C Block

Great, they can beat KTVU at 10pm on the Friday before the Fourth of July. But that's not a trend. The fact is that KTVU still frequently has triple (or more) the audience of KRON at 10pm, and often more viewers at 11pm than all the other stations combined. Don't believe Lieberman's assertion that KTVU ratings are "cratering" in his mind. He makes up 80% of his "reporting" and doesn't have access to the numbers. He even claimed recently that KRON was beating KTVU at 11pm – only problem is, KRON hasn't had an 11pm in years. With that said, KRON's primetime block has cultivated some sort of following, especially after KGO cancelled their 9pm show on KOFY. There are more eyeballs on KRON's 8 and 9pm than on the CW shows. If Nexstar cheapens the CW programming as widely reported and also forces KRON to air it, then that seems like a perfect recipe to sabotage what success they have.

That's not really true. It has happened in some isolated incidents. But Rich Lieberman keeps making up his own facts to claim otherwise.

I'm not so sure KRON would be too happy about becoming a CW affiliate. Their primetime news block has actually gained some traction since it launched a few years ago.

I'm not so sure of that. Fox has more than $4 billion in cash on hand, which is plenty to cover the settlement. In perspective, $787 million amounts to about two weeks' worth of revenue for the entire company. What I imagine probably will happen, though, is that you'll probably see Fox be less willing to make new investments in its operations and some overall belt-tightening in the medium term.

I'm confused by that KYW look. Why bring back a throwback logo that few people probably remember? It seems counterproductive to what I thought was CBS's ultimate goal of unifying all the stations' branding and eventually de-emphasizing channel numbers. Yes, I know they want to have local elements in there too, but this just feels like it's going in the opposite direction. Also, why let stations pick their own colors? The whole point of standardizing graphics equipment on Chyron Axis is that you can roll out different animations and monitor graphics for all kinds of news topics really quickly to all the stations. Other station groups have done this for years. Stations like KYW and KDKA with one-off looks are going to perpetually have a mismatched look or will not be able to benefit from the resources of hubbed graphics.

I’m sorry, but that pee-stained Spirit Airlines vibe looks awful. They should have been forced to use the same colors like everyone else.

There was definitely a push initially that every O&O would contribute some kind of content on a regular basis to Fox Weather. Obviously that didn't happen with everyone. As I see it, a big reason for that is that all the O&Os have so much live news to worry about themselves and barely enough meteorologists locally to fill all of it, so I doubt a lot of the local mets wanted yet another thing dumped onto their workload with nothing for them in return. What has happened, however, is that Fox Weather will request live shots from O&O reporters who are on weather live shots, and O&Os are also able to request live shots from Fox Weather correspondents.

Most likely that. That sounds like a "the competition is doing this, therefore we must do it too" directive from somebody locally. That graphic also looks like a rush job from the hub which is typical of station-specific requests. This is not a thing on other O&Os nor would I expect it to become a thing.

This is textbook Wendy McMahon if you recall the branding shifts at WCCO and WBZ in the mid to late 2000s, both of which were places where she was the head of creative services. The WBZ brand of that time is a great example — she brought the call letters back, but the CBS eye became more prominent in a lot of branding elements.

Maybe I'm late to this, but there's been a proposal to turn the base of 1515 Broadway (where CBS Mornings originates) into a casino. Who knows whether this would ultimately happen, but it does make me question whether Paramount will keep CBS there long-term. https://www.curbed.com/2023/02/times-square-casino-slgreen-caesars-jay-z-security-bratton.html I believe there's an ordinance or some other requirement that every building in Times Square be flashy or have some sort of prominent use. I think Viacom got away with it during the TRL days because that show would spill big crowds into the street, but the way that studio space is currently used certainly isn't flashy or anything to keep people lingering.

If you're a station, you need a whole crew of people even if you just have a single half hour 6pm newscast. Making them work harder by doing more live news doesn't cost anything. You can expand that half hour newscast into an hour and not have to pay anybody extra or hire any more people for it. If you cared about quality, you might, but that would also cost money. An extra half hour of news will get higher ratings and be easier to sell to advertisers than almost any syndicated show these days or informercials. Now keep doing that several times over. This has been the sad reality of local TV news economics for the last decade, and I expect it to continue. We're going to keep seeing this industry do more with less. It's happening everywhere at every station in every market to some degree.

Why would KGO ever want to use the former brand that one of its competitors used for decades?

I wonder whether this means they'll start putting newscasts over there when they're pre-empted by network programming. Right now, they'll cancel newscasts during Thursday Night Football instead of moving them over to the second station, which is what most of the other O&Os do.

Moving to Chyron probably explains at least some of the teething problems on KCBS, I mean, uhh, KCAL. I believe they were on Viz before. Hopefully the other stations have a smoother transition. The assignment desk segments are interesting, though it’s not a new idea by any means. I can’t help but think the unions would kill it before anything else though. I don’t know what the contracts are down there, but up here, SAG-AFTRA is pretty clear that anybody who’s not hired to be on-air never appears on-air.

