Rusty Muck

If you want to remake and streamline the O&Os to be synonymous and harmonious with the network, it’s the way to go. As it stands, the CBS O&Os are a weird mix of totally different logos and branding conventions, with some legacy brands and call letters shared by unrelated radio stations. Only WCCO-TV at this point holds any promotional or marketing connection to it’s former sibling at AM 830. WBZ-TV has minimal to no relationship with AM 1030, an iHeart station. KYW-AM has an extensive news and weather partnership with WCAU, not KYW-TV.

The “KCAL9 News” brand is clearly being retired. Obviously the station will still be KCAL9 outside of news, but the news operation is going to be renamed “CBS News Los Angeles” across both stations.

Maybe they’re doing all sorts of rehearsals and the like behind-the-scenes. Assuredly a lengthy series of mock newscasts to try to iron out any bugs and glitches and make sure everyone knows what they are doing. You can’t just flip a switch and instantly have a round-the-clock news service right off the bat.

Pretty much this, it’ll likely be a mishmash of things until something permanent can finally be rolled out. WWJ is going to be the interesting one here, given they never really used the 2016 pack to any sort of degree prior.

WSB is owned by a New York private equity firm (to call it a "hometown company" is extremely generous bordering on Truthiness, Cox Media ceased being "an Atlanta company" when the Cox family sold out due the Theranos scandal), which doesn't care about investing into it and ultimately wants to sell it to the highest bidder. Private equity is the worst type of ownership because they want to make back their money, everything else be damned. The only thing WSB has going for it is Rusted Dial Syndrome.

Who’d buy them? Nexstar is grossly over the cap that, even if they tried to play the Mission route, it wouldn’t exactly work like they would want it to. The charade of selling WPIX to Scripps was set up in a way that Mission could buy them, this OTOH would be grossly flagrant and highly visible (as opposed to Mission shadow buying a station for Nexstar to create a duop in the middle of nowhere in market #179). Plus this is no longer an environment receptive to M&As as the Federal Reserve keeps hiking the prime interest rate. If anything, CBS can use KSTW and WTOG to force Apollo to sell them KIRO and Tegna to sell them WTSP.

Once the deal closes, WUPA is no longer a CW O&O, regardless of how much a stake they might still have in the CW for now. The network could sign to remain on stations like WKBD and WPCW (or even KBHK) but does Paramount have much of any real desire to be involved with the network beyond the 2024–25 season? Plus WSBK and WBFS disaffiliated from MyTV a few weeks ago and now function as indies.

CBS sold WUPA to Viacom the First in 1994 after it was no longer needed. The station became a UPN O&O, then a CW O&O under CBS Corp. control. Now that CBS is giving up their ownership stake in the CW, they have zero incentive to have WUPA be an affiliate of a network they will have no stake or involvement in and every incentive to take the affiliation in-house.

Looks more like a transitional phase upon which the "WCCO" name is slowly retired in favor of "CBS News Minnesota". I dare say even the name "The 4 on WCCO" is transitional. KCNC may be getting the "CBS News NOW" graphics next week out of necessity alone. It's not like that station is stuck with running on the 2016 look when they rebrand.

Technically the first EWN station was what is now WKYC and they dropped it in 1965 when the FCC ordered the asset swap reversal between NBC and Westinghouse. I know common interpretation has KYW “moving” back to Philadelphia but that was borne out of Westinghouse wanting to erase any connection to NBC ownership of 3 and 1060 as soon as possible. By stark contrast, NBC tried to play off the “KY” name with WKYC and acknowledged Westinghouse’s prior ownership in Cleveland.

And WWJ-TV has gone all-in as "CBS Detroit" (h/t @DetroitTVNews)

That’s the point. One company is controlled by private equity. The other is not. They still have the offices but Cox ceased being a “local company” with the Apollo buyout, it merely became the equivalent of a subsidiary.

KYW in Cleveland (now WKYC) was the first station to use the EWN name in 1959, so Westinghouse had the first-use service mark. To keep it active, they might bury it in KYW station promos not unlike what WAGA has done for decades under Fox ownership. (“Be an Eyewitness to News on CBS News Philadelphia!”)

Channel 46 doesn’t need to have “46” in their branding, either, and why would they? They could easily brand outside of news as “WANF CBS”, “ANF CBS” or … hear me out … “WANF”. It’s intentional and I love it. Cox ceased being a local company when Apollo bought them out (blame the Cox family losing hundreds of millions on Theranos).

