Samantha

How has that KEVN logo survived this long?

Gray is WYMPing out: they're acquiring WYMP-LD 14, virtual 7, southeast of Memphis (Bruce, Mississippi) from 5GTV for $500,000.

On October 18, Gray executed a subchannel lease agreement with 5GTV, too.

The "Metromedia News at Ten" moniker is interesting. This is from just after the time when they flirted with starting up a national newscast which would have competed with INN, and I wonder if that is a legacy of the failed attempt.

1 hour ago, 8Viewer said:

 

Getting TPIR was a coup for WTSP and so was Late Night with David Letterman. Always baffled me how WTSP has been an underperformer in news but great in programming along with airing Wheel and Jeopardy!. 

 

I think you are right. I'm not sure if they were doing any local news yet, though. There is a preview video on YT for WFTS "28 Tampa Bay News" that says "Starting December 12th"

The local news did indeed start 12/12.

11 hours ago, PBC5NewsUnova said:

Finding old clips of Spanish TV is like finding a needle in a haystack and today I found one of those needles.

WXTV station ID and Reportar 41 open (1987)

1 NYEn Memoria de johanse' 1987 #15 VHS - YouTube

No kidding. Big fan of the theme music, too. Unfortunate why we have it, though—it was taped because of the story of a 2-year-old baby (and others) who died in a fire.

KLAS veteran Gary Waddell has died of a heart attack while battling COVID-19 in a Las Vegas hospital. He was 77.

According to the linked article, he was fully vaccinated but suffered a breakthrough case.

There are two cross trends that are going on at the same time.

With so many cord cutters, OTA channel numbers have become more important—but also less important as many vMVPDs (say, YouTube TV) don't use channel numbers.

At the same time, we're also seeing the increased presence of city and region names in TV station branding in the last 10 years. My guess is that this aids SEO. When the "MyFox" era ended, KSAZ didn't revert back to fox10.com and became fox10phoenix.com (they are also Fox 10 Phoenix on all social platforms). Years ago, KNXV added "Arizona" to a lot of its branding and materials, and they slapped a big "Arizona" on KASW when they bought it. NBC famously tried dropping channel numbers, which was both a foresighted idea and a horrible one at the nadir of the NBC-owned station group about a decade ago. We are also seeing this elsewhere in Scripps (see WRTV, for instance).

When you're a station like WJZY that has a high channel number and is trying to be relevant, you end up ping-ponging between the two when you refresh (WGNX/WGCL is the most classic example of this, imo).

Wow, that KCOP stuff is raaaaaaare. (They indeed changed their news brand and look later that year.) It also is loaded with strange presentation elements.

We learned today that

KPLR will be the host in St. Louis. KMOV, KTVI, KSDK and KDNL are also on board. Planned distribution of KPLR's subs:

11.1 -> KTVI

11.2 Court TV -> KDNL

11.3 Comet -> KSDK

11.4 Grit -> KMOV

WSTR will be the host in Cincinnati. All of the major network stations will be included. Planned distribution of WSTR's subs:

64.1 -> WLWT

Antenna and Comet -> WKRC

TBD -> WXIX

Dabl -> WCPO

WMYV will host in the Piedmont Triad, where WXII is confirmed on board.

12 hours ago, JosephH1998 said:

Actually the KSL 1998 theme debuted in January 1997 when they received new graphics. Although it was done by Pinnacle, it still used the logo from Non-Stop's "Broadcast News" (KSL version).

Did not know that, probably simply because we didn't have a lot of KSL from that era (and I believe we are still missing an open generation from 1992–93).

I still agree that it is Lubbock — no references to "Newsbeat" in the El Paso papers of the period.

Paging @Knoxville TV Fan...

53 minutes ago, ColtFromGulfcoast said:

Relating to Austin and how Nexstar got KXNW in Fort Smith, I wonder if Nexstar could use KCWX being technically licensed to the Austin DMA to acquire that outright and expand into San Antonio. 

KCWX is actually slotted in the SA DMA, though when the DTS is completed it will have transmitters in both cities.

WRIW has filed to shack up with WSBE.

19 minutes ago, tyrannical bastard said:

With WYTV and WBDT, WYTV hosts WKBN on their channel and WDTN hosts WBDT.   

 

Why not just cash in the extra licenses?  WBDT can go away while WYTV becomes WKBN (since they sold off their frequency in the auction) and WYTV goes away. 

There's probably a retrans and contractual benefit to having the two licenses. Especially retrans.

On 7/23/2021 at 10:26 AM, CircleSeven said:

Telemundo O&O in Providence WRIW, has ended its CSA with Scripps' Ion O&O WPXQ.

 

The station is now off the air,  as they try to find a new channel to share with.

I saw this. My personal guess is that Telemundo was taking up space that Scripps wanted for itself and, as a CSA, it had to be terminated.

There were several other Telemundo subchannels on Ion transmitters: Atlanta (// the LPTV affiliate there), Portland, Sacramento, Seattle.

