T.L. Hughes

I've always wondered who composed the theme music for All News Channel, particularly the music package it used from c. 1995 to 2002. I also read that this about the music used on ANC (this excerpt from Wikipedia isn't referenced, so I need confirmation on this): "In addition, since ANC's newscasts never contained any copyrighted music (by design), stations broadcasting the ANC feed could stay on the air longer without increasing their ASCAP, Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI), and/or SESAC fees."

Serpentine/Serentino was also used by KOCO for its "5 Alive" logo that was introduced probably close to the time WETM introduced theirs and used until about 1993. The new logo looks quite like a stylized version of another logo used by an NBC affiliate on channel 18. Compare the one seen on WETM's Facebook with WLEX's, there are subtle differences but you can tell.

It's a variant name of the typeface used in Gannett's graphics, as well as Sinclair's new graphics package.

Rather than just shut it down, how come Disney-ABC didn't just retool Live Well in the same manner that NBCUniversal did with Cozi TV (which originated as the local Nonstop services)? Disney (much like Warner Bros.) is a major holdout in the content space on subchannels, and haven't bothered to seek content deals with other networks since they struck a deal with .2 Network that never got realized; putting its film and television library on a rebranded Live Well would have wooed more affiliates.

Actually, the CTA was passed in 1990, just over a decade before ABC and CBS ran the programs you mentioned on Saturdays. It's just been revised multiple times to add or change provisions.

Emphasis on most in both cases, if you're a child whose parent doesn't subscribe to cable or satellite, unless you have the internet, PBS or maybe one of the religious networks like TBN or Daystar are your only options for children's programs that aren't the entertainment equivalent of drinking cough syrup. Also, 21st Century Fox has no kids' cable presence (at least, here in the U.S.), yet Fox dropped out of the children's television business altogether five years ago. It doesn't have that issue of trying to compete with one of its own stablemates, but Fox and MyNetworkTV leave it up to their O&Os and affiliates to carry children's programming compliant with the E/I guidelines. The Children's Television Act may have sounded good on paper, but they loaded it with too many provisions unfavorable to broadcasters and a couple that just don't make sense (like not factoring a subchannel's programming format in regards to the carriage of E/I programming, since kids aren't likely to watch a program geared toward them on a local weather channel, Movies! or Me-TV), making it an extremely flawed law.

Really, a lot of people blame cable television and the internet in part for making children's programming on broadcast television a bad business proposition, but that isn't the case. While I like Recipe Rehab and used to watch Food for Thought with Claire Thomas before it got canned, Litton's programs aren't really children's programs (not that they market them that way) so they're really borderline on E/I compliance, since that was the whole reason of the Children's Television Act, for E/I shows to target kids. The advertising restrictions in the Act as well as the fact that the producers of these shows are rather milquetoast in what they consider children would want that would also allow stations to comply with the guidelines are what really killed network children's TV. With this, PBS is the only one striking said balance (making educational shows enjoyable and entertaining for kids) well. If only there were Peter Engel-types that made shows like those on Nickelodeon, Disney Channel and the like that entertained as well as educated that kids/teens would want to watch, maybe Saturday morning TV would still be as interesting as it was 10+ years ago. Although the Children's Television Act is to blame mostly, rather than be repealed, the whole thing just needs to be rewritten to make it more palatable for broadcasters to air and produce better kids' programming and make it less of a profit loser. Address the issues that resulted in the overly strict advertising clauses, but restructure it to allow broadcasters to be able to compete in the children's programming marketplace. Repealing it would just make Saturday morning broadcast TV here in the U.S. look more like it does in Canada.

KPTV is also adding news, to its MyNetworkTV-affiliated sister station KPDX; that station will begin airing an hour-long 9:00 p.m. newscast in September (as a result, KPDX will run two hours of news in primetime; KPDX delays MyNetworkTV programming until 9:00 p.m. currently, so it's likely to be moved at least to 10:00 when the new newscast launches). http://www.mediabistro.com/tvspy/kptv-kpdx-launching-9-p-m-newscast_b121435 Interesting to point out that WXMI will air the new 11:00 p.m. newscast seven nights a week. I've only heard that Fox is doing away with its Animation Domination High-Def block next month, I'm not sure if this is a sign that Fox is giving the hour back to its affiliates or if WXMI is delaying the skeleton that will be the network's Saturday late night lineup.

It's a fairly good ripoff, though. The only thing missing is the moving text behind the logo and names, as well as the absence of the fast-moving (what I think is?) traffic lights that is featured at the start of the WBBM intro.

