-
Posts
4