Rusty Muck

On 1/17/2023 at 1:44 PM, CLETVFan said:

I can see parts of NewsNation seen on The CW in the future.

Wouldn’t be surprised to see affiliates owned by Gray, Scripps, Sinclair and CBS just refuse to carry any NewsNation cramdowns over the CW by Nexstar. Scripps can simulcast Scripps News, CBS has the “Now” hybrid newscasts, Sinclair has TND and Gray stations have a sizable commitment to local news.

13 hours ago, JosiahCubed said:

Okay... now I feel like we're just throwing crap at a wall to see what sticks... and I don't like it.

NewsNation reached that when they trotted out “Truck Week” twice like it was supposed to be a Late Night with David Letterman running gag.

8 hours ago, 24994J said:

 

 

2 hours ago, brycats said:

 

You're right! Sorry about that, guess KTLA is exempt from that delay 

How'd you like to be at WPIX, WJW or WGN and see that KTLA can still stream live? That's really gotta do wonders for morale.

It's obvious why they exempted KTLA. Because the second they order KTLA to delay by two hours, KCBS-KCAL would eat their lunch.

10 hours ago, CraigViewer said:

After sampling a few "KCAL Mornings" broadcasts over the past week or so, I feel that it's certainly the best morning product that KCBS/KCAL over many years.  Whether or not they can ever overtake the solid and dominant "KTLA Morning News" remains to be seen.

KTLA is controlled by a cheap company run by a Luddite who sees no value in streaming platforms. They won't be solid and dominant for too much longer.

3 hours ago, Newsjunkie24 said:

 

At least Scott is a fan of streaming newscasts.

He just hates practically everything else that deviates from his limited mindset of news... as it used to be.

The hilarious part is that KTLA, WJW and WGN will be totally crippled on a digital angle by more aggressive efforts from KCAL-KCBS, WOIO-WUAB and WBBM. And in this era, it’s terminally stupid to hand your competitors a massive advantage right off the gate. I was always curious when Nexstar would start sabotaging the only good assets in their portfolio they basically lucked into, and now we have our answer.

The irony is that Uncle Perry and ol’ Scotty Jones have something in common… they both openly want to keep the industry forever stuck in 2003 and discourage innovation.

27 minutes ago, nycnewsjunkie said:

I apologize for sounding repetitive, but people who are only watching KCAL might not even know that the brand is now also on KCBS. If they are only making minimal (if any) references to CBS, how do they expect their viewership to grow on KCBS or their streaming channel? That’s where they need to grow. The use of the KCAL brand to stimulate that growth isn’t surprising; the lack of any CBS promotion outside of CBS itself (in a market as big as LA) is.

KCAL has a strong news brand and KCBS has been a market laggard since the early 1990s (and again, they were an embarrassment under Applegate before that). It’s a net positive to have the stronger brand used over both stations. KCBS has nothing to lose by ceding their brand over this.

Yet again, this is not complicated.

29 minutes ago, nycnewsjunkie said:

Hopefully their researchers are proven right though (they sure as hell know more than I do). The product itself looks good so far IMO.

I’m an armchair quarterback and I’ll never work in the industry. If I operated a television station it would fail in a matter of days, and I know it.

1 minute ago, nycnewsjunkie said:

It isn’t; just pointing out that co-branding wouldn’t alienate them either.

Calling it “KCAL CBS News Los Angeles” is an invitation for disaster. Scuttling the “KCAL” name right away is as bad an option.

12 minutes ago, nycnewsjunkie said:

If they wanted brand evolution, what KPIX is doing is a much better execution of it. Keep the call letters on air to let people know it’s the same newscast, while introducing a new name. In hindsight, it probably wouldn’t make much of a difference on either station ratings-wise, but co-branding would be a better way for people to immediately associate KCAL with CBS on both stations (without alienating KCAL’s current audience).

With all due respect, how is this “alienating KCAL’s current audience” when it had always been a news-heavy indie? If anything, it’s finally showing people that KCAL’s news and KCBS’s news are one and the same. It’s literally doing the same thing KPIX is doing, just in a different path but the same end result.

26 minutes ago, TVNewsLover said:

Extenuating circumstances as they were going through an ownership change. It definitely sounds like indecision and a rebrand, not brand evolution. 