Chase Thomason has announced that he is leaving KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City to join CBS affiliate KUTV in Salt Lake City (where he grew up), where he will start in early June. Thomason currently serves as KFOR's weekend morning meteorologist and also serves as a fill-in on the weekday morning newscasts on KFOR and sister station KAUT-TV. He joined the station in August 2012 from Lubbock Fox affiliate KJTV and is married to KFOR web editor and on-air contributor Ashton Edwards (daughter of the station's late longtime investigative reporter Brad Edwards). @TexasTVNews had it right on the money. Albert Flores has been promoted to chief meteorologist at San Antonio's WOAI. He will shift his duties from the weekday morning newscast to the 5, 6, 6:30 and 10 p.m. newscasts starting May 27.

Not to mention, what happens to his show Sunday Edition, assuming it's still on (based on looking at the program listings)?

News regarding two Fox affiliates: * Another Fox affiliate accidentally plays a commercial over a segment dealing with the topic of evolution in the network's Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey. WVUE in New Orleans covered one minute and 24 seconds of such a segment dealing with the correlation between climate change and the evolution of primates into humans featured in Sunday night (May 4)'s episode of Cosmos, with a news promo, a PSA on seatbelt safety and other commercials. The station has apologized for the blunder, and has rescheduled the episode in question to air this coming Thursday (May 8) at 10:35, after WVUE's 10 p.m. newscast. Oklahoma City's KOKH had this same error occur during the premiere broadcast of Cosmos back in March; only in that case, an excerpt that referenced evolution was covered just by a promo for that night's 9 p.m. newscast, which the station apologized for. * WDRB in Louisville will be expanding news in the early evenings this fall. On September 14, the station will debut a half-hour 6 p.m. newscast, which will bear the WDRB Local Evening News title currently used on the station's existing 6:30 p.m. newscast and the 7 p.m. newscast it produces for CW-affiliated sister station WBKI. This is a bit of a change for WDRB, whose current evening newscasts (airing from 4-5, 6:30-7 and 10-11 p.m.) on the station itself do not compete with local newscasts on rivals WAVE, WLKY-TV and WHAS-TV (the only times in which it does compete with those stations is in the morning, its weekday and weekend morning newscasts compete with those aired on those three stations, and its 11:30 a.m. newscast competes with the hour-long midday newscast on WAVE). No anchors have been announced for the program as of yet.

What made WJZ's previous (pre-2014) news opens illegal in regards to IDs is the fact that it used the layout "this is WJZ-TV, WJZ-HD and WJZ.com, Baltimore". The inclusion of the website domain and the mention of "WJZ-HD" constitutes a violation of the FCC's rules for station identifications. A more compliant ID would be "this is WJZ-TV, Baltimore" or "this is WJZ-TV/DT, Baltimore".

Them, too. A five-hour morning newscast, hour-long newscasts at noon and 10 p.m., three hours in the late afternoon and a half-hour 11 p.m. newscast; on weekends, it has a three-hour Saturday morning newscast, 10 and 11 p.m. newscasts and unusual for a Fox affiliate (even for one that carries early evening newscasts), 5, 6 and 6:30 p.m. newscasts on Saturdays and Sundays. The only daypart WSVN doesn't carry newscasts in is Sunday mornings (nor do they run Fox News Sunday at that time, it airs during Sunday night/early Monday mornings; E/I shows and religious programs air then).

It seems as if about half of the 10 highest newscast outputs in the country (and probably, North America) belong to Tribune-owned stations: WJW, WXIN and WDAF are among them. I think KTLA or WGN also fall in there somewhere. If anyone knows which stations have the 10 highest local news outputs are, please post here or create another thread.

WXIN is adding more local newscasts. The Indianapolis Fox affiliate is adding a half-hour 7 p.m. newscast in the fall (adding to the 3½ hours it already carries in the late afternoon/early evening. 6 and 10 p.m. anchors Bob Donaldson and Fanchon Stinger will serve as anchors of the new 7 p.m. newscast as well. The station is also launching an 11 p.m. newscast on June 30, called Fox 59 NewsPoint, and has hired former WTHR weekend morning anchor Nicole Pence as its anchor. The program will be structured as a standalone newscast featuring “a concise wrap-up of the day’s events, plus a quick look forward to tomorrow’s weather” and will have “a distinct look and feel from the rest of FOX59’s newscasts seen throughout the day.” In total, by the time the 7 p.m. newscast is added, WXIN will carry 66 hours of local newscasts each week (surpassing sister station WJW in Cleveland, which ironically supplanted WXIN as the highest news output among Tribune Broadcasting's stations when Tribune's acquisition of former WJW owner Local TV was finalized in December, for the highest local newscast output of any U.S. television station by a half-hour). http://www.mediabistro.com/tvspy/wxin-adds-nicole-pence-expands-evening-newscasts_b120080 http://www.tvnewscheck.com/article/75906/wxin-adds-7-and-11-pm-newscasts?utm_source=NetNewsCheck-rss&utm_medium=latest-news-feed&utm_campaign=latest-news-feed-WXIN-Adds-7-And-11-P-M-Newscasts

