C Block

The station owns the airtime and decides what they do with it. If they decide to let an anchor use it to say goodbye, then great. If they don't, then that's their decision too. Different stations and different circumstances could lead to different decisions, but ultimately, nobody is owed any airtime. You'd also be surprised to find out how little viewers actually notice or care if an anchor 'disappears.' Yes, many might notice, but most don't. What everyone in this line of work should know is that everyone, from the GM, to the anchors, to the part-time video editor, is replaceable. I am far from a Nexstar apologist, and I'm glad I don't work for that company, but unless there's a huge backstory that we're not aware of, then it sounds like a lot of the on-air people at KTLA need to be reined in and have their egos put in check. I get that KTLA is all about personality, and to a degree, that's fine, but anchors are principally hired to do a job, which is to do the news. They're not hired to do a talk or reality show, and they're not hired to sell products or a lifestyle on Instagram. It wouldn't surprise me if Mark Mester just anchored his last newscast on KTLA. What he just did is stupid. I highly doubt the GM would have approved of what he said, but the fact that he referenced her in it is enough to make it appear like she did, and that's just stupid on his part. He just put a target on his own back by doing that. I get that he must feel like some special connection with their viewers has been violated, but being the weekend AM anchor at a big market station (or an anchor at any station) is not that big of a deal. Ultimately, it's management calling the shots, and management hire people to do the news and also not make the company look bad.

An anchor got away with airing the station's dirty laundry not just on air, but also in the first four minutes of the A-block of a newscast? I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. The news should always come first. I get that it's KTLA's style to be a little overly personal, but all this is doing is making the station look bad and making the situation worse. Trust me, nothing good comes out of calling attention to yourself in these situations. That is way over the top for what sounds like a fairly routine situation of an anchor not feeling valued and going to a competitor for a better offer at the end of a contract. Sucks that such a thing happens, but that happens in this business all the time.

Weekday AM reporter, weekend PM anchor is kind of weird. That seems like a temporary schedule until new management comes in and decides whether to give her a more prominent role either in the morning or evening.

If he doesn't work on Face the Nation, put him on Mornings. It he doesn't work on Mornings, put him on streaming. If he doesn't work on streaming, ....? I'm sure he's probably a nice guy, but he just doesn't have that on-screen presence that clicks with viewers. If he's their idea for a marquis show on the streaming channel, then the streaming channel must be in a lot more trouble than it looks.

What strikes me the most about all of this is how traditional it all looks. Solid royal blue everywhere, restrained design elements, and an orchestral theme that's refreshed but still light on contemporary touches. The newscast itself is pretty sober with an offering of all the meat and potatoes news of the day. This show feels more in line with what it was like during the later Rather or early Pelley eras. Funny how every time CBS tries to shake up the Evening News, they always eventually go back to a pretty traditional presentation and newscast format. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

Amazing to think that set held up pretty well for 15 years with very few modifications.

Dang. They have a lot of the ingredients for success, but they just cannot get it together.

I don't get the pessimism on here about this. The soaps have run their course. We've all known that for the better part of two decades now. NBC's also not going to replace it with any other kind of conventional program like another tired talk show. NBC News Now is a really high quality product, and this is a great opportunity to get traditional TV audiences to sample it. Somebody's finally going to try a true midday national newscast. I also don't think this is that much of a competitor response to GMA3 – that show is garbage, whereas NBC News Now is actual news. It's not going to be pretty though when word gets back to the Days of Our Lives audience that their beloved show is moving to some far-flung internet outlet. I would not want to be answering phones at an NBC affiliate this fall, as that is a very small but pretty rabid fanbase. I remember whenever NBC would pre-empt DOOL for something else, such as the Olympics, the French Open or a news special report, a DOOL fan would call in and accuse *us,* not NBC, of pre-empting DOOL and would threaten to call NBC to get them to pull our affiliation. Lol.

KKTV in Colorado Springs has such a thing already: https://tvnewscheck.com/uncategorized/article/kktvs-new-digs-small-in-size-big-in-tech/

This is....interesting. I wouldn't necessarily say it's a good product, but it's certainly a clever way at offering a news product with minimal or no local resources. Even as it is now, even in top ten markets, it's extremely hard to find and retain producers, and I can see how some stations might see it as a waste or a burden to keep a staff producer position for newscasts on throwaway secondary stations that nobody's watching anyway. Literally nobody is watching WLNY's 9pm news, so why bother trying to pretend to put together a half-decent newscast? Save that effort and energy for the real newscasts that matter. And notice that this show is not replacing anything good on stations that people actually watch, such as KCAL. This hybrid local-national format certainly isn't going to be replacing flagship 6pm or 11pm newscasts on blue chip stations anytime soon, but it is an interesting idea that we'll probably see more often in the years to come from everyone. Hybrid local-national has worked for decades on the big three morning shows, as well as on a much larger scale in Canada, the UK, France, and elsewhere. US local news currently is a lot of repetition and repackaging of a lot of the same national content, so it's not necessarily a bad idea. With that said, I don't necessarily see how this is competitive in any market where CBS is trying this. This is not going to pull away viewers from KDFW in Dallas, or KTVU or even KRON in the Bay Area. But I guess CBS can at least say that they do have a competing news product at that hour and can sell some ad spots on it. Can somebody please explain to me though how they're attempting to pull off any local content in cities where they have no news department, specifically Seattle or Atlanta? Surely CBS aren't pulling from their local affiliate and then using it to compete, are they?

Fox is offering a level 2 cut-in (optional) for affiliates, as has been the case with all of them.

