Rusty Muck

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.

@Georgie56posted this in the Discord but KCNC recently updated their Twitter profile, without a single 4 in sight. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what will happen next.

Easy money on Standard General’s legal counsel being that bad. Soo simply thought he could buy Tegna out of sheer hatred for Dave Lougee, and the details didn’t matter.

Their public statements have been this mix of playing the victim card and tepid deflections (“It’s not true! Proof? Bro. Trust me!”), it’s stunning how unprofessional Soo and Deb have been throughout this process. I’m employing Occam’s Razor for this analysis, and with the level of opposition, FCC scrutiny and Standard General in amateur hour mode, this deal needs to set up an appointment with Dr. Kevorkian.

Again, the problem is that KDKA, KYW, WBZ and WCCO have to share those call letter brands with unrelated radio stations. Most people really wouldn’t care if the call letter brands were retired. They aren’t nerds like us and get easily confused between the two. If that wasn’t the case (and CBS had forced the radio stations to change their calls en masse in 2017, as what Sinclair made Lotus do when they bought KOMO radio) then a case could be made for keeping the call sign brands in the TV group.

It’s only a matter of if anyone at Tegna has the good sense to call off the deal before the FCC rejects it out of hand. The one thing you do not want to do is lie to the FCC, and withholding the info about Apollo having a substantial financial stake in the buyout (because Soo can’t afford the company on his own) reaches that level of impropriety. This deal is deader than dead.

The goal is brand unification. CBS already has an open position for Group Creative Director which explicitly states that they will “work closely with CBS Stations, CBS News and CBS Marketing to unify our brands.“ Group W hasn’t existed for nearly 26 years. Legacy is one thing but not if it’s holding back the evolution of the station group/rebuild of the network news division. Moreover, outside of KPIX and WJZ-TV, the Group W TV stations never fully owned those recognizable brands. They were always shared with radio and now mean totally different things to different people since CBS sold off the radio unit. (Nevermind that KYW-TV was never a “market leader” in any sense of the word.)

WCCO, KDKA, WJZ and KYW share their identities with wholly unrelated radio stations. John Q. Public has no clue about KDKA not having any tie to it’s onetime TV sister, so of course the TV station got all sorts of flack when Wendy Bell’s career imploded at the radio station. Or that KYW radio is now co-located with, and operated alongside, WCAU. Call sign brand equity doesn’t mean as much as you think it does when it’s been split both ways for decades. How much do vehicle wraps cost? Something instituted by prior management (the GM that instituted the gaudy black-and-gold look left months ago) always can be reversed through a simple Paramount Global budget line item.

WSBK doesn’t have to compete against anyone at 8pm. The 10pm hour is up against WHDH and (in theory) WFXT. Why not experiment at 10pm and eventually merge the two newscasts as a 8–11pm primetime news block?

Everything is pointing to CBS using these DFW-hub produced newscasts as what will subsume all the existing brands. (NewscastStudio isn’t exactly a reliable source, tbh, I could barely read what Michael Hill wrote.) Outside of WCCO, KCNC, WJZ and KDKA, the CBS O&Os are laggards. WFOR, KYW-TV and WBBM have nothing to lose by becoming CBS News Miami, CBS News Philadelphia and CBS News Chicago, respectively. Ditch the current number and call letter brands and Enforcer, too. Besides, it’s all but confirmed that WWJ-TV will be rebranding as CBS Detroit/CBS News Detroit when their news operation launches.

Huh, it's like the FCC has some questions relevant to the plot...

The tightening credit market and unfavorable interest rates are what will doom this deal. The shareholders vote was symbolic and pretty pointless. Stubborn Raccoon Index for Standard General/Apollo’s purchase of Tegna is at or near 12%.

It depends on how badly Daystar needs the money. After Harold Camping's 2012 apocalypse prediction failed, Family Radio had several of their 92-108 FMs (inc. Newark, Philly-Trenton and Annapolis) reassigned as commercial in order to get quick cash. Daystar might be well advised to do the same.

If that one-size-fits-all Gray ticker wasn’t in the way, I’d be fine with the look; in fact, the WMC package looks like something that Raycom would have done back in the day.

Amen, amen, amen! There should be a niche that Austin could fill and give KMSG something of value for the community. Even if it was a long-form newsmagazine I’d respect it.

LOLOL at all the apologists and shills on here (and you know you are) for something that is in reality a non-factor in the Fresno market and never will be a factor. It’s almost like you want Austin to credit you as a “Consulting Producer” at the end of his newscast. I don’t think anyone at KFSN or KMPH is even aware this newscast even exists, let alone thinking it poses anything close to a “threat”.