Spring Rubber

I wonder if Nexstar requires the job to be posted to the public? I know some corporations post all jobs in the same way for internal and external candidates, even if they do plan on promoting/hiring from within.

Lauren did the 5-7 block of sports in studio. Come to think of it, there were several times prior to GN Sports debut where they aired the Dan Roan bumper on a Friday even though Lauren or somebody else was doing sports. Did they stop using the special Friday bumpers for some reason? Maybe somebody new took over in production that doesn't even realize they have special Friday bumpers with Lauren in them.

They just ran a Dan Roan talent bumper, which is odd for a Friday, but hey, maybe he'll be on tonight with the Spring Training report?

Any idea what this segment is about?

Hmmm, somebody was listening. This week, they've added the WGN News signature to the beginning and the end of the opener.

They were referred to as "football" graphics, so my initial inclination is yes, but then again, ESPN uses a completely different package for college football, so...

I'll have to try to pay attention next week. I haven't been watching the full hours of each newscast to catch if there was a talent open. Do you remember which block they air the talent opens during? I feel like it's either near :08 or :38, but I can't remember.

Has Dan permanently been removed from the 5pm and 6pm news? Even on the nights Dan is working, it seems to be a rotating cast of characters on those newscasts while Dan is only appearing at 9pm and on GN Sports.

Night 8 of GN Sports, and now both Dan and Jarrett are off. Wow.

Right, on no normal newscast or sports program do you see a host move over when someone is off. An anchor always maintains their side of the desk while the fill-in takes the seat of whoever is off. It's strange to see Jarrett be moved over to the right in Dan's absence.

That didn't take long. Day 6 of GN Sports, and Dan Roan is already off. Josh Frydman is filling in. Yesterday's show was the only show with Dan and Jarrett in studio together, as Jarrett was in Miami for the Super Bowl all last week.

I'm with you on the "none of this feels like Fox" thing. I think what makes it worse is how rarely Fox uses their own music anymore. The broadcasts feel very generic and unbranded. The graphics don't scream "Fox". The production and pop music doesn't scream "Fox". It's all quite generic.

So basically they're pulling an NBC and only updating their football graphics. Every other sports property will be stuck on the same old graphics for 5-6 years+ probably. I hate this new trend of football-only graphics.

That font being used for Kyle Shanahan's name is HUGE. Trying to figure out if that's going to be the standard or if it's just for added effect for the pregame show.

Ok, so everyone's officially obsessed with italics now, because just flat graphics weren't enough. Everything has to be italic now. It started with ESPN's CFB graphics, then made its way to NBC's Wednesday Night Hockey graphics, and now it's going to be adapted by Fox too.

Maybe the plan is for Fox to immediately roll out the new graphics to all of their properties and to just give the old graphics over to Sinclair to use on the RSNs for however long they need to use them before Sinclair rebrands the RSNs.

Wow, that's a complete shocker. Maybe they realized how boring their current graphics were for a Super Bowl. Question is if the new graphics permeate into the other sports properties or if they pull an NBC/ESPN and give their NFL coverage a completely separate look from everything else.

I like the graphics, but I was hoping the music would be something more custom, something aligned with the WGN branding. This techno music they're using seems kinda generic.

There is no slowing down with WGN announcements in the new year... https://www.robertfeder.com/2020/01/16/wgn-launch-half-hour-sports-show-1030-weeknights/ So does this mean that Dan Roan will work Monday-Friday instead of Sunday-Thursday like he's been doing for the past several decades? Will Instant replay be officially handed over to Lauren Magiera?

I would think their biggest challenges are the fact that WGN America has gone 6 years without any content that draws an audience, so they need a lot of advertising to get eyeballs back on their network, and also it feels like a hindrance to only do nighttime news with no daytime component to draw the daytime audience and cover breaking news. Here's hoping they can overcome these hurdles with time.

Having the LA studio continues to make less and less sense for ESPN. They just cut back the amount of usage for their NBA coverage there this year, now they lost SC Coast to Coast. It's basically only used for 4-5 late night SportsCenters per week, one or two days of NBA coverage per week, and I believe their daily show The Jump.

I noticed that CBS 2 rolled out the weeknight crew for all of the evening newscasts tonight. Not sure if it was mainly motivated by the winter storm or by the NFL game...I'm thinking mainly because of the NFL game. I think everyone else in the market stayed with their usual weekend teams.

Also, according to my program guide, they're going to end the Saturday 5pm news at 5:30pm instead of 6pm. That's only showing for this Saturday. The Saturday after that appears normal for now. Hopefully this is just a one-off occurrence.

Dang, I was hoping for more midday weekend news...something either at 12pm or 4pm. Nobody in the market is doing that.

I predict that a replacement will be named just prior to November 2020 sweeps.