jerseyfla

Looks like WOFL anchor Charles Billi has left the station. His Fox 35 Facebook page and his bio are gone and he’s hinting moving back to his hometown of Tampa on his personal FB page.

Here is Andrea when she was a young upstart anchor at then-2 year old independent station WFTS Channel 28 in Tampa. 11 years before they would become an ABC affiliate. WFTS TV News, Andrea McDaniel (May 1983) - YouTube

Well that's just bleeping great! I wondered why I had so many deleted videos on my favorites outside of Sloan's videos. I favorited many of his videos especially for KNBC coverage of the Dodgers 1988 World Series run and I think this guy also had the first hour of coverage of the 1989 World Series Loma Prieta Earthquake uninterrupted as it happened with the network quickly filling time with a Roseanne rerun from ABC as he said he was auto recording that WS game when he was at a college class. This is a damn shame! I need to save more videos! Edit: Yep that was him. Arghh!!!

That show loves having national "has beens" as hosts! Dave Nemeth, Jerry Penacoli, and now Maggie Rodriguez!

That’s the one aspect I loved about that market when I lived near there 6-10 years ago and should not change is the separation of focus between the two stations. WEAR is completely a Florida based TV station where WPMI focused mostly on Alabama.

Great! Now I have to break out my indoor antenna! Otherwise, I'm stuck with 2 crappy low budget understaffed stations owned by Sinclair and Morris!

Now that I have been living in the Macon market since January, I can tell you WMAZ would have to literally self destruct for either of its competitors to come close to them. They could change its news music to Rebecca Black's wretched song "Friday" and people would still watch them 4:1 over WGXA and WMGT. WGXA had given up on morning newscasts on their ABC subchannel even though my Directv listings still show them scheduled from 6-7am M-F. I don't think they have enough people on their staff for daily newscasts and they don't have the elaborate sets like their bigger Sinclair sisters. And don't me started on WMGT! They still have their weather and sports staff at their houses even during known severe weather coming to the area. They don't produce live weekend newscasts. You know your market sucks when your NBC affiliate shows a local stereo store informercial every Saturday night at 11pm instead of a newscast and on Sundays they do a recorded review of local stories from the past week.

Yes, she wasn't there long. Maybe 2 years. I remember one day she was anchoring at 5pm on WTSP and then a couple of months later I see her co-hosting the (1992?) Fiesta Bowl parade on New Years Day on NBC as she had just joined KPNX.

Pannoni has posted a lot of late 80’s-early 90s WTSP clips on his multiple channels lately. I probably saw some of these commercials live as a kid as my mom watched ABC soap operas back in the day before she went back to work when my sister reached school age in 1992. Now if we could only get some newscasts from this era.

Let’s see how long NMSA will take to edit it.

With the slogan in the image campaign promo at 3:44, it probably is safe to say the news music package known at WTVT 1983 Theme should probably be titled “Where News Comes First”. Who knows they probably had been using it since 1982 just like WFLA’s “Spirit of Tampa Bay” theme was discovered as starting that year too.

This!! They could easily run Press Your Luck and Pyramid or Card Sharks as half hour versions. All Press Your Luck has to do is cut the Bonus Round. Pyramid or Card Sharks can become single runs. Actually the best idea for ABC would be to launch a game show block to counter The Price is Right at 11am and move The View to 1pm or swap it with General Hospital and have The View counter The Talk. I'm sure The View gets crushed at 11am by TPIR. Really the only show that ever really came close to countering TPIR was when NBC ran Wheel of Fortune against it in the 80s.

Yes, you’ll need to watch it on a desktop with Adobe Flash. If only I knew how to rip it to mp4 and put it on Youtube.

Here is a link to that promo from the Internet Wayback Machine. You have to hit continue go to the 70s, then 1977 and then click on Bob Hite sails to Tampa, the promo then plays. https://web.archive.org/web/20050326181659/http://media.tbo.com/wfla/flash/timeline/popup.htm

WPMI is owned by Sinclair. Kind of a go figure. If any other group owned WPMI, Greg Peterson probably would have been fired for violating state law with his side venture.

The logo may look similar to KGTV and WJAR's old logos but I think it looks more like a knockoff of WFLA's 1982-1988 Spirit of Tampa Bay "Figure 8" logo. Kind of an odd looking logo for 2020.

I remember when Belo changed the graphics at WWL back 8 or 9 years ago (I think) with a rotating logo bug in the right corner. The viewers complained left and right on social media and probably via phone too and within a week the rotating graphic was frozen. I wonder if more complaints ensued once Belo and Gannett merged to become TEGNA and launched the standardized packages to WWL. I'm sure Tegna brass said "to hell with the viewers" this time. I bet someone at WNEP gave Tegna brass the run down on what effects could happen if they ditch MCTYW Schwartz-style like ABC did with WPVI.

This was replaced by a reboot of Tattletales with Bert Convy in January 1982. 4pm became an infamous daytime death slot for CBS. Most CBS affiliates and even their O&Os programmed syndicated shows at 4pm and shifted the 4pm scheduled show to 9:30am or Noon, or never showed it. CBS tried to put a game show in this slot for 4.5 years. All great game shows in Tattletales 2.0, Body Language, and Press Your Luck but nothing stuck. CBS moved Press Your Luck in January 1986 to make room for Card Sharks, CBS figured more affiliates would change their schedules to keep PYL and it never happened and the most iconic game show of the 80’s was gone by September as CBS gave 4pm back to the affiliates.

Wow! Carol Jenkins looks great!

Actually, next year will be the 40th anniversary of many stations swapping NBC for ABC in 1980 due to ABC's massive ratings at that time and the network seeking stronger affiliates. Atlanta-ABC swapped from WXIA to WSB losing NBC Dayton-ABC swapped from WKEF to WDTN losing NBC (reversed August 2004) Jacksonville-ABC swapped from WJKS (now WCWJ) to WTLV losing NBC (reversed April 1988) Not 1980 but 1979 for the same reason Indianapolis-ABC swapped from WTHR to WRTV losing NBC

Another WFTV alum headed to the big leagues at WSB. I'm glad to see him come up to my new neck of the woods, I liked Jorge when he was at WFTV the first time around when I was in Cocoa Beach.

It wasn’t that late. At least according to this ID before an episode of Super Password in May 1988 it wasn’t.

This is probably when they launched the "Watch Our Spirit Now" promos with the "Newswatching Out For You" slogan. But as a newscast close from 1984 shows, WXFL didn't stop using the soft instrumental close to close the newscasts. They had so many graphic iterations of promos during The Spirit of Tampa Bay's time. They had the pre-call letter change multi colored logo which was on the trucks, the yellow logo with black background on the mics, and the gold logo with blue background after the call letter change. I think I saw 5 different show promo graphics for the station from 1982-1985 to when they went to the Gannett knockoff graphics and they went with Power News for newscasts and Turn To News for promos.

The only viewership WIIC got in the 70s was when the Steelers played on Sundays and Pirates played on The Game of The Week on NBC. If it weren't for the Steelers success starting in 1972, I'd think WPXI would still remain a laggard in the ratings.

10 minutes of a WTAE newscast from January 20, 1980, the night the Pittsburgh Steelers won their fourth Super Bowl. Most of the open included too. At the end you see part of KDKA’s news open from that same night, which KDKA posted on their own website 10 years ago. Which was the last time the Steelers won a Super Bowl.