T.L. Hughes

If this helps to explain it any, KOCO has used a sign-off for its storm coverage for about the past decade, “We bring you the First Alert”, that better conveys what “Your First Alert Station” is supposed to mean: that they’ll give you the “first alert” to severe weather and breaking news events when they happen. Ironically, while Gray owns the trademark to the “First Alert” brand, Hearst-owned KOCO was one of the earliest (maybe the earliest) users of the moniker in local TV news, having adopted the name for its on-air weather warning system (purported to be the first such system to be automated, allowing it to receive and display NWS alerts once they’re issued) and storm chasing units in 1989, when Gannett owned the station.

KFVS 12 and Heartland News are the brands (general and news, respectively), “Your First Alert Station” is meant to be the slogan.

One odd thing I noticed, one of the Oklahoma City skyline photos used for the evening newscasts is dated before 2012, considering it doesn’t even include the Devon Tower, which in the view from where the pic was taken, would be visible to the right of the Oklahoma Tower (the building farthest right in the picture). Skyline photos taken after the Devon’s completion usually incorporate it in the frame. (For additional reference, the BOK Park Plaza, built five years after the Devon’s completion, is also absent in that photo.)

Yes, but satellite stations aren’t considered to be a duopoly arrangement until they cease simulcasting their parent station to offer their own slate of programming (like what effectively happened with KNWA and sister KFTA, when the latter stopped simulcasting the former’s NBC programming and converted into a Fox affiliate in 2006).

KNWA had previously used the KFAA calls from 1989 to 2004, adopting its current calls shortly after being sold to Nexstar. Unless otherwise noted, this would mark the first time the same base call letters, disambiguated only by different leading prefix letters (“W” swapped for “K”, or vice versa), were used on a duopoly. Until now, there only have been cases of this occurring within the same station group, but in different markets (the Big Three’s New York and Los Angeles O&Os being a major example), as well as cases like WPKD (a nod to parent CBS O&O KDKA) where the junior partner station’s calls only partially reference those of their duopoly parent.

DirecTV actually managed to get what it wanted from Disney all along in this process, the ability to create packages grouping its cable channels based on genre (similar to what Disney wants to do with Venu Sports, if it somehow wins Fubo’s case against that service). For this to work, though, requires other distributors (Comcast/NBCUniversal, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, etc.) consenting to similar terms in future negotiations.

This KWWL newscast from New Year’s Day 1995 features an open that’s based on the 1993-95 title sequence used by then-NBC-owned KCNC (which became a CBS O&O nine months later).

KTUL produced a special commemorating its 70th anniversary, which is somewhat bittersweet given what little respect Sinclair gave to the station since acquiring it in 2014, having run aground its news operation to where it’s now mostly farmed out to Oklahoma City sister KOKH last November (it was among the ~10 stations whose news programming or operations that Sinclair cut in 2023).

That said, Matrix Midwest is essentially a repackaging of KMOV’s existing MyNetworkTV subchannel, just with additional sports content being folded into the schedule. According to RabbitEars and based on other listings sites (like OnTVTonight) that still show the previous channel layout for both stations, Gray remapped KMOV-DT2 (now branded as Matrix) to 32.1, previously assigned to the main channel of low-power sister station KDTL-LD (which still uses 32.x for its Corner Store TV and Outlaw subchannels). KMOV’s First Alert Weather Now subchannel was moved from 4.5 to 4.2, while KDTL now hosts KMOV’s The 365 sub (mapped as 4.5).

Confusingly, despite the Fox name being dropped from the news branding, the new on-screen bug kept the old “WBRC Fox 6 News” branding in the new logo style and old design layout. So, either this was an oversight or Gray wasn’t sure that Fox would give approval for the station to remove the network’s branding when GrayONE was being retrofitted for WBRC’s use, and the original intention was to keep the previous title in place before Fox gave them the greenlight to alter the station’s branding.

If you saw the bug on the 6 News Now intro, the Fox logo remains in the station’s logo alongside the revived ABC-era “6”. So, unless they plan to keep the network logo but deemphasize the “Fox” branding verbally or modify the logo to remove the Fox logo once the package officially launches, it seems like the “WBRC Fox 6” brand will remain in place. WVUE and WALA have kept their Fox branding after switching to the package; to date, Gray stations that have dropped network branding have usually made the change before (like with WMTV and KOSA) or when they switched to GrayONE. Fox has stricter branding guidelines than other networks, and has been pretty selective in allowing affiliates to eschew network references (like it did with WSVN, WDRB, KVRR, WFXT and, before Fox bought it and to a lesser degree, KTVU), so it’s unclear whether Gray will be given the same license to deemphasize network branding.

Months after TVNewsCheck briefly suspended daily site updates and feature articles, on Monday (August 6), Future plc announced it will cease publishing the print editions and daily newsletters of venerable broadcasting industry magazines Broadcasting & Cable and Multichannel News effective September 30, after 93 and 34 years, respectively. Future’s Next TV will relaunch its website as a single portal combining reporting from all three brands in the fall (B&C and MCN already have subpages on the website), and will continue distributing its “SmartBrief” newsletter to cover streaming, broadcasting and pay-TV industry stories.

The Times-Picayune article linked above indicated this is in the works:

So, that means Bally Sports New Orleans will go bye-bye, since the channel was built around the Pelicans. Since the Oklahoma City Thunder are also among the five NBA teams that it is/was considering dropping before the 2024-25 season starts (the Pelicans were among them), it wouldn’t be the last Bally Sports network centered around a single local major league team that will be on the chopping block, as Bally Sports Oklahoma will likely follow suit, if Griffin becomes the Thunder’s long-term broadcast partner (a couple of Gray stations, including KSCW and KSWO, were among those that carried the games sublicensed to KSBI/KOTV-DT2).