Yet again, this is not indecision. It’s a fairly calculated move and entirely a transitional one.

It’s brand evolution for KCAL as their brand is being refitted to the CBS branding conventions. It’s transitional because the entire operation is being renamed outright and “KCAL” will be retired in less than a year. And yes, big-picture, it is a rebrand for the obvious reasons. All they have to do is literally swap out “KCAL” with “CBS”.

And in the end, the viewers will not be confused. This AGAIN is not complicated.

For this debate about how long a brand should last, WJW used the “ei8ht IS NEWS” name for 10 months, then hastily renamed themselves “Fox 8” after the network bought New World. (The newscasts went from “ei8ht IS NEWS” to “Fox 8 Is News” to “Fox 8 News” in less than a month.”)

No one ever accused WJW of indecision. ei8ht IS NEWS lasted through three sweeps periods and a ton of promos incessantly intoning the brand.

2 hours ago, nycnewsjunkie said:

They’re deemphasizing CBS in the name of viewer attachment to a brand, but they’ll eventually dump the legacy brand in the name of corporate synergy… thereby losing the brand viewers were attached to. IMHO, that’s not a plan; that’s indecisiveness.

It’s brand evolution. Businesses in practically every other industry do it.

1 hour ago, mrschimpf said:

The big problem overall is that "KCBS" has just become a jumbled mess ever since whichever guy at KNX-TV decided 'KCBS should be on our flagship station and we don't care that they've been on that San Fran station for decades'. It was the beginning of the end for channel 2's branding because for whatever reason, KCBS in SFO kept their call letters and come 2002, you had a brand manager's nightmare in LA where KCBS-TV, KCAL-TV, KNX, KFWB, and KCBS-FM all had different brands that never were united very well at all.

 

KFWB eventually got shafted and KNX and KCBS-FM became Audacy properties (along with KCBS-FM), but it still left open that it's only in 2023 that CBSNS is getting around to finally one-branding their local news operation, a thing that should have been done either in 1984 when KNX-TV became KCBS-TV, or in 2002 when KCAL because CBS-owned.

At this point, stick with KCAL. CBS in LA=entertainment, sports or national news (the only thing that cares about KCBS-FM's calls is the PPM as it's 'Jack FM' to a normal person). KCBS may have been there longer, but KCAL has established themselves as a news brand.

This is also an atonement for the infamous “NewsCentral” setup 15 years ago in which **both** KCAL and KCBS were de-emphasized right out of the gate. It was a marketing nightmare and confused viewers.

Take the KCAL name, use it for both stations as a long-term transitional brand, then creep in “CBS Los Angeles” and retire the KCAL name in a year. Boom. Done.

22 minutes ago, nycnewsjunkie said:

The problem is, this isn’t a reconciliation of strategies at all. They’re basically disregarding the CBS brand entirely. The new rebrand across the CBS stations is supposed to unite the linear and digital products. That’s why the KPIX rebrand works; what you see online is virtually identical to what you see on TV. In LA, the linear and digital products are actually more distant after the rebrand. The website is linked to CBS News, but outside of KCBS newscasts, there are zero on-screen references to CBS. This is even the case for the CBS News Los Angeles streaming channel, which is where the screenshot is from. Granted, this is probably a non-issue in Baltimore, but not in the second most populous market in the country.

People are assuming this is a permanent situation and it is most clearly not one at all.

In less than a year, “KCAL” will be gone, the name “CBS Los Angeles” will be on both stations, and no one will call either station to complain about being confused over “where did KCAL 9 News go?”

23 minutes ago, mightynine said:

So call letters are meaningless, except in this instance where they are the stronger brand, but then maybe they’ll eventually drop the stronger brand anyway because that makes sense.

 

KCAL is a brand. WJZ, WBZ, WCCO and KDKA are also brands, but the latter three are brands now confused openly with radio stations which also still use those brands for their own purposes. (KCAL doesn’t have that problem because virtually no one confuses them with KCAL-FM in Redlands.)

Call letters are not “meaningless” but they are increasingly unreliable in order to make your station stand out in a digital world. Same with “CBS 2” or “Fox 5” or “ABC 7” or “NBC 4”. KCAL AGAIN doesn’t have that problem BUT they have to reconcile their brand legacy with what has become a streamlined branding convention among CBS as a whole.

