C Block

I read the whole petition. It’s a bit weird and reads more like a high school essay at times. It does a lot of conflating FNC with FTS and the Dominion suit, but it doesn’t really make a very clear connection between FNC and WTXF other than that both broadcast Fox News Sunday. The petition would be stronger if it could point to specific examples of false election claims being broadcast on WTXF via Fox News Sunday, Level 1 and 2 cut-ins, and/or NewsEdge packages during that timeframe. There might be some instances of such a thing, but even so, it’s probably a far cry from what was being broadcast on FNC at the time. Don’t get me wrong – NewsEdge definitely does sneak slanted reporting through its PKGs that it passes along to affiliates almost every single day, but I don’t know if there was much during that time that rises to the same level of libel as Sidney Powell on Maria Bartiromo’s show. I don’t know how far this will go, but it’s still interesting, and another headache for the Fox legal team. The FCC’s notion of license holders having a duty to the public might be a product of a bygone era, but it’s possible the FCC could take this seriously. Is a corporation that settled in the biggest defamation lawsuit In American history worthy of holding an FCC license, even if the defamation didn’t happen on FCC-regulated airspace? It’s an interesting question, and while this whole thing might not go very far, perhaps it’s still worth exploring in an FCC hearing.

I never worked with her, but I universally always heard that she was great to work with.

Legoland has been very aggressive with their media campaign. They've been buying up ads and pitching a lot of stories to TV stations wherever they open up new locations. When the one opened up here, we did a few stories and segments on it. I got tired of all things Lego and passed on any of their other pitches about new exhibits or events because I didn't really see much news value in them. It's very possible that Lego bought ads on WCBS from the sales department and then turned around and pitched the news department to do a live shot out there for 'newsworthy' reasons, unbeknownst to either news or sales. This is an unfortunate circumstance that makes it look like Lego paid for the ad and the segment even though it's likely they paid for the ad but not the segment. Or, maybe I'm giving WCBS too much of the benefit of the doubt, and perhaps they are pay-for-play. In that case, it's inexcusable.

I'm pretty sure there's still a hiring freeze at Disney.

Sorry, but I'm not a fan. This doesn't feel like much of a substantial improvement. It very much has a "designed by committee" vibe to it. The opens are too busy, and the 3D elements already look just slightly out of date. The supers and fullscreens are fine, but nothing amazing. I think the KABC/KGO look is still the best of the bunch by far.

Here's a collection of most of the new "This is CNN" promos. I think there might be some CNNI-specific ones that aren't on here. https://www.cnncreativemarketing.com/cnn-uncut/#open-overlay These are fantastic – CNN at its best. With this ad campaign, I can look past the pretty bland and underwhelming update of their chyrons.

I think this is about right. Much like Denver and St. Louis, I could see where they might shift around some of the evening newscasts on KUSI to not compete with KSWB. A primetime block on KUSI might make sense. They then can keep the morning blocks the same and compete with one another and differentiate them with "unique talent" even if much of the content is the same, and cheap. The whole point in all of these duopoly markets is to simply maximize ad inventory, not about maximizing the potential for new content.

Erica Hill-Rodriguez will be named KTLA's new news director. She was most recently the news director over at KTTV. https://www.linkedin.com/in/erica-hill-rodriguez-706559b/

More turmoil at KTTV – acting news director Pete Wilgoren is out. By my count, three LA stations are currently without a news director (KTTV, KNBC, KTLA). Yikes.

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 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.