I'm not sure they were. I do remember the shortened version of the
they had, but it was still an actual open. And they did occasionally have a "cold open" with no music, but it was just occasionally. Now, the weekday 11pm show (the only show that even occasionally does ratings that aren't horrible) always runs that rather bad cold open.
Thinking about it, was there even any reason for Gannett to drop the Giant Octopus graphics with their own standardized ones? The GO graphics were a standardization. They could have still outsourced everything to Denver, and just have them use the GO metrics. Was Gannett too cheap to even try to customize their graphics producing machine to work with GO graphics? (Never mind Denver's KUSA still has many customizations in its presentation.) I guess they save money by forcing all their stations (except KARE) to use the same theme music from Rampage...
Anyway, I find it interesting that WUSA uses the no-open on its highest profile newscast, and that also they have not used the latest updates to the Gannett open and graphics for its other shows.