One of the Ion transmitters (WPXG Concord NH) has Daystar as a channel share (WYDN). Another has a UHF simulcast of the Scripps VHF station in the market (Tulsa).

The other oddities are Columbus, a full-service license on an LPTV stick and there are only two subs Ion controls (shared with Daystar) and WKOI in the Dayton market, which is just one subchannel on a three-license mux.

16 minutes ago, AJClementeFan69 said:

Wonder who did the WIS 1991 theme? Seems like way more than production music. Gives me Peters Communications vibes.

WIS is not on the Peters client list.

34 minutes ago, VHSgoodiesWA said:

There's another partial KGWC newscast coming from '93 (relayed from KGWL 5 Lander). I didn't find anything from KTWO in that period, and KFNB/KFNR never aired news. It's my first newscast found from the state of Wyoming. I've looked at the Casper newspaper for that period and I notice that in the '80s they carried most stations from Denver. Let me guess, Casper folks WITH cable watched KMGH more than KGWC?

KFNB had news briefly in the late 1980s (1986–87).

On 7/18/2021 at 4:47 PM, VHSgoodiesWA said:

Probably one of the rarest newscasts I have ever found. It's the Great Western News at 10:00, originating from now-newsless KGWC-TV 14 Casper, WY (and taped off their satellite in Lander, WY, KGWL-TV 5). Note the 'set' - a desk in front of bookshelves full of books, like it's a psychiatrist's office or someone's library or office room. One guy adjusts cameras behind the scenes and does floor directing at the same time. And then the male anchor juggles three jobs at one - news, weather AND sports!! No wonder KGWC has no news department nowadays.

You should look for the late 90s blooper reel. Benedek improved the quality of that station quite a bit after purchasing the station (including a studio relocation) but could not get stable management and shuttered it as the company ran financially aground.

35 minutes ago, okiechi said:

It's been a little bit since I've been this way, but I came across this just about, oh, 10 minutes ago.

 

"90s AF" would be an understatement.

It's the Peters special. I can't describe it any other way.

KVVU wants less V and more U: it wants channel 24 instead of 9.

Very cool to see more of Arizona's News People Mk I — which included the 1986 theme. They weren't Arizona's Family until 1990 — the opens didn't change until independence, though, and in the case of the 10pm not until February 1996.

Wowza. If not for the statutory cap, the base penalty would have been $1,720,000—and likely to be adjusted upward.

Also worth noting: Gray ended the violation by moving the CBS stream to K22HN-D (now KYES-LD)...and then putting it on a subchannel of KTUU. How dumb this whole mess is. It's clear these rules were not written with multicasting in mind.

1 hour ago, VHSgoodiesWA said:

Not a newscast, but towards the end of this late-night commercial compilation from KUTV is a promo with then-fresh-hire Bob Evans (now a long-time anchor at KSTU) reading the 'memo' sent to him by Randall Carlisle on how to master the news...and a Donahue promo airs in between!

 

Gotta love how KUTV turns up everything but an open from this era... The theme package is killer from all I've heard of it (and we've been piling up non-news open uses of it). Also nice to see more of the Livin' in Utah short promos...noticed they changed the end animation between February and August to the one that matches the signoff supercut...but you have a different version!

The partial one you uploaded has a different Utah Jazz section (there was a coaching change midseason for the Jazz and the full version has footage from a 2-1-89 game with the Atlanta Hawks), and it also attributes the beginning quote to "Al Seethaler, Vice President and General Manager". Seethaler left that year, or maybe in 1989?, for KMGH.

Seethaler hired Mike Youngren for KMGH, too... Keep this in mind (and the fact that we have a 1983 mention of the Mike Post KUTV theme) while reading the Tulsa TV Memories material:

Quote

Former KOCO News Director Mike Youngren - after he left 5 - had a memorable campaign of original music done in Salt Lake City by a local composer that I loved for a station there. Hell I used to play the package on my car cassette player driving to work - it was so good. Mike also had Mike Post - composer of all sorts of TV music such as the Rockford Files - do a package for another station he was VP of News at. Thru Mike - I contacted Mike Post and his partner Pete Carpenter (yes of the Carpenters' fame) about music for the National Assoc. of Broadcasters Convention - when I worked at NAB. NAB poor-boyed though it with something Frank Gari had unsold on the shelf and re-adapted for NAB. Hey - I got a free CD from Mike Post out of it and a chance to talk to the man!

11 hours ago, 8Viewer said:

Baffling that nobody has been able to identify the "techno" news theme that WBNS was using. 

It is very clearly from a production library. Maybe Killer Tracks? Compare to the PRISM Sports logo on

EDIT: KT31-15 "Zap Ya" https://www.universalproductionmusic.com/en-us/discover/albums/589/sweepers-and-stingers-volume-1

They've added some of the stings from Dawn (track 37) for WBNS...not sure if that was a separate edit.