T.L. Hughes

Starting Monday (April 6), Full Court Press will launch a special coronavirus-focused weeknight edition to be anchored by regular host Greta Van Susteren (who will present from an in-home studio) and WVUE anchor Lee Zurik (who will host from New Orleans). The program, to be titled Full Court Press Now, will air most of Gray’s stations; no word on if it will air on non-Gray stations that carry the main weekend program (like KOCO in my hometown, which carries Full Court Press early Sunday mornings before the 5:00-7:00 block of their weekend morning newscast).

The bizarre thing about this is that earlier in the week, Baldwin was brought to tears during an interview with a woman whose mother died from COVID-19, and who couldn’t see her to say goodbye. Little did Baldwin know, she had been infected herself, but was asymptomatic at the time. Given this and Chris Cuomo’s diagnosis, it’s possible CNN may need to do to its Hudson Yards facility what CBS did to Broadcast Center when its first news employees tested positive. I don’t know if they’ll fall back on using CNN Center in Atlanta as an auxiliary facility for some of its broadcasts (like CNN Newsroom) if a temporary closure for extensive cleaning happens. At least, they should have all of their New York employees that have not yet done so, including on-air talent, work remotely.

Thanks for the clarification. The original post by MidwestTV made it sound as if it was a launch of a half-hour 5:00 p.m. newscast, as opposed to WDAF extending its existing, hour-long Saturday early evening news block by 30 minutes to match said block on weekdays (from 5:00 to 6:30).

WDAF already had a Saturday 5:00 p.m. newscast; the more frequent sports preemptions on Saturdays caused by Fox in the past few years effectively placed it on an inconsistent hiatus (I believed it still aired on the few recent occasions when Fox didn’t have a sports event running in early access; previously, it would be delayed to 6:00 if there was no sports scheduled during that hour). Also, TV listings I looked at for WDAF (including its Zap2It-powered listings on the station’s website) show it as running for one hour, the length its 5:00 p.m. news had been airing on all seven days of the week since the 1994 NBC-to-Fox switch.

Circle City Broadcasting has struck an agreement with the Family Broadcasting Corporation (the former LeSEA Broadcasting) to simulcast WISH-TV’s newscasts on religious-secular independent WHME/South Bend starting April 6. Family Broadcasting’s flagship station will carry around 60 hours per week of WISH’s newscasts, though exactly which ones will be carried and which ones will be exempted have not been immediately specified.

KTRK weekday 3:00 and 6:30 p.m. anchor Chauncy Glover announced Thursday that he has tested positive for coronavirus and is under self-quarantine. The disclosure from his Facebook account:

The FCC appears to be going down this route. They have issued guidance opening up waivers of the 15% weekly programming time limit for stations operated under brokerage agreements to offer additional news programming they couldn’t run otherwise under current rules for as long as the pandemic is considered a national emergency. From Broadcasting & Cable: Also of note, WMC-TV has formed a partnership with Shelby County Schools (the district encompassing Memphis and its suburbs within the county to offer distance education telecourses for language arts/English, science and math for students from pre-K to 12th Grade on its 5.2 subchannel (relegating Bounce TV programming on that subchannel to nights and weekends mainly) starting today. This lasts likely until the district is able to either resume in-person classes or the calendar school year ends. It’s interesting that the school district approached WMC to do this, since telecourses have historically been broadcast on PBS stations (like Memphis’ local PBS member station WKNO and nearby Mississippi Public Broadcasting and Arkansas PBS [fka Arkansas Educational Television Network]) and other non-commercial educational stations.

I don’t think Tegna was behind the retitling of WTHR’s news brand necessarily. WWL still uses the Eyewitness News branding for its newscasts five years out from the company’s spinoff from Gannett. I think it may be a station-dictated move in conjunction with the changes to the graphics and music, just like when WMAZ dropped the Eyewitness News moniker for its newscasts about two years ago to become simply 13WMAZ News. These “vanilla” titles have kinda become more common over the past decade, probably because station consultants probably think they convey an “old school” air to the brand, just like when NewsCenter and NewsWatch went out of style by the end of the 20th Century and NewsScene went out of style towards the mid-to-late ‘80s. Unique news branding makes sense, it’s just no one thinks applying it to the newscast title is “modern”. Those still using brands like Eyewitness News, NewsChannel, NewsCenter, etc. are really more of an exception these days than they were before the early 2010s.