That’s all there is to it. We aren’t talking about rocket surgery.

Just now, TVNewsLover said:

So their strategy is let’s go all in on the KCAL branding only to change it a short time later? Sorry, doesn’t make sense. 

That’s exactly what I said. They’d be foolish to drop the KCAL name right away and risk confusing viewers that still view 2 and 9 as separate news departments.

9 hours ago, iron_lion said:

Genuine question: as some people have asked before, why didn't CBS shift the network affiliation from KCBS to KCAL? 

Because it’d be solving a problem that doesn’t exist. Rebranding KCBS as “CBS Los Angeles” makes the station easy to identify and distinguish. KCAL has been a news-heavy indie since Disney signed it on in 1989 and the brand was never de-emphasized under CBS ownership. KCAL’s news department (despite being one and the same as KCBS) has a better reputation and standing as Bill Applegate, quite frankly, dragged KCBS into the mud with a tabloid format that would put WSVN to shame, and they’ve never recovered from it.

My hunch is that you’ll see the KCAL brand get slowly phased out over the next few months, if not a full year. It’s capitalizing on their existing brand equity while associating it with the “CBS Los Angeles” branding.

5 hours ago, Amra said:

But it shouldn't be dismissed either. The LA Times piece about KYW is a good reminder about it too. The Post may be doing a hit piece on Khemlani and CBS, but it doesn't deny the fact that CBS is always one step forward and one step backwards at the same time.

That’s exactly the problem. The Post has an extremely polemic reputation as a right-leaning paper, and Fox News has pushed an anti-CBS agenda dating back to Bernard Goldberg’s falling out with the network a generation ago.

So even if there’s a possibility it might be true, there’s also a good chance people will dismiss it as little more than a hit piece.

20 hours ago, CircleWXYZ said:

https://nypost.com/2023/01/12/cbs-news-boss-neeraj-khemlani-faces-internal-hr-review/amp/

 

What a mess!!!

This story is from the Murdoch-owned New York Post. Unfortunately the Post’s track record is such that it merits scrutiny as much as the subject matter itself.

On 1/12/2023 at 6:52 AM, bmasters1 said:

Noticed that WSMV in Nashville (Music City NBC station) is now WSMV 4 News, whereas before it was News 4 Nashville. What would make WSMV change its news name yet again-- was the News 4 Nashville name unpopular?

It’s also trading on the legacy “WSM” name. After all, Gray has been collaborating with Ryman (owner of WSM) for Circle well before they bought Meredith.

On 1/11/2023 at 10:56 AM, VHSgoodiesWA said:

Elizabeth Vargas and Dan Abrams at the same ho-hum network. Oh joy! I bet she doesn't get 100K viewers on night 1. Maybe not even 75K. The time to start this network has definitely passed - like 20 years ago. It could have been more successful in the pre-streaming days.

In every aspect it’s an outright failure that has been both continually rejected by the marketplace AND bested by other broadcast chains with better now non-cable concepts… and yet it still makes money.

Only In America…

20 hours ago, Newsjunkie24 said:

I wonder if they've been considering getting Robin Meade?

Would Nexstar be able to accommodate her with an Atlanta facility?

tbh I wouldn’t be surprised Gray hired her for WANF-WPCH once her noncompete ends. She’d be ideal for an old-school lifestyle talk show that can be syndicated throughout the chain and they’d have the facilities for it.

12 hours ago, mrschimpf said:

Because that worked so well and perfect and awesome for the BBC–oh, they're replacing them with new models because their robocam system is comedic. 

CNN acquiring the Beeb’s rogue robot cams might just result in the UK’s most significant cultural export since the Beatles.

A retrospective on her life and career:

https://www.ideastream.org/npr-news/2022-12-30/trailblazing-journalist-barbara-walters-has-died-at-93

She was the product of an era in which many of us on here are so removed from and will never be able to fully understand (none of us were around to experience the Great Depression or WWII), which makes one appreciate her body of work even moreso when understanding the context. 93 years and a treasure trove of glass-ceiling-shattering accomplishments. Much respect.