C Block

Keyword is "filling in." He was a prominent face at MSNBC and had a consistent slot for a while. Then he didn't. It was pretty clear that his time at NBC was up. He probably could have stuck around NYC to try to find something else, but think of how many other people are doing that while salivating at the chance to get hired fulltime somewhere? The other big factor is probably money. Meredith is no small company, and they were probably able to offer him something worthwhile to be main anchor, even if it's a last place station. Plus, didn't he work for CNN in Atlanta for a while and/or his husband also has connections to Atlanta? As far as career development goes, I suppose it's a step down from being a midday anchor on MSNBC, but it's probably a step up in terms of quality of life.

KUSA political reporter Brandon Rittiman is moving to KXTV. https://twitter.com/BrandonRittiman KUSA's loss is KXTV's gain.

I really liked the BBC rebrand in 2008, but ever since then, their entire look feels really stale and uninspired. They should have gone for a more radical evolution of that look when they moved to New Broadcasting House in 2013.

Here's KUSA from exactly 14 years ago to the day. Coverage from when a guy went on a rampage in an armored bulldozer tearing down buildings owned by people he had beefs with. Also, this is probably the earliest clip of the KUSA HD era online. KUSA would have been two months into HD newscasts by this point. (This aircheck was 4:3 and uploaded stretched to 16:9, obviously)

I don't see any of those scenarios happening anytime soon. Fox would tell Sinclair to suck it if they wanted a national evening newscast from Fox. Fox and Sinclair already have a somewhat testy relationship. Fox objected to the Trib sale, and sure, Fox never submitted a bid for Tribune in the end, but it probably doesn't sit well with them that one company owns a good chunk of their affiliates. I don't see either Fox or Sinclair trying a national broadcast, and the reason for that is that both of those companies are so cheap that they'd much rather keep extending local news and filling it with repeated and filler content. The way I see it, only if/when they start shutting down news departments would be the time when they would do a centralized national newscast.

I tuned in again for the first time in a while, and I couldn't believe how subtly different the show is now. It definitely blends in with its competitors more than it did before. Reporter packages are seemingly shorter and have a faster pace. Glor is on a tight shot in front of the video wall for almost the entire broadcast – he could very well be anywhere or nowhere. And I'm not against the idea of having a super on the screen the entire time, but does it have to be so big? It's not necessarily a bad broadcast, but it just doesn't feel the same or as comprehensive as it did before.

Big loss. He was there 26 years. Really nice and friendly guy too. https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1703593603061219

New GM named at KGO-TV: outgoing ABC News exec Tom Cibrowski. http://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/tom-cibrowski-leaving-abc-news/360206 Here's to KGO getting a new news director in 3... 2...

Also, Turko is a stage spelling. Here's a classic clip from KOA-TV, where he is "Michael Turcot." You can also see what is probably a toupée in a stand-up bridge and some me-roll. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=7TECePfo0oU;t=13

Heartland doesn't really have much design foresight aside from passing down some warmed over graphics packages from big markets that looked passable 10 years ago. They're hoping that a team of consultants and "late breaking news" will be enough to solve any branding problems in their markets.

What did I just watch? I normally love KGW, but that is a bizarre move. I can't tell whether that's a terrible idea or genius. Any chance the full episode is anywhere?

Oops: http://www.9news.com/article/news/local/next/about-those-strange-closing-alerts-on-9newscom-this-week/73-524665741?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=5a996dfa04d301381ffad752&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter

Definitely a surprise. It seemed like he was a KGW lifer. He and Laural Porter have been paired together for more than 20 years and were a really great anchor team. It's hard to imagine KGW nightside without him, though I'm sure they'll manage. This interview from the Oregonian sheds some more light on it. Turns out his adult children all eventually moved to Chicago and the midwest. Not everything boils down to "Tegnitis," whatever that's supposed to mean. http://www.oregonlive.com/tv/2018/02/portland_kgw-tv_news_anchor_jo.html

You could hire 300 journalists and pay them $80,000 a year for how much Matt was making. You'd even have some money and a helicopter left over too. Matt was overpaid. And he was not worth every penny. This is not just a reckoning in sexual harassment, but this is also a wake-up call that overpaying talent doesn't necessarily correlate with higher ratings. NBC's money could have been better spent employing more people to improve the overall quality of their news department.

Not sure if this has been posted yet, but here's a montage of opens and closes of nearly every Southern and Central California TV station from 1993. That open from KTTV is pretty sharp; I hadn't seen that one before. [MEDIA=vimeo]247655678[/MEDIA]

Whoa. Sexual harassment is not sexual assault.

The best Fox affiliate music has always been the X and X2. It's too bad more stations didn't pick up the X2.

CBS wouldn't do it any other way - all over the place.

Looks like the show is getting another rebrand. I just saw a promo for the CBS Evening News with Jeff Glor and it had a new logo set in Proxima Nova. It looked nice actually.

I don't believe CNN gives stations that power to embargo something in another market just because their parent company owns another station there. I don't think I've ever seen that happen. Typically, something is only embargoed for other stations in the same market or if it includes video that's restricted for one reason or another. In one place where I worked, our sister station one market over threw a big stink at us because one of their competitors (a Sinclair station) ran one of our packages that CNN picked up. The reporter had a stand-up in it while wearing our jacket and mic flag with a logo that's nearly identical to our sister station's. They somehow thought there was something wrong going on, but since it's two different markets, there wasn't any embargo on it, so it was fine for the Sinclair station to run it even though our sister station had access to all of our content internally. Probably a dumb move on the Sinclair station's part to run a package that looked like it came from their competitor, but whatever. Or at the very least, they could have edited out her standup. That's the double-edged sword with being a CNN affiliate. It's great because Newsource has tons of video, including lots of packages, but if there's more than one CNN affiliate in a market, then competing newscasts can end up running a lot of the same content if you're not careful or get in the habit of only checking CNN for wire content.

This happened a month ago but I forgot to post it on here. I'm sure some people would be interested in this. Dave Lougee, the current Tegna CEO, former Belo executive, and KUSA's news director in the mid-90s, was interviewed by Kyle Clark on his Facebook Live show, "Afternoon Delight." He talks a lot about how TV news needs to innovate and change and how they are using a number of different approaches in different markets.

Tom Green, KWGN's longtime morning anchor and KUSA's sports anchor of a bygone era, has been hired to anchor the 4 and 5pm news on KUSA according to his Twitter.

Talk about big market moves. Kristen Rodgers jumps from KEZI in Eugene to WTXF in Philadelphia as a sports anchor/reporter. [MEDIA=twitter]906203638850138112[/MEDIA]

I agree. There's no obvious internal choice, and an external choice would result in the same culture clash issues that happened during the Katie Couric era. I say let people do it a few weeks at a time. Anthony Mason is always great, but why not let others do it too. I wondered if maybe they'd consider Norah O'Donnell and move up Margaret Brennan to CTM; she's been filling in a lot more.

I could see how you'd get KIRO out of that. But looking more at the opens and stingers, I see Look F. It's not a complete ripoff necessarily, but I see some NBC influence.