…and @RustyMuck was so certain that The CW would be locked out of those two markets. Anyway, funny that Paramount/CBS gave up its CW affiliations last year, only to now agree to bring the network back to WKBD and add WBFS (which The CW passed over in favor of WSFL through its charter affiliation deal with Tribune) as an affiliate. This was totally out of left field.

Uhh, Cox commissioned Stephen Arnold to create Stream for WFXT and WHBQ, both Fox affiliates. As far as the KAKE graphics becoming a group package, Lockwood only has four news-producing stations (WTNZ, WPGX and WDFX outsource their newscasts to Big Four stations in their respective markets), so KTEN and WCAV/WVAW would be the only ones left to switch.

Here are a couple of the opens: …and I get what @NYCshorty said, the graphics and open style would fit as a Fox O&O package, as components of it blend better with the network’s current graphics style than the actual O&O package does.

Extremely redundant with Oxygen, which has the same format and parent company (Comcast/NBCUniversal), and is also available OTA. Funny enough, KUOT-CD carries both networks on neighboring subchannels (American Crimes on 22.4 and Oxygen on 22.5). That said, the former LX had been adding more true crime shows to its lineup since it shifted from news to lifestyle programming (as LX Home).

The reason The King of Queens is leaving broadcast syndication is because Sony Pictures Television has cut a deal to bring it and Married… with Children to Cozi TV’s lineup. King will join the network’s prime time lineup (displacing Frasier in the 8:00-10:00 p.m. ET slot) on September 9, while Married… (following an eight-hour marathon two days before) joins the late afternoon schedule on August 5 (replacing Monk in the 4:00-6:00 p.m. ET slot).

Free TV Networks has acquired the naming rights and programming inventory of Defy TV from Scripps, which repurposed the (original) Defy’s former channel space for an OTA relaunch of Ion Plus (a farm of 2000s-2010s dramas carried by other Scripps networks, former Ion/Pax originals and obscure CanCon and ‘90s-early 2000s first-run syndicated series that Scripps relegated to AVOD streaming shortly after acquiring Ion Media in 2021). Free TV Networks relaunched Defy (dropping “TV” from the name, but keeping the logo used by the Scripps iteration) on Monday (July 1) with much of the same programming lineup as the original network. The Free TV Networks iteration of Defy was originally announced in April to be launched as Dare, intended as a copycat to the original Defy (similar to how The 365 and Outlaw are copycats to Bounce TV and Grit, both of which FTVN CEO Jonathan Katz once oversaw), with FTVN cutting a deal with A+E Networks to air unscripted content from its library (the network also initially intended to reuse The CW’s former “Dare to Defy” slogan, which was changed to “Dare to be Bold” for the “relaunch”).

I thought something was different; I noticed the change earlier during coverage of a standoff that resulted in an officer getting shot and hospitalized. That the set is being updated/replaced only two years after the station moved to its downtown studio is odd, especially considering KWTV’s last three sets at their old Kelley Ave. building were used for progressively long stretches. Their final set at the Kelley building was built in 2004 (lasting for 18 years), the set before that (inspired by the WCCO set introduced not too much earlier) was built in 1993-94 (lasting for ~10 years), and the set before that was built in 1985-86 (lasting ~8 years).

Michael Steib has been named the company’s President, CEO and Director, succeeding David Lougee, who will remain with Tegna in a Senior Advisor role.

Former WRTV news anchor Tanya Sumner (neé Spencer), who later became a town council member in the Indianapolis suburb of Whitestown after leaving journalism, has died at 53 from complications from a rare form of colon cancer she was diagnosed with in November 2022. https://deadline.com/2024/05/tanya-sumner-dead-news-anchor-indianapolis-abc-affiliate-wrtv-1235941409/

CNBC is reporting that WBD appears to be pivoting from matching NBCUniversal’s bid for the “B” package that TNT currently holds towards matching the offer for the new “C” package framework that the league negotiated with Prime Video (encompassing regular season games, the In-Season and Play-In Tournaments, and alternating rights to a conference finals series). That package is expected to go for between $1.8 billion–$2 billion, slightly lower than the $2.4 billion that NBCU is likely to offer for the “B” package. The Streamable points out that the plan for Max to switch its Bleacher Report Sports content to a paid add-on could be a wrinkle in that regard, unless it’s willing to make it a permanent no-extra-fee offering (a la Prime Video’s sports content), but that Venu Sports could help bridge the gap (although Prime Video already has a wide subscriber reach built in, though having a larger streaming-only package of NBA could pose issues, especially given recent political posturing over streaming-exclusive college football games on ESPN+).

Paramount and WBD should have only sold a combined 33% of their stakes in The CW to Nexstar, rather than giving up all but 25% of the network. By offloading the majority of the network to Nexstar, the company’s strategy for The CW seems to hinder it more in the name of making it profitable while making it more difficult for the network to make it into the black (even though they claim it’s slashed the network’s operating deficits, while simultaneously stating that the network’s revenue will soon no longer be disclosed publicly) by driving away its existing audience through the replacement of its more costly but better produced shows with low-cost fare and imports that make it less competitive with the Big Four. It makes you wonder what the network would look like under a Paramount/WBD/Nexstar equal partnership. Would the programming be much like the CW pre-Nexstar or a hybrid of the old and new formats?