Spring Rubber

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.

I don't expect them to syndicate it, at least not year one. Once they get ratings feedback and see how the format faired with the audience, I think maybe they'd consider it the following year, assuming they continue to do the show.

The fact that they had to use a costume supplier to create that many replicas of that getup is amazing. That was something.

So now that Alicia Roman is officially off the weekend evening newscasts, I guess Pete Sack actually has a permanent role as the meteorologist for those newscasts. He's been appearing on them ever since she switched to mornings. I wonder who covers those newscasts whenever Pete is unavailable. Maybe Paul Deanno...

This seems like a trial to eventually put Alicia on weekdays mornings after Andy retires. I can't think of another good reason for it. They barely have enough time for Andy's segments in the fast-paced morning news environment; I can't imagine what it's like with two AM meteorologists. How do they handle it? Do they alternate segments or something? Who stays around and provides the Today Show segments?

Wow, I didn't realize that they use the news set for that show. I've never watched.

I wish Xfinity would put the ESPN channels all together. It baffles me how spread apart all of the sister networks are on their lineup.

Looks like they're wasting additional room for extra padding for no reason.

I have a feeling this might have been in the works when they hired Paul Deanno. I wonder if Alicia will take back both weekend mornings and evenings or if they'll just use Pete or a rotating cast on weekend mornings now.

11:30pm? With essentially no lead-in? Are they basically trying to kill off the show at this point?

Ugh, that's so annoying. If they want to play it that way, they should just fold all their RSNs into a single channel and air whatever game is local to your DMA.

Same thing I dislike about their previous set...the lack of depth behind the desk. All of the depth is off to the sides.

For whatever, reason, Feder seemed surprised that they were hiring a 5th meteorologist. I mean, WGN and WLS already have five. I assume Pete Sack will be utilized a lot less or almost never now.