Weeters

Firstly, blue for high pressure and red for low pressure is the NOAA standard marking. Also, I'm fairly certain those are both just generic graphics that came with the systems... That KTRK one was designed in the weather office if it isn't a generic one. No broadcast designer would have made that. For what it's worth, WLS is using generic WSI high/low pressure system icons...

Thread cleaned up and unlocked. The user that initiated the disruption has been banned. In the future, I humbly ask members to use the "report post" function and the block tools built into the forum over "backseat modding" users disrupting a thread. -Weeters

There's not many things I dislike about this package. I'll agree the opens are a little busy, it will be interesting to see how they evolve over time. The music though... The music is bad. I am sure some people are going to love that previously unheard cuts of the "classic" music are being used, but hoo boy, they are 22 years old, and you can tell why they were tossed in a drawer in 2001 and forgotten about. My understanding is these might not have been their first choice, but for various reasons this is what they ended up with. It would be nice if they find the money in the coming years to commission something new. It's past time for some of these Gari packs on the O&Os to be put out to pasture, or at least updated to not sound like a bunch of 90's synth work.

I could have sworn the WBBM streetside studio was going to become some kind of weather center annex, not a full news set...

It's in the same place as the WPIX control room was when they were using that newsroom. The windows are obviously much larger now, though! Hard to believe that area was this mess 12 years ago (and this was after they fixed it up with those wavy panels, it was just plain black walls before that!)

This constant debate is getting nowhere. The gaslighting and ad hominem attacks aren't constructive. Both "sides" here are making compelling points, but some are less rooted in the reality of the situation than others. Folks, we can sit here and scream about "market research" and "freedom to brand as they want" until we're all blue in the face, but that doesn't change the material facts being offered up at this point in time. Every station (with the exception of KCBS/KCAL, using a modified variant) has adopted the "CBS News [location]" co-brand, which is, in essence, the dominant brand in the graphics. Most, but not all of the stations, have also begun verbally using only the "CBS News [location]" brand, with the co-brand being regulated to nothing more than an image on the screen. If there was truly as much freedom being offered to the stations as some claim, I cannot imagine a world where every single station has adopted the same exact branding strategy with minimal to no variation. The rumored KYW co-brand is the first one that seems to have been designed for the branding scheme developed here, however even it is confined to the co-brand box. Either every station is on-board with the strategy CBS has developed (likely!) or there's now a real "CBS Mandate" that they stick to the one size fits all "cram your co-brand in this square" strategy. Otherwise, I'd suspect we'd be seeing stuff like this or this. "Brand equity" and "market research" is just a snapshot of consumer sentiment at one point in time. Many of these stations, with a few exceptions, are only visually co-branding. KTVT may still show the old CBS11 logo in their bug and certain graphics, but every single on-air mention, every promo, every reference to what the station is, calls it "CBS Texas". What's that mean for "brand equity"? It means that, over time, more and more people will connect "CBS Texas" to the station than the "CBS11" brand. This could happen six months from now, or maybe six years from now. Who knows! In the case of KTVT, the SVP of Brand Strategy and Development for the CBS O&O group is on record as saying "I think it was a no-brainer that while you’re trying to make a position around CBS New[s] Texas, that [the CBS11 logo] remained.” A very interesting choice of words, as "while you're trying to make a position around CBS New[s] Texas" seems to imply that the CBS11 logo will stick around as they build up the CBS News Texas brand, but not forever. Yes, older generations are going to refer to these stations however they damn well please until they ultimately depart this mortal plane. I still have family members that call WITI "TV6" despite the fact they haven't branded as such for almost thirty years. WITI smartly used the long-dormant "brand equity" for the TV6 brand on their Antenna TV channel, which appeals to those same people. This same demographic has also long aged out of the demographic these stations are largely trying to appeal to on their primary channel. All of this, all of it, is at the whim of a few managers at each station and a few people at corporate. The understanding is that the News Director at KCBS/KCAL fought for the "KCAL News" brand. What happens if he leaves? What if viewership and impressions decline? Whoever comes in next could easily blow up the whole branding strategy and decide to brand as "CBS News Los Angeles" in an attempt to change things up. To claim any of this is "permanent" is disregarding how this industry has worked for the past 40+ years. Nothing is permanent in this industry. There's been graphics packages that have lasted less than a year (some that have never even launched!), sets that get re-worked within months of debuting (look at what became of the very expensive WBBM Streetside Studio set...), brands like "Ei8ht is News" that lasted all of a handful of months. NewsNation launched with a bright "WGN America" plexiglass panel on the front of the desk. Surely, someone at Nexstar knew that the channel would be renamed "NewsNation" in the future, yet they paid for that WGN America panel anyways. @Myron Falwellis free to have his own opinion as to when this will happen, so is everyone else. I'm a bit more conservative with my guesses, I think it could take some stations years to move away from their co-brand, and I think a handful (KCAL, maybe WBZ) could keep their co-brands indefinitely (though the co-brand box is super awkward for a long-term brand.) Fighting about it isn't constructive. It doesn't have any effect on anybody's day-to-day life, unless you're in one of the aforementioned positions making these decisions. My opinion? Folks, we're not in 1995 anymore. The local broadcast TV industry has long resisted necessary changes, and we're now on the precipice of needing to do some once "unthinkable" things for it to remain viable. People who actually work in it were telling me 6 years ago that they expect it to utterly collapse by 2030, and that was before we had a global pandemic that showed these companies that you can have your reporters file packages out of their home and pipe in newscasts from the other side of the continent. Nothing lasts forever, and that includes retrans fees (which, I should add, largely became a "thing" when stations started seeing ad revenue fall off a cliff) and political ad dollars. At some point, the proverbial gravy train is going to come off the tracks. These station owners, large and small, are going to have to cut costs more than they already have, and that could come in the form of working with the networks to have more national news programming with local opt-outs (Similar to how the BBC handles regions, which the US morning shows kind of already do, and NBC News Daily does precisely) or the companies will just opt to do it themselves (Nexstar is in a position to do this with NewsNation, Scripps with Scripps News, etc. Why pay for a network news service when you already have your own?) The "CBS News [location]" strategy accounts for this while also giving each station a unique brand, which is more important in the digital age than ever before. There are a lot of "CBS 2"s out there, but only one "CBS New York"/"CBS Chicago"/"CBS Los Angeles". If the local media landscape looks the same in 2033 as it does now, some terrible mistakes were made.