I still think the programming strategy is smart. But there's no way of getting around it: that branding is clunky. It is most certainly going to confuse viewers, and I wouldn't be surprised if CBS tinkered with it again within the next two years.

It's not about cost-cutting, it's about more effectively using the power of owning two stations. By putting different and better programming on both stations, they can sell ads on both stations. Right now, they're trying to sell ads on a newscast nobody watches on one station, and infomercials on another. There's no guarantee that people will start watching right away, but there will now be more reason for viewers to linger on both of the stations CBS owns, and it's at least a more compelling sell to potential advertisers.

They sold the building, but that doesn't mean they're getting evicted. The announcement last year was that they expected to lease the space back from the new owners for a few years. https://apnews.com/article/ga-state-wire-fl-state-wire-atlanta-florida-health-c7e1f0b9f85ecb1203f4fa727701c3ac Honestly, I think it's probably so hard to predict when or how the drawdown of CNN Center and move to Techwood will happen. It's been talked about for years and first came about under different management and under a different corporate owner. I'm sure it'll happen, but I wouldn't be confident trying to pinpoint when or what the final outcome will look like. My only guess is that, whenever faced with any kind of decision moving forward, the current people running CNN will probably select whatever's the more austere choice.

It''s not that clear cut. There are a lot more resources, people, and space needed to support TV news production than just what you see on air. Morning Express probably only accounts for a fraction of the headcount still based at CNN Center. CNN Domestic weekends, a good chunk of CNNI shows, and CNN En Espanol are all still anchored out of CNN Center. And even though they've moved a lot of anchoring out of Atlanta, a lot of other important staff are still there. As I understand it, a lot of the staff for the CNN Domestic dayside hours stayed in Atlanta even though those hours moved to New York. So a lot of the producers, writers, segment producers, editors, etc. for much of CNN Domestic are still in Atlanta even though the shows are anchored in New York. Not to mention CNN.com, Newsource, Image + Sound, and plenty of other teams. CNN Center may not be the bustling place it was a decade ago, but there are still a lot of people working there to support a major news organization. Some other people also might have a better idea than me, but I also question whether there's enough space for everything at Techwood just yet. Even if they are going to move everything there and in a smaller footprint than what they have at CNN Center, there's still going to be a fair amount of work needed to move so many employees and have space for all of them. I'm sure they'll be able to do it, but it won't happen overnight, and it won't happen just because Morning Express got cancelled.

The other thing is that it nearly doubles the amount of ad inventory, so there's at least the potential to make more money by having more compelling programming on both stations in the morning. I honestly think what they're doing with the mornings is a fairly smart strategy to try considering they have nothing to lose. People have tried far, far dumber ideas in the morning. The only move that makes me question whether current KCBS/KCAL management have their heads on right is the hiring of Ross Palombo. That guy is so horrible to work with that KTVU let him out of his contract more than a year early, and then people at WPLG were literally crying in their newsroom when they found out that he was rehired there.

Probably didn't help that her EP left shortly after her show was launched.

It's sounding like Fox is expecting that NBC and ABC will indeed drop the 10pm hour. I've heard that the O&Os are looking into what effect, if any, it would have on their long-established 10pm newscasts. It sounds like there's actually not much overlap between viewers who watch the big 3 primetime offerings and those who watch primetime newscasts.

Interesting. I always thought it was odd that he was replaced on the morning show and put onto what seemed like a pretty meaningless 11am/4pm midday shift not too long ago.

Pretty sure it was dropped sometime in early September at the start of the fall season. KICU dropped it too, though it still has the Live Now simulcast in the middle of the day. If I'm not mistaken, Fox Weather is on a subchannel somehwere on at least one of the stations Fox owns in each market.

Yes, is that not basically what I said?

This doesn't read as any new information, but rather just analysis of the original story that the WSJ broke several weeks ago. I do agree though that it seems more than likely that the 10pm hour goes away and will probably be replaced by more local news in most places, especially the small markets. For local stations, that's probably the best bang for their buck – no extra costs ("you've been producing half an hour, so we'll promote you to doing 90 minutes!") and a lot more ad inventory and therefore more revenue potential for the stations. I doubt we'll see a late national newscast as so many have speculated in here. If NBC is going to give back the hour to affiliates, then they're going to give back the hour. I suppose some stations on the east coast could take the west coast edition of Nightly on a tape delay if they really wanted to, but that sounds kind of lame. At the most, maybe NBC would offer the option for stations to carry that Tom Llamas show or whatever else is on late on NBC News Now at that hour. One idea I haven't seen brought up is whether the stations in the Central and Mountain time zones would be able to shift primetime to 8-10 and basically expand prime access to the 7pm hour and also still have a decent lead-in to the 10pm newscasts. If so, that would make programming neatly uniform nationwide with prime access until 8pm, primetime 8-10, and then local news at 10. If so, then this move would really work out well for the stations in the middle part of the country. I would love to see some stations take this opportunity to do their own local late night talk shows. That would be fascinating, and perhaps some big market stations could pull it off. But I bet the cost-benefit analysis on that doesn't even get close to penciling out.