Samantha

It sounds a bit like the Phil Copeland package from 1989. Which is not a good thing if the point of this look is to be modern.

Consolidation has truly hit the fan in Yuma. Last year KYMA bought KSWT. Now KECY is buying "operating" BOTH of them. NPG is set to form the only English-language television empire in the Imperial Valley via a resource sharing agreement—and every news employee goes with them. All of the employees will be moving to the KECY building in Yuma, which is being remodeled to accommodate the operation, and all of the stations will continue to produce the newscasts that they are currently providing. NPG says this arrangement will mirror that of KCOY. NPG in Yuma will now include all of the Big Four networks, The CW and Telemundo. The only other major media owner on the US side of the market is Entravision, with its Spanish-language station combo of KVYE and KAJB providing Univisión, UniMás and MundoFox. On the other side of the border, in Mexicali, there's the "of course" Televisa combo of four stations, Azteca with two, the Sonora state network Telemax in San Luis del Río Colorado, and XHILA Mexicali, effectively an independent. The entire media market (both sides of the border) basically comes down to four owners, plus the Sonora state network and an independent in Mexicali. It's the only time Televisa and Azteca have ever made a multiple ownership situation look good. NPG now owns virtual duopolies in quite a few markets: Idaho Falls, Santa Barbara, Palm Springs, Mid-Missouri and Bend, Oregon.

They have to be rolling this out soon. When I went there the navbar was too low but it had the color accents from the Gannett package.

¡Más noticieros! KBLR, the Telemundo O&O in Las Vegas, once again has a local newscast that's produced in Vegas. The weeknight shows debuted last night and replaced a newscast produced from Phoenix. The new newscast uses KSNV facilities because KBLR does not have the space or equipment to produce a local newscast. The anchors are Beatriz Moncayo, former correspondent for NTN24, and Leticia Castro, who transferred from KTMD Houston. The news director is Xochitl Sandoval, who has worked at KBLR in sales and marketing for the past seven years. Her career has included being an EP at the Dallas news hub as well as being news director at KXTX.

I do as well. In a non-competition schedule, it'd give KTVK two cornerstone early evening newscasts, 4pm and 6pm, to go with its morning and late offerings.

With Scripps converting KNXV's 4pm show to its The Now hybrid format (a BBC "Sixty Minutes" for America in 2014, I suppose), KNXV has balanced the lost local news by announcing it will expand to 6:30pm on July 7. The new hour-long 6pm show will mark the first time any newscast has attempted to compete with KPHO at that half-hour. 4pm has the potential of becoming very vacant. KTVK is at 4:30 for who knows how much longer, 12's 4pm local hour is less of a newscast, and Cronkite NewsWatch won't move to 8 until the fall IIRC (it has aired at 4:30 for most of its run).

Something happened: as seen from the FCC Broadcast Actions today, the three ComCorp stations to be transferred to Marshall were OK'ed to go to Mission.

Ran into this while looking at a Phoenix memories thread on another forum. An undated KOOL News ad (maybe from the early 1970s), with the team of Bill Close at 6, Dave Nichols at 10, and Kent Dana on weekends: Nichols later went to KTVK in the late 70s and was there through about 1981. Dana, of course, landed at KPNX and finished his career in the 2000s at KPHO. Sports anchor Bill Denney was at KPNX through the 90s, while Joe Dougherty stuck around at KOOL for at least another decade.

I posted more from this channel earlier this week, but this video deserves a special mention. You wouldn't misspell your own call letters when you're making a station ID...

KCPQ is entering the 11pm news race beginning August 17.

Effective Tuesday, ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication takes over KAET. The channel had previously fallen under the purview of Public Affairs. (ASU press release.) The changeover means that the Cronkite School will handle all of KAET's news and public affairs programming and also that Cronkite NewsWatch (their 4:30 weekday newscast) will move from digital subchannel 8.3 to 8.1. (Fun fact: Mark Curtis is the VO for Cronkite NewsWatch's opens! The school has a close relationship to KPNX, which is pretty much right off campus.) Highlights from the press release: KAET will become the largest media organization in the world run by a journalism school. Cronkite NewsWatch will be expanded to become one of the nation's few daily newscasts on a PBS member station. Most changes will be seen this fall after a summer of planning the integration process.

It's in the NMSA, actually.

Fox's massive local news expansion continues, and here's what's coming next: KTTV's noon news will be expanding to a full hour on June 30; WAGA will add another half-hour to its Saturday morning news (8:30am) on July 5; WHBQ adds a Sunday morning newscast on July 6; WTTG expands its weekend morning newscasts (two more Saturday hours and one more Sunday hour) on July 12 and 13; KMSP will have an hour-long Sunday 10pm newscast and a Sunday 10am hour beginning July 13; WJZY will debut several newscasts. A 6pm hour is programmed for July, while August will bring a 4:30-9 weekday morning news, 5-8 Saturday morning news and 5-9 Sunday morning news; On September 6, WTXF adds three more weekend morning hours, while KMSP adds a weekday 6pm newscast; and KTBC will return to 10pm five nights a week for the first time since 2000*, listed as coming in August. *Not a misprint. KTBC inexplicably had no 9pm newscast until 2000!

This is the same cut KPNX uses for its noon news. They use a different cut for their evening newscasts that's a little more authoritative.

KAAL is on the move: it will be building a new studio in southeast Rochester, with the old facility maintained as a bureau.

Those Image West "grid and Gill Sans" animations that wormed their way into so many 1980s news opens... , at least on KVVT Victorville/Barstow, California! The channel is a gold mine of finds from the station, which became KHIZ in 2002.

Some highlights from the end of KSAS's first try at a local newscast (produced by KSNW), which ended in December 1998 after a brief run:

Something else interesting, the image campaign from the WBNS "Take a Good Look at 10" package produced by Gavin/Conner in 1977. This goes with the news open in the same package (NMSA name "WBNS 1977"): Also, a behind-the-scenes of a KMIR newscast from 1994. Listen closely within the first minute and you can see/hear part of the open:

Look at the comments: we have confirmation of this from Hal Brown himself.

I don't normally embed clips but I think this one's worth embedding. It's from Joe's return to WBRC in 1982. Rest in peace, Joe. You've certainly earned it.

Here in AZ you do need a map. Counties are huge in size (we have 15, 11 are in the Phoenix DMA) and the NWS likes to issue warnings for non-county areas here. We have 40 different forecast areas in AZ, including "Northeast Plateaus and Mesas (N of Highway 264)", "Southern Gila/Tonto National Forest Foothills" and "Northwest Deserts" (full list).

Fox is doing a lot of weekend morning expansion lately.

Nice catch. Looks like a solid upgrade.

NABOB says "we like the deal, but...": The National Association of Black-Owned Broadcasters wants the Marshall deal to go through but also wants to see annual reporting requirements, examining things like sales personnel, payments to the brokering stations, terms for guarantees, etc.

I'm with you on the design. It looks...cleaner than I think a lot of us are used to seeing in American TV news. It's also brilliant with its cross-coordination with the USA Today colors and thus the station websites. The best design principles work in any medium. Many TV station graphics would not cut it on the Web or in print. This is excellent.