Surprised no one mentioned this, but there is now a case of COVID-19 involving a network news personality. ABC News correspondent Kaylee Hartung revealed Wednesday that she is recovering in self-quarantine after contracting the illness while reporting on its effects in Washington State, one of the coronavirus’ early hotspots. Good news is her symptoms—which she originally thought were allergies, given she didn’t experience shortness of breath, dry cough or chest tightness, the primary symptoms associated with the coronavirus—aren’t as severe as they were early on, stating that at its worst, “I was fatigued. I was not looking forward to getting out of bed. I had a headache right between the eyes. I was congested. I had body aches. My lower back was really hurting.” She is worried about having spread the illness to others when she was asymptomatic. Also, the coronavirus is affecting the family of NBC/Telemundo anchor Jose Diaz-Balart, as his brother, U.S. Representative Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) was one of two Congressmen to be diagnosed (along with Ben McAdams [D-UT]) in an announcement Wednesday, resulting in other Congressional members who had contact with the two House Reps. to self-quarantine. I don’t know if Jose decided to take time off from his anchoring duties at Telemundo in light of his brother’s diagnosis, but it would seem difficult to report on your own brother having been afflicted with a respiratory disease you have been reporting on for a few weeks.

Springer's commentary made pointed references to Marin's decision to resign because of him being brought on to be a commentator for what was apparently a segment that was to feature rotating guest commentators, even suggesting it as "elitist snobbery [...] hidden in the self-righteous cries of journalistic integrity".

In that case, the tornado came at a bad time. Had it touched down during the daytime and had there been more lead time ahead of the tornado to do such a thing, WTVF management could have sent somebody to the airport to move Sky 5 out of its hangar to avoid damage. Since the twister touched down just west of Tune Airport at 12:30 a.m., that idea appeared to be a non-starter, hence what happened.

Sky 5 was severely damaged when the tornado (then at EF2 intensity) hit Tune Airport. When I first heard that the helicopter was parked there while watching a live stream of their 7:00 a.m. newscast Wednesday morning, thought it seemed odd, considering that many news helicopters are housed on their station’s studio grounds, not at general aviation airports like John C. Tune Airport. Considering the airport suffered $93 million in damage and WTVF’s studios escaped damage, putting the helicopter at the WTVF building would have prevented this.

After a 38-year run, Steve Raible is calling it a career at KIRO-TV. Raible announced on the station's 6:00 p.m. newscast Wednesday that he will retire from the station as its main anchor in late Spring (my guess is probably around May sweeps). Raible will continue to appear on the station as a contributor for special event programming and will continue to do play-by-play for Seattle Seahawks radio broadcasts.

BTW, for those not familiar with the other “bad actor” incident referred to in the post, James Gunn was fired by Disney from his role as director of the Guardians of the Galaxy films in 2018 for past tweets that joked about things such as rape, paedophilia and child abuse, uncovered by Mike Cernovich, an alt-righter who tried to paint several Trump critics as “pedophiles,” even though he was charged (though not convicted) of sexual assault himself years prior. Gunn was reinstated by Disney a year later.

Wasn't sure whether to put this here or in Out & About, but ABC has suspended another correspondent, in another incident where Disney effectively cowed to bad actors on the right. David Wright has been suspended for comments he made criticizing ABC's incorporation of promotions for Disney's movies and TV shows in some of its news programs (notably citing Good Morning America, though this is also used to a point on World News Now, America This Morning, Nightline and occasionally on WNT) as well as how ABC covers politics in a superficial way. Project Veritas, a right-wing group known for "undercover" videos trying to expose alleged liberal bias in media, filmed Wright making these comments, in which he also identified as a socialist. There are two issues: one, Veritas has been discredited for use of unsubstantiated claims, "gotcha" journalism and selective editing, therefore, suspending Wright effectively gives them legitimacy; two, it appears this was a case of Disney not respecting Wright's opinions of how news should be done. And, he has a point about the promotion blending thing. NBC and CBS don't do that to the level ABC does, and both those networks are also owned by major media conglomerates (NBCUniversal/Comcast and ViacomCBS). I've been an ABC News viewer for years, but they clearly blundered here.

I've only seen service marks/trademarks in station branding in that particular instance as well as with the "Where the News Comes First" slogan in recent years (as seen on KCRA).

You mean a registered service mark? It does seem odd, though. Station logos usually don't have trademark or service mark (registered or not) on them, so that seems odd.

