tyrannical bastard

Caught a WGNO newscast a couple of days ago. They've tightened up their color scheme by losing the more "purple" shade of blue from their graphics (ticker and bug). Since this is New Orleans, it probably should have been the one they kept and implemented throughout, but at least it's more consistent now.

Computer animation pioneer, Chuck Csuri, who started Cranston/Csuri productions in the 1980s, has passed away at the age of 99. https://abc6onyourside.com/news/local/former-ohio-state-football-team-captain-father-of-computer-art-charles-csuri-dies-at-99-world-war-ii-bronze-star-battle-of-the-bulge-3-3-2022 Some of his firm's notable works included animations for ABC and CBS Sports. They also did some work for WBNS as well being based in Columbus and having ties to Ohio State. The programs they started evolved into a computer graphics research lab that is still around today.

It feels like the lighting in the studio washes everything out. You can tell on the monitor bank when they try to show a dark image and pick up the reflection of the lights. CBS was trying to unload WUPL to Belo with WWL, after being rebuffed by them to acquire WWL as well. Katrina pushed that sale aside for about a year or two. Emmis was in the midst of selling all of their stations and Katrina pushed off the sale long after the other Emmis stations had been sold.

It is good to see the former West Virginia Media stations branching out a little more on their own after Bray Cary pretty much hubbed them all together. WVNS more so than the others since it was pretty much more of an extension of WOWK for years.... before finally branching out on their own. The only real vestige of the WVMH days is "West Virginia Tonight", as the rest of the stations have done away with some of the central-casting that was done in the past like doing a statewide weekend newscast.

Sadly, that's probably why Nexstar is pursuing them in the first place. And if they succeed and go through with it, expect a lot of the remaining "affiliates" to drop the network as soon as they can.

As much as Nexstar is hoping for their "Peter Arnett" moment with NewsNation, they're still going about this wrong. (For anyone who doesn't know, he was the star of CNN's Gulf War coverage that pretty much put them on the map as a legitimate news source all those years ago!) Instead of trying to ram it down the station's throats as an alternative to regular programming, it needs to be an addition. Put it on a sub-channel. Get it out there on OTT. But don't pre-empt your own programming for what could be redundant coverage (once the networks kick in)...Thankfully, few stations are going this route and wisely are sticking to their regular programming. And ironically, NewsNation is in usual morning mode right now, being their former WGN America self at the moment (with In The Heat Of The Night)

This is one of the strangest deals in recent M&A memory. It looks like the Apollo portion is where Cox/Apollo is buying some of the largest Tegna stations and others around Texas (and spinning off WFXT to Standard General/Tegna), while Standard General is trading some others to Cox/Apollo (including the Sinclair castoffs in Cape Girardeau) while getting the other Tegna stations. After the dust is settled, will Apollo have a stake in the Tegna/Standard General stations going forward? If not, then the deal may pass, but if Apollo has any stake, then it will still be messy, ESPECIALLY in a place like Jacksonville.

It's been a while since I've chimed in on this thread....but going back to the ratings post that was posted back in November.... Newsmax getting 5 times the ratings of NewsNation should be setting off the alarm bells. Nexstar could try to fix this, if they ramped up distribution of NewsNation on OTT platforms, as digital subchannels, or even simulcasting some programs on their MyNetwork and independent channels. But they seemed maligned to try and cook what's left of the goose that was WGN America, as people are leaving pay TV in droves, and the network that has 5 times the viewership on NewsNation could be in jeopardy itself if pay tv providers decide to pull the plug for them. Nexstar really needs to seize this opportunity, because if they don't, the ratings will continue to suck and they will soon have to admit defeat. It's well past time for Nexstar to get into the 21st century and take the streaming off their web sites and get more into the OTT realm!!!!

It appears to be working now. I dialed up Indy on my browser and WTHR shows up with the other Indy YTTV locals. I have the "location guard" plugin on my Chrome. I just set it to "fixed location", and move the pointer to where I want to test it.

For a 1990's package. Balls and Walls is pretty quintessential. Even when stations like WSAZ used it well past it's prime....all the way to late 2003.

I remember seeing it for the first time on old Andy Griffith repeats that ran on WOAC-TV 67 in Canton/Akron before they got sold and turned into an INTV/Shop At Home station and now TCT owned WRLM.... By then I was old enough to not be scared by stuff like this, but years before the "Sit UBU sit" somehow had an effect on me And the old ITC logo that ran after the Muppet Show kind of creeped me out too!