Looks nice. I'm surprised they didn't get the same set everyone else has gotten.

The 7-9am block was pretty much identical for all the stations as the 6am hour. The thing that's a little shocking to me about the LA ratings is just how low the share is across the board – so much competition I guess, not just from all the other news options, but just everything else that's on the air too. I can't see the Spanish stations, but maybe those take most of the viewers, perhaps? I suppose you could say that KTLA and KABC are the leaders, but neither of them seem to have anything that's a dominant news hour over everyone else like what you see in other markets. KTLA stays a pretty constant .5 rating / 12 share in the demo all morning long, which isn't bad, but not a runaway. Compare that to the Bay Area market, for example, where KTVU averaged a 1.0 rating / 23 share in the 7 and 8am hours. Another insight I saw is that I can see why they'd want to do more with KCAL. The primetime block is actually quite strong. KCAL's 9pm hour last week averaged a .6 rating / 4 share in the demo, which was not only the best rating of any KCAL/KCBS newscast, but also one of the better ratings of any English language newscast in LA. I think trying to do something local on KCAL in the morning while leaving all the network garbage on KCBS is a pretty good idea. That doubles the ad inventory, and it at least gives them a chance at maybe siphoning some viewers away from KTLA and KTTV. What KCBS is currently doing in the morning clearly isn't working.

I think this is a brilliant idea. KCBS isn't going to take a ratings hit – they have nowhere to go but up. 6am hour P25-54 27 Jun - 1 Jul KCBS 0.0 rating, 1 share KNBC 0.1 rating, 2 share KTLA 0.5 rating, 15 share KABC 0.2 rating, 7 share KCAL (Relative Justice) 0.0 rating, 1 share KTTV 0.2 rating, 7 share Sure, it's only July when morning ratings are pretty soft anyway with school not in session, but May didn't look any better for KCBS.

For those interested, KNBC is launching a 3pm show in September.

There’s also an option in the Fox lower thirds to put chips in that space. If you use them, they automatically animate away after four seconds. I don’t think I’ve seen any station use those chips at all. KTVU started using the QR bugs a while ago. Maybe two years ago? They stayed on the screen for a few weeks before they went away.

Not too much of a surprise that FNC is picking up the second one. It's late morning, so it vibes a little better with FNC's dayside schedule. I think most, if not all of the subsequent ones are during the day.

It looks...fine? I think it's decent for a refresh. Is their 7-10am a 3-anchor format now? I thought it was just Michaela? https://i.ibb.co/SyqhtpS/Screen-Shot-2022-05-10-at-8-01-44-AM.png https://i.ibb.co/Qk4vbpC/Screen-Shot-2022-05-10-at-8-01-51-AM.png https://i.ibb.co/pbXGm14/Screen-Shot-2022-05-10-at-8-01-58-AM.png https://i.ibb.co/k1DFZvL/Screen-Shot-2022-05-10-at-8-07-33-AM.png My only complaint would be this shot. I'm tired of seeing 2x2 monitor grids in sets and wish we didn't have them. This graphic isn't so bad, but it's hard to use these monitors and put pictures of people in them without looking like there's a target on their head. https://i.ibb.co/gzydbtb/Screen-Shot-2022-05-10-at-8-08-19-AM.png https://i.ibb.co/SQKT6RT/Screen-Shot-2022-05-10-at-8-09-10-AM.png

My problem isn't with potentially ripping off the news music, which seems to be the main gripe here, though a superficial one. The problem is with the content. There wasn't a single original story and not a frame of newsworthy video he or anyone else shot outside of a studio. If he tried to shoot and put together his own story (or two) like a proper reporter and then put in a few "pacer" stories from police, press releases and other material that don't require too many resources, then he'd probably be able to come up with a decent 15-minute newscast. Throw in a longer interview or two and you might be able to stretch it to 30. That would be a better use of his time and his viewers' time than an hour of old content ripped from other news outlets from YouTube. Go out into the world, talk to people, and do your own story instead of repackaging everyone else's.

What a disaster. The whole newscast is just content lifted from other news outlets (including some from other Fresno stations). Looks like a failed reporter who is just putting his YouTube show full of stolen content onto TV?

I didn't realize until not too long ago that KCNC and WXYZ had almost exactly the same set in the late 90s from pencilogic. Looks like WXYZ got it first.

To be fair, I believe these simulcasts are being added on the second station in most, if not all markets – not the primary one. The hour is being added on KICU, not KTVU, and KICU's programming lineup in the middle of the day is a wasteland anyway and has been for a long time.

I suppose she could stay in the business with her husband quitting his job, but that still feels like a really uncomfortable situation. I have in the past and currently work with on-air personalities with spouses in law enforcement (and even I've at least gone on a date or two with a cop, not that it ended well), but the wife of the police chief union during George Floyd seems like a pretty hard sell.

I haven’t paid too much attention to KUSA lately, but I noticed they’ve rebranded their morning show from “Mile High Mornings” back to simply “9News Mornings.” They’ve also brought back the “Colorado’s News Leader” tagline, and it seems like they’re starting to use the KTVD callsign in the KTVD branding. It seems like they’re trying to go back to a more sober and authoritative brand unlike…*gestures broadly* whatever they’ve been doing the last few years.

I'll park this here – some more of the Linda Kane look for KWGN from 2000 has made it to YouTube. This was also shortly before a new news director took over who painted everything blue and wanted to make everything look as safe as everything on KUSA. Also, for you WABC fans, there's a peek at Amy Freeze in there before she hit it big.