T.L. Hughes

I’m a bit lost how this fits. The closest I can surmise is maybe it takes elements from Global’s current news graphics, along with the program using a title that makes more sense as an offshoot of ITV’s morning show.

The interesting part about the article (besides the major errors in initially reporting that Diamond was dropping all but one of its MLB team deals, rather than offering to do so as a leverage point, and suggesting all of its MLB broadcast deals, instead of just four of them, expired after the recently concluded season) is this quote: Ummm, MLB basically telegraphed it might dump Diamond and acquire their team contracts (even potentially moving them to an in-house streaming platform similar to MLB.tv) because it didn’t have faith they would come out of their bankruptcy reorganization as a viable business. So, it seems odd they’d be shocked Diamond was willing to walk away from all of its team contracts (sans the Braves), or that it chose to discuss new contractual terms with the teams themselves instead of the Commissioner’s Office. That said, given MLB’s position on its viability as a broadcast partner, Diamond offering to walk away from its team contracts if it can’t get more favorable terms seems akin to when David Zaslav said that TNT Sports “doesn’t have to have the NBA”, only to end up suing the league two years later after WBD’s offer to match the financial terms of Amazon’s NBA contract framework was rejected. It might sound like a means to ensure leverage in contract talks, but could readily backfire with the league leaving its offer, rather than taking it.

While this makes MLB happy, since they lost faith in Diamond Sports on account of how Sinclair ran it into the ground, I don’t see how this allows Diamond Sports to survive as a going concern post-bankruptcy. Dropping all but one of its Major League Baseball contracts leaves a major hole in Bally Sports’ event schedule during the late spring and summer, thus impacting ratings during those months and undermining any leverage Diamond may have in future carriage negotiations. It would also potentially result in Bally Sports Great Lakes and Bally Sports Kansas City to close or merge into adjacent regional networks (Bally Sports Ohio and Bally Sports Midwest, respectively), since local MLB teams serve as their sole regional broadcast partners. (TBF, this is true for Bally Sports New Orleans since they lost the Pelicans rights, though Diamond has yet to announce its closure, compared to Bally Sports Arizona, which it shut down after losing all four of its pro team partners.)

The Streamable suggested that too in its report on the merger. However, the DirecTV-Dish combo does create a monopoly in satellite TV; it’s possible that could still give the DOJ some pause since the Antitrust Division has been more scrutinizing of horizontal mergers (involving companies operating in the same industry) than vertical mergers (those that involve consolidation of companies in different industries, like with Amazon’s 2022 purchase of MGM, ironically despite Amazon already being in the TV and film production business). Compare the current limited competition in the satellite industry to 1997, when there were four DBS providers (DirecTV, Dish, USSB and Primestar) and at least three C-band/Ku-band programming distributors (Netlink, Superstar and TurnerVision). Since then, USSB and Primestar both merged with DirecTV, Voom and OrbyTV launched and shut down, and the DBS providers iced the BUD programmers out of the marketplace. OTOH, the number of cable providers remain in the dozens (major providers like Comcast, Charter (Spectrum) and Verizon Fios, and many mid-sized and small providers like Cox, Altice (Optimum), Cable One (Sparklight), Mediacom and Service Electric) and six vMVPD services (joined by YouTube TV, Hulu, Fubo, Philo and FriendlyTV) would still be left—with a seventh joining in the off-chance Venu Sports is allowed to get off the ground—following the merger of DirecTV Stream and Sling. On top of that, the merger of Sling and DirecTV Stream could pose an issue considering significant pricing differences between the two, unless DirecTV agrees not to substantially raise prices for current Sling subscribers (DirecTV Stream’s packages start at $80, whereas Sling’s start at $40). DirecTV’s recent deal with Disney allows for genre-based packages, but it’s a while off before it can implement that kind of tiering, since that requires making similar agreements with other pay-TV programmers (like Comcast/NBCUniversal, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount).

With this, the number of OTA 24-hour news channels will have gone from two at the start of the year to none at the end (with NewsNet—which didn’t have great affiliate distribution compared to Scripps News, nor the backing of a legacy broadcaster with news experience—having also gotten the ax). Surprising no subchannel network operator has been able to successfully compete with cable news, considering the market for a 24-hour news network for people without a cable or vMVPD subscription or access to AVOD streaming services (and yes, this includes the shutdown of NBC Weather Plus, and AccuWeather and WeatherNation shifting to pay-TV distribution within the past 16 years).

Weird that the Blazers are partnering with Sinclair to distribute their Rip Sports network, considering other NBA teams have ditched Sinclair part-owned Bally Sports (though in their case, the Blazers ditched Root Sports Northwest). It’s especially odd, considering that Gray owns KPTV/KPDX in Portland and has created over-the-air RSNs in a few of its other markets (including New Orleans, where the Pelicans are moving to one to be carried over WVUE’s signal), which should have made Gray a natural partner.

In a way, the graphics seem like an evolution of Griffin’s previous standardized package with major improvements (better animations, fully streamlined typefaces, slimmed down tickers, etc.) Elements of the package also, for some reason, reminded me of the 2016 WFTV package. They also replaced the Enforcer cuts that had been used since the introduction of the 2010 graphics and standardized KWTV/KOTV logo design (I never found out which series they came from) with cuts from a more recent series of the package. (Curiously, until it moved to the downtown OKC studio, KWTV mixed those Enforcer cuts with leftover cuts from Image News that were still played on occasion during segment preview bumps.) The only issue I have is the sizing of the “Oklahoma’s Own” slogan in the bug, which is too small and probably could have had the possessive “Oklahoma’s” broken into two lines so it could appear remotely legible within the bug. The ticker font also could have been made slightly larger, and the text speed of the tickers used for the morning shows and sports segments could be increased a bit. (I also have minor quibbles with 1) the wind speed in the current conditions graphic being listed as a range, a la in the forecasts, rather than the observed sustained winds, 2) the current date in the extended forecast, which could have been left out, and 3) the separation of the dialogue boxes containing the time/date and legend on the radar and forecast models, despite there being little space between them.)

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).