CBS News anchor/reporter Terrell Brown is joining WLS as a reporter and contributing anchor. http://www.mediabistro.com/tvspy/terrell-brown-to-join-wls-as-reporter_b118434

Longtime KSDK morning anchor Jennifer Blome has announced that she will be retiring from broadcasting, to take a position as director of humane education at the Animal Protective Association of Missouri. Blome's last day on-air will be March 28. http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/ksdk-s-jennifer-blome-retiring/article_69155ef4-3dd9-5d65-8e29-e02cc586c713.html

I went there to check not long after the above post was made, that specific page was down earlier. Looks like the problem was fixed.

I'm not really sure where to find it. It's not in the NMSA, nobody has submitted it yet. I remember how the melody went (there was a telegraphic sound in parts of it), all I can tell you is that the end refrain of the piece is similar to the commercial break bumper used on The Rush Limbaugh Show during that period.

I got another theme that needs to be solved, but its not just the composer that needs to be identified but also the name of the piece of music. When I used to travel to Shreveport as a little kid, I remember hearing a theme that was used on KTAL's newscasts from about 1996 to 2001 (during the NewsCenter 6 era). I believe it was production music, as I have heard it in a couple of commercials elsewhere during the early/mid-2000s. It was kind of a light music piece featuring piano and trumpets.

I should point out that the examples I mentioned regarding KFOR and KOKH, sometimes these miscues aren't caught in time. Whole commercial breaks have accidentally been miscued and the stations don't catch it in enough time, causing you to miss part of a program. I would think there would be someone at master control to override the incorrectly insterted break before promos or commercials run through once they interrupt a scene mid-program.

KOKH has sparked the inquiries of conspiracy theorists everywhere when it inadvertently cut into the premiere broadcast of Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey on Sunday (March 9). Video of the incident has gone viral, resulting in a lot of people theorizing that given Oklahoma's largely conservative ideologies (not to mention that KOKH's owner is the same one that preempted Nightline on its ABC stations when the program ran a list of soldiers killed in action during the Iraq War and ran specials scrutinizing Democratic presidential candidates), the station did it deliberately. As the story in the Los Angeles Times link below states, contrary to reports, the portion of the episode that was interrupted was not the only reference to evolution (directly or indirectly) in the broadcast. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-oklahoma-city-fox-affiliate-cuts-evolution-from-cosmos-20140313,0,4969385.story As a person who has watched a lot of local television (we receive TV via antenna), KOKH's Twitter apology that this mishap was an operator error isn't far off. KOKH and KFOR-TV have blundered several times in running locally inserted commercial breaks when they were supposed to be airing a scene in a network program (KFOR has had these mishaps quite a number of times since the early 2000s at the earliest, though I remember this happening on KOKH a few times before, as recently as last fall). These kinds of errors doesn't happen very much with KWTV, KOCO or any of the other commercial stations in OKC. KOKH will be rebroadcasting the premiere episode of Cosmos on Saturday at 7:00 p.m. local time, as Fox already had it scheduled to repeat that night.

One obvious knockoff was done to the Hearst "camera" package (used from 1995/96-2003/04). I'm not sure if any other stations have used a standardized graphics originally used by another station group other than those run by the Big Four networks. KEZI used this copy during the late 1990s-early 2000s. The lower thirds are styled the same as how the Hearst stations used them, down to the use of BankGothic; however, the intros use a combination or Copperplate and what appears to be either Helvetica Extended or Univers. Also, Score's "ABC Affiliate News Package" was used instead of "The B Package" or "Image News".

It looks like Time Warner Cable is preparing to expand its regional cable news holdings with a new channel in San Antonio. http://blog.mysanantonio.com/jakle06/2014/03/time-warner-launching-s-a-news-channel/