where they were previously paying $8,000 for an hour of Law and Order: Parking Enforcement Unit, they are coming out ahead.

That's not a "mock", it's an actual graphics package offered up by our very own @cxd7346. It is NOT the new O&O graphics. While the package is well done, this thread is not the appropriate place to talk about it.

The article to me reads like they're only building a "state-of-the-art weather center" in the space and not trying to replace the current news set. Weather is something that wasn't given much attention on the current O&O sets, so that makes sense.

The contract was originally awarded to Stun in 2019 (Yes, folks, sometimes graphics do take three years to develop).

Austin posted in the comments of the Studio 31 video that the music is totally licensed and we can contact "Mark Agent" about it, or somebody named "Gary". I'm just curious how they managed to license all these themes.

I was going to write something out defending the concept of TV graphic artists copying each other, but it's really not just a problem there. The whole industry copies each other's work. Look at how many stations just blatantly copied WSVN's format in the 90's and early 2000's. The whole industry functions by taking what works in one market and either improving on it or just straight up copying it.

Given the group's new focus on the CBS News Streaming stuff, and that other stations had dedicated CBSN studio space, perhaps they plan on turning it into a proper studio for CBS News Chicago, or a kind of "hub" for the entire CBS News Streaming operation. If you look at WMAQ's old setup, it's not like you need much to accomplish this. Basically a desk in front of the windows and some lights. They might have to buy some new lights, though. I know they've been holding on to and using fixtures from McClurg Court even on the current news set when it went in.

It looks like a re-creation of the mock-up made by the new logo designers that was included on Page 1 of this thread. I am told that the local station group was not involved with this project and that any mock up local logos included in the design documents leaked are not official new logos.

I wonder where they got that...

Just because something shows up on someone's demo reel or portfolio does not mean they created the entire thing from scratch. If there was some "rule" that you could only include stuff you made 100%, nobody would be able to get a job.