C Block

I see some chatter online that this is only for certain newscasts (11am and 4pm, plus maybe mornings?) and that KEZI and KDRV still have separate newscasts at 5 and 6pm. Just please don't tell me what's-his-name is also the news director of the combined operation.

When? Whenever I tune in, they're clearly inside these days. It's not like the days long ago when the main second block weather hit was always outside (or started inside and ended outside).

It's been in there ever since they installed this set, what, 8 years ago? It wasn't perhaps as noticeable before this refresh as it didn't really have any weather branding around it. I think it's kind of a shame they don't do weather from the backyard anymore – that was unique.

More of a refresh than I was expecting, though it's still pretty minor. The angled peacocks everywhere are a little odd.

I don’t think they’re building a new set. I saw Kyle Clark say on Twitter that it’s only for a week. With that said, if they don’t replace Daily Blast Live with anything, then it would be nice if they down the line moved Colorado and Company and the Denver Huddle back to Studio B (perhaps even just using the DBL set) and make the main news set in A the full size of the studio again. Probably not anytime soon, but someday.

KUSA is temporarily in the former Daily Blast Live studio. Kyle Clark said there was some work being done on the main set. Aside from the atrocious white balancing on one camera and awful lighting in one shot, I actually don't think this looks that bad....

The whole plan is weird. I'm not convinced it's going to last, and I'm not convinced that CBS management thinks this is going to last. Did Wendy McMahon take Neeraj's place, or is that still vacant? This anchor lineup feels like more of a placeholder idea until there's a clear idea of who's leading the news department. Whoever it is will probably want to put their footprint on it and redo the Evening News, just like what every other former head of the news department has wanted to do. Maurice is a smooth anchor, don't get me wrong, but is he a national name yet? Does he even have any body of reporting outside the tristate area? Dickerson's not awful, but he's never seemingly been super successful with any chair he's been given, and he's now basically been in them all (mornings, Face the Nation, streaming.)

I don't think that's too crazy. Is it really "most" have severed ties? KCBS and KPIX still have their partnership, though it's not as close as it used to be. Literally – KCBS moved into their own facility and had to stop sharing KPIX's assignment desk. It's a little weird that KCBS political insider Phil Matier is the political insider for KGO-TV, though I think that happened before the sale.

My one complaint is that the color palette and font selection is a little too similar to the KTVU / Fox O&O look. It's not a dead ringer by any means, but it's very very close. With that said, it's quite nice. It looks well thought-out, and it reminds me a bit of the first look KRON had in the post-NBC days. Seeing a bespoke graphics package for just one station is always rare and refreshing these days. I always assumed Nexstar would have eventually forced stations like KRON and KTLA into some kind of half-cooked standardized group look. Oh, one more complaint: a 3:30 pkg on new graphics? KRON really competing with KPIX here on who can regularly self-congratulate themselves all day long.

Looks nice....but also....it doesn't look all that different from what it replaced. I agree with the comments about the home base looking a little washed out. Hopefully they can fix that.

I don't know, I think I kind of prefer the simplicity of the previous opens. These feel like they have a little too much going on in them.

That's sad. He was one of the good ones. You could always count on him to be a class act on weekends with the occasional and unexpected quippy remark.

Those are the standard Fox O&O graphics. I don't spot anything different there. There are I think five different skin types of the Fox graphics with a different set of colors. Each one has an internal name that's a fox. I think the one with the light blue accents is called Arctic Fox.

He’s maybe not bad in small doses, and he was good writing for Cable Newser back in the day, but he was too much and too didactic in how much he was on CNN during the Zucker era. I also still maintain that media journalism is the laziest form of journalism.

Meh. The outgoing look was pretty good and probably could last a while longer. I don't see how this is much of an improvement.

Maybe so, maybe not. Some of the biggest costs with these conventions aren't the travel costs, it's renting space in the arena to work and do live shots. Some networks are charging their affiliates (including O&Os) thousands of dollars a day to use their workspaces.

What!!

They are not dead last or next-to-dead-last across the board like they were five years ago, but they're still not doing great. I'm not sure what the monthly averages are, but they're probably a ~#3 overall. Their bright spots are probably their 6 and 7pm newscasts. The format is fresh, Juliette Goodrich is a good and popular anchor, and those shows are in between the Evening News at 6:30, which also helps. I can see why other O&Os like WCBS are more or less copying that format. Otherwise, they're still basically last place in the morning, and the 8/9pm news block on PIX Plus gets hashmarks most nights.

What's the point of calling that out publicly on air? Bragging rights? All the networks take turns doing pool for all of those kinds of big events.

It looks fine. I suppose it's better than the current standard Nexstar Fox graphics. I don't think I'd say this is better than the O&O BNF graphics.

I'm actually not a huge fan of how Studio 47 looks these days. Outside of the Cronkite-styled map, the whole backdrop looks pretty dark and cluttered most of the time. The anchor desk feels too informal, and the lone monitor standup shot looks cramped. The space doesn't have that commanding feel that the Rather and Couric era sets had. Maybe that's by design, but I think they could do better.

The new set really appears like something designed for another space (ahem, KCAL) rather than something bespoke like the 2008 set. The new one has a lot of missed opportunities: nothing really to see on that left wall, weather center completely obscures one wall of windows rather than taking advantage of it, and there's seemingly no option to swivel the cameras around and have a standup presentation inside with a window backdrop. Also, is it just me, or are some of the wooden pegs above the main video wall not installed straight??? I'm glad that they're back in that space though. It's probably just a result of them being unable to lease it out to retail, but oh well. Window sets can be really finicky – I know firsthand (who knew studio walls also provided insulation from RF interference of IFBs and mics!?) – but I think they're cool and worth the hassle. Not every station can pull them off, as most stations are in boring midcentury suburban boxes. Complicated studios like these really require the buy-in of a GM to make them happen. It appears that was the case here.

I happened to be watching WHDH last Saturday night and noticed this. Their 10:30 lead was an anchor tracked pkg about a police chase caught on video from Texas that happened several days prior. Wasn’t sure if that was typical for them or not, but I got the sense that maybe it was.

The more you're able to control the coverage by using your own resources, the better the end result will be. If you're relying on a sister station or the network for coverage, then you're at best someone else's second priority, and you'll have limited say in what content they'll gather. The benefits are obvious, but whether it's worth the cost is another question. Even though the story didn't have a ton of big local ties for us, we sent a crew along with one of our sister stations to the Maui wildfires last year, and I'm generally glad we did. They were able to do live shots for us and gather more content than if we'd just relied on the Honolulu stations or the network.

I don't think it's fair to say that Miami is a "serious" news market and that Denver isn't. Miami is big on pacing, style, and breaking news. The Denver market is perhaps plainer in style but with much more community-driven stories. I think the Denver market is pretty similar in style to what you might find in Minneapolis or Seattle. I don't think either approach is necessarily wrong. You're right that plenty of stations tried coping WSVN and failed. In Denver, that station was KMGH. The short-lived "Real Life, Real News" era brought in outsider Natalie Pujo from Toronto. They put her in a short skirt in front of a big monitor and reformatted the newscast with lots of punchy franchise segments ("Burn and Learn"). It didn't work. KMGH has pretty much always been a #3 or #4 station, but the best momentum they had was years later with the Mike Landess-Anne Trujillo pairing and with a more traditional format that was heavy on investigative reporting and weather.