Looks like WPCH (Peachtree TV) will be ramping up its local programming offerings to create more Atlanta centric programming. https://www.ajc.com/life/radiotvtalk-blog/briefs-gray-hires-peachtree-tv-station-manager-capital-b-news-launches-charles-barkley-ponders-leaving-inside-the-nba/VOWKRU6BM5CQRBWFKOOEVTYICM/ Time Warner did this originally after the TBS split, but it was short-lived especially after the operations were turned over to Meredith, replacing the original content with syndicated programs.

Cleveland Scene has a downright scathing review of the Bally sports app.... https://m.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2022/02/16/we-are-all-so-goddamn-sick-of-the-bally-sports-app?utm_source=feature&utm_medium=home&utm_campaign=hpfeatures&utm_content=HomeFeaturedStoriesCustomMobile If this is what they've pinned their hopes for the majority of their viewers (cord cutters and the DTC customers), then they may as well be doomed.

Well, it's finally happening at WFMJ. No, they're not being sold, they're FINALLY adding a 5pm newscast. https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2022/2/16/adding-more-news-in-ohio

And now, let us bask in the former glory of Viacom logos. My personal favorite was the "wikiwiki" version of the 90s, where VYE-a-com was spoken. Was the company known as "VEE-a-com" before? Some of the 80s variants seem to think so.

Sinclair really used a lot of these sets picked up from other owners well past their prime. Even with their legacy stations like WBFF. WCHS was another, (lasting from the 90s until 2012) and so was WEAR in Pensacola, lasting pretty much from the debut of their building in 1994 to 2008.

The DTV era pretty much gave markets the ability to fill themselves out with subchannels. Since ABC was not represented (fully) in Clarksburg/Fairmont and both ABC/FOX in Steubenville/Wheeling, WTAE was piped in both markets and WPGH provided Steubenville & Wheeling with a FOX station on cable. In the analog era, KDKA was easily receivable in Steubenville, so this likely stole viewers from WTRF when they went CBS. That, and the absolute mismanagement of WTRF under Adams and Brissette before Benedek picked them up. And this was one of the few stations that Gray did not get from Benedek, so it was ripe for the picking for Bray Cary and his West Virginia Media Holdings...

Traditionally, WBOY has led the market, and was the only former WVMH station with a market-leading presence. That may have changed now that Gray owns WDTV and the WVMH look has indeed gotten stale over the years. Up in Steubenville/Wheeling, WTRF mortally wounded themselves years back even before Benedek owned them. WTOV has ruled the market since. Not helping matters was the affiliation swap in the '80s when NBC began rising from the basement to a dominant #1 in the late 80s while CBS continued sliding.

I"m thinking it may have been the WUAB Sports Extra portion of the set.

All graphic mishmashes aside, I felt like I was watching a reboot of Today In Cleveland...the only things missing were the Haley Shuffle, the kitchen-like set and Henry the Rooster! As for the graphics. I'm thinking the open was some kind of template package that had the KOIN-like vibe to it. The only thing that even ties in to the current offerings of Nexstar is the time/temp bug and the ticker.

It would be a smart addition to their netlet (especially MNTV) stations, especially if they're in markets they do not have a local morning newscast from 7-9 or already have a station doing local news at the same time....cough cough...WMYT....cough cough.

What about WPCH? Sad to say that the station evolved from the groundbreaking WTBS into a local independent station running syndication repeats (mostly at Meredith's behest when they acquired the station from WarnerMedia). While it would nice to use that station as a launching pad for a new-generation SuperStation, it may serve the area better as a full-powered Telemundo station and use the acquired low-power station for their experimentation and content origination (to be expanded in the digital realm). Plus, with their efforts in Cleveland, they can be replicated (and even refined) in Atlanta.

Well, after looking up some airchecks from WOIO and WUAB in the 90's....I guess my vision of what they had was sort of jumbled together. It seemed the banks of monitors that both WOIO and WUAB used on their respective sets resembled what I saw when the WDTN and WKYC sets were shown here. None of the "highway bars" like the other sets had. WOIO had their "newsroom" set all the way to "Action News" and WUAB had a separate set until the same era. This was the pre-Reserve Square set that WUAB had at their studios in Parma. I guess the image I had in my head was what WTTE used for their first newscasts. This was in 1996 so I don't know if WSYX was involved yet (about the time Sinclair bought River City and spun off WTTE to Glencairn).

Was Express Group also involved with set design for WOIO/WUAB for their news launch at Reserve Square? The WUAB set for their 10pm news had similar elements to the WDTN set shown.

One "vintage logo" we'll never see on TV again for sure is likely the 1980's WVUE logo. During Hurricane Katrina, the station was badly flooded by the levee failures in the area, resulting in the station having to be re-built from the inside out, literally. Since then, the station has risen to become the #1 station in New Orleans, with it's own doing, and helped by the declining fortunes of WWL, mostly at the behest of their owners and CBS.