Two things of note: * WDRB anchor Lindsey Allen is leaving the station after 10 years to focus on taking care of her children; she is in her ninth month of pregnancy with her second child, and will depart the station on Valentine's Day (February 14). * Longtime KOTV anchor/reporter Lori Fullbright is being inducted into to the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame for its 50th inductee class.

So, apparently K26AC was an indirect predecessor of what is now WFTC satellite KFTC. The ads for the subscription TV service offered by the station seem nondescript, it doesn't say what the name of the service is, if it's a service we haven't heard of or one of the ones known to exist (like ONTV, SelecTV, VEU, Wometco, Preview, etc.).

In the case of New York City, however, Scripps did give Nexstar the option to buy back WPIX, and that option period is on the horizon (it commences March 31 and lasts until the end of 2021). I'd say they are planning to keep WTKR/WGNT and WTVR but are in wait-and-see as to whether Nexstar plans to swoop 'PIX up, given that it is in the process of trading KCPQ/KZJO and WITI (two of which are kinda consequential to the cap space they need to clear to buy WPIX) for WJZY/WMYT.

Welcome to the 25th anniversary post of the first network of the next century... which would only last five-and-a-half years into said next century. UPN (originally beginning as the United Paramount Network) launched on January 16, 1995; at launch, it bested The WB in terms of over-the-air affiliates but was bested by them in national distribution, given that it lacked affiliates in many smaller markets that the WWOR EMI Service (the superstation feed of the network's New York City flagship WWOR) prevented them from reaching (compare that to the fact that the WGN superstation feed provided that small-market coverage for The WB during its first three-and-a-half years before the network launched its own national cable feed). UPN was the second of the two eventual predecessors of The CW to launch in January 1995, five days after the The WB made its debut. Here's a look at the commercials that aired during the network's first night and promotional ads that aired preceding its launch:

25 years ago today, The WB Television Network launched. It was the first of the two eventual predecessors of The CW to launch in January 1995, five days before the United Paramount Network (UPN) made its debut. Here's a look at the commercials that aired during the network's first night (as seen on WLVI in Boston): ...and a couple of teaser commercials for the network's launch:

Furthermore, the WFLD package shown in the clip lacked a key component of TVbD/JCBD's graphics of the 1980s and early 1990s. The layer effects of the name banners and title logos in the news open just slide from left to right, not zooming out or coming together at a split point. Basically, every package from those two companies had that element at that time; this package doesn't. Compare the WFLD open to the WGN midday open and to these...

Regarding the coverage of this story, while KOCO and KOKH directly disclosed that it was Abigail's home that caught fire, KWTV made no reference to it at all on their evening newscasts, only reporting on it during their early-evening newscasts and omitting it from the 10:00 broadcast (it's possible that this might have been an understanding between uncle Kelly Ogle, who anchored the Thursday night newscasts, and station management, given the sensitive nature of the issue for their family). KFOR initially went as far as saying that the home belonged to "a daughter of Kevin Ogle" (he has two, KWTV reporter Katelyn Ogle being the youngest), but Kent Ogle openly addressed that it was Abigail's home that caught fire in an addendum to a report on that story during the noon newscast (and presumably, the morning newscast) Friday, thanking viewers for their well wishes to the Ogle family. (Kevin took the night off Thursday, with Eli Roberts filling in for him at 6:00, for what apparently was Eli's last KFOR newscast, and Joleen Chaney anchoring solo at 10:00.)

To show how long it took for KXAS to even provide coverage of the tornado, the YT channel Random News Footage composed a six-minute timelapse of the programming on KDFW, KXAS, WFAA and KTVT during the period between the issuance of the tornado warning at 9:00pm until KXAS began their third cut-in of the warning timeframe at 9:24: Also of note, as basically referenced by KTVT meteorologist Jeff Ray in footage of their storm coverage on StormSpotterMike's channel, KTVT took quite a bit of time to provide tornado coverage over its airwaves. As Ray mentions, they continued offering only a Facebook Live stream of the storm coverage for about 8-10 minutes after the warning was issued (with KTVT airing the first act of that night's episode of Madam Secretary for about thirteen minutes after the first reports of the tornado having touched down near Love Field were made), and elected to commence television coverage on KTXA first, before throwing coverage onto KTVT, instead of starting a simulcast of coverage on KTVT and KTXA at the same time.