There's also no lights... so my guess is whatever is set up in there is temporary and just meant to fill the space.

They are running promos that state "CBS 11 is now CBS Texas" while animated stick figures lower in the "channel number box" to sit next to the new CBS Texas logo. Seems to be another sign that the "logo box" is, as theorized, a temporary and transitional thing. .

KCAL might honestly be the only one where the "transitional" branding can function long-term. I do think it's just a matter of time until the "CBS News" portion gets put back into the OTA broadcasts. The rest of them, though? There's no way something like the WCBS and WJZ lockups, with the current logo in the box next to "CBS News New York/Baltimore," are viable long-term. The "channel number logo" gets shoved into a small box in the corner, dominated by "CBS News (location)". Two distinct logos advertising the same product. Same goes for the call signs. They accomplish very little, simply existing to reinforce the fact that this is the local news and not the visually identical network news. They're not even following the way the stations currently use their call signs, if the KDKA image is any indication... They want you to "Expect More from KDKA-TV News" for a reason. KDKA will keep that call sign box until the day someone on KDKA radio decides to say something controversial again. Some of these call signs aren't viable long-term because CBS management made a huge mistake not requiring call sign changes on the majority of the former radio cluster. As for stations buying stuff with the logo, KPIX is still using mic flags with the CBS 5/CBSN Bay Area branding on them. Just think of how good that square "KPIX" box would look on a mic flag... But maybe there's a reason they haven't bothered to order new ones yet? Waiting until they can get away with simply putting "CBS News Bay Area" on them? Perhaps. Why do I think the "call sign box" is a transitional brand? It looks and plays the part. It's one size fits most, grafted onto a different logo in an uninspired manner. It's also not universal, and only seems to be rolling out at stations that have some kind of long-term branding history using their call sign. @ChesapeakeTVrecently shared a news article in the Discord that had some interesting numbers in it. CBS knows that people by and large (over half of all people, at this point!) are moving away from over-the-air television being how they primarily consume local news. This is why Detroit was launched as a "streaming first" operation. If this company truly felt that call signs and channel numbers were still relevant to today's consumers, we'd be seeing them on WWJ CBS 62 News Detroit. Those boxes are transitional. This is a fact. The question is, how long will this transition last? At this rate, what relevance will channel numbers or call signs have in three years? Five years? Ten? The digital renascence is here, folks.