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Or “CBS (name of city/region)”. The way CBS is pushing this across the chain, I expect them to push the non-owned affiliates to go in the same direction, either as “CBS” or “CBS (city/region)”. It’s something that I’ve debated @channel2 on in the discord as she values the brand integrity of the affiliates and the legacy brands of the O&Os, which I totally get. At the same time, harmonization is not new, from the time ABC had their O&Os all adopt the same Circle 7 in 1962, to when NBC pushed the same news sets throughout their chain in the 1970s to when CBS had their affiliates use Rockwell as their CG typeface in the 1980s. The only difference here is the presumed excising of the channel number and retiring of call letters as brands in favor of a unified approach. It’s revolutionary in US broadcasting but is so commonplace elsewhere. Moreover, CBS has a clear and obvious brand issue with KDKA, WBZ, KPIX, WCCO and to a lesser extent KYW as stations that have to share a branding with their onetime radio sisters. It’s in theory not bad unless the radio station gets bad publicity a la Wendy Bell flaming out at KDKA 1020 and KDKA-TV has to issue statements that they had nothing to do with Wendy’s employment. It’s an awkward licensing agreement between Audacy, iHeart and Beasley Les Moonves made that never should have happened (but at the same time everyone would be grousing at KDKA 1020, the fabled “first radio station”, being forced to change their call sign. Look at the awkwardness of KOMO 1000 being forced to rename itself KNWN). Moreover, CBS going with a unified “CBS” branding solves issues with brand awareness that have dogged the network since 1994, especially in Detroit. It’s also why I see them pushing the renaming before “CBS News Detroit” launches, to help get the marketing campaign underway and help to better promote the news service. It also helps the O&O chain’s laggards—WFOR, KTVT, WBBM and WCBS—a chance to start anew, they literally have nothing to lose. The chain’s successful stations—WCCO, KCNC, WJZ, KDKA and to an extent WBZ—will handle it in a transitional way, but the viewers will adapt. I highly doubt anyone in Pittsburgh proper is going to be no longer watching KDKA simply because they no longer call themselves “KDKA-TV 2”. Thus, I expect the network to pressure the major chains—Gray, Nexstar, Cox, Sinclair, Tegna** and Scripps—to adopt these branding conventions on their CBS affiliates wholesale, which will set up an interesting confrontation between the groups and the network that @Weetershas been predicting on the discord for awhile. (“Why should we have to brand our stations as ‘CBS’ and act like the network owns us when we can fall back on NewsNation, the CW and Antenna?”) ** Fate of said company still TBD.

Erik Estrada? Does this mean Cool Cat is coming to the CW?

Well, the inverse of BBS completely taking over CTV comes to mind right away.

There's one thing that glares significantly over this sale, beyond this totally cringe-inducing passage from COO Tom Carter: @sanewsguyasked this on Discord this morning... where's Perry? Arguably the biggest day in the history of the company—and less than two weeks after his tenure as CEO was extended by four years—and he was nowhere to be seen. I can't imagine the CEO of one of the country's largest pure-play television chains going AWOL the day of their highest-profile transaction, let alone a CEO so totally tied in with the company that he's almost universally known as Uncle Perry.

Forcing any NewsNation product onto the CW is a non-starter and would implode the affiliate base.

If I’m at Scripps, Sinclair and Gray, I’m taking a good look at exercising whatever sale-related clauses exist in my CW affiliate contracts.

The other difference is that UPN and WB existed in an era where smartphones and OTT streaming services didn't exist.

Paramount and Warners still hold minority stakes and will continue to supply programming, and unless something drastic happens, the existing streaming deal with Netflix will be unchanged. The biggest change has already happened with the mass cancellation of shows (but that may have more to do with Zaslav at WBD than anything else). If Nexstar was smart they'd keep the network as-is with other production companies producing content for them. If they can stave off the losses and turn something close to a profit, it could work. But the CW has never made money and has always operated as a loss leader and that was even when the younger demo-strategy still WORKED.

It goes back to the cost-benefit analysis. What is to be gained by making WGN or KRON an affiliate of a network that no longer can reach its' target demo due to mere obsolescence? The mere fact your average CW affiliate has a daytime lineup with hours and hours of courtroom schlock, "Trash TV" Maury reruns and Steve Wilkos, spillover newscasts from a senior duop partner and barely anything else is rather telling.

What is there to be gained from yanking the affiliations off of WCIU, WPSG, KBCW, WCCB or WISH? What is the return on investment for alienating the massive groups that own those stations right off the bat? What benefits stations like KRON, WGN, WPHL, WJZY and WTTV that already have established brands (and in the case of WGN and WTTV, willingly gave up the CW for their own self-interests) to disrupt their programming with CW fare? Just because Nexstar is buying majority control of what is still for all intents and purposes a three-way partnership does not mean they are going to be doing things to it or to the affiliate base "just because they can" The CW targets a demographic that is least likely to watch OTA TV. It might have still worked in 2006 but that's 16 years and 12 models of iPhones ago.