Once and for all: Rey Rodriguez of Linear Drift is the Art Director for Nexstar. In fact, his LinkedIn shows his "employment" at Linear Drift ending in 2015 when he started at Nexstar. Technically speaking, none of the Nexstar packs are "Linear Drift" graphics.

That desk is 8 years old, recycled from the 2015 temporary set.

The general consensus seems to be that box is a transitional element, so I'd not expect them to brand as what is essentially "CBS 4 WBZ CBS NEWS BOSTON" forever.

It has been longer since WPVI tried changing the music (1996-2023= 27 years) than it was between MCTYW debuting on the station and the attempt to change (1972-1996= 24 years). This is a fun piece of news lore, but it's also ancient history, and things are a LOT different today than they were in 1996. They have been sneaking in new cuts of music for a while now. I can almost guarantee "modernizing" MCTYW would not get the same response as it did nearly 30 years ago. It would probably take days for anyone but the oldest, rustiest dial viewers to notice.

Firstly, CBS owns the trademark to "Eyewitness News". Secondly, no. Both "Action" (which is owned by Cox!) and "Eyewitness" are cliché and ancient brands that do not need to be picked up by anyone not already using them.

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...

The discussion about channel numbers is missing the entire premise of CBS News Detroit. Somebody please show me how to tune my phone or web browser to Channel 62... This is an operation built on a "streaming first" mentality. The fact that it airs OTA is just a bonus. CBS appears to be, by and large, moving towards "streaming first". This is exactly how I've publicly predicted TV will move over the coming years. Channel numbers are an outdated concept in a world where more and more people are watching OTT where those precious numbers mean nothing. Traditional TV viewers are not bumbling morons and will figure out where to watch. Millions of senior citizens have figured out where to watch Fox News without it branding with channel numbers.

I'm sure that the transition to "KCAL News", even if temporary, was thoroughly researched and discussed by people with a lot more information regarding the possible outcomes than we do. Things in this industry generally don't just happen without some kind of research or thought being put into it. We knew when the "white box" logos started showing up on the websites, that they were likely there to help transition stations who are well known by their callsigns to the new branding. I don't know why it's surprising that KCBS/KCAL chose to transition using the brand that's better liked/known instead of just ripping off the band-aid on "CBS News Los Angeles". (Also, WITI used the transitional "FOX is SIX/SIX is NEWS" branding for less than 6 months)

Most viewers probably don't care, they're turning on one channel or the other and see the same faces they usually do. Folks were complaining about "CBS News (city)" not being "unique" enough and whatever, and then when given "KCAL News" are upset about that. It's a good brand. It translates well cross-platform, and there's no other "KCAL News" out there. KCAL was seen as the stronger brand and there's nothing wrong with that.

Couple folks in this thread acting like they are personally affected by a TV station changing the name of its newscasts. Chill.

Missing the point. "Action News" and "Eyewitness News" are extremely dated brands, and are more or less cliché at this point. It's nearly 2023, it's time to find new ways of branding local news outside of two 60's era news formats. The formats themselves are barely even used anymore. I sure don't notice any difference between an "Action" or "Eyewitness" newscast and... every other newscast out there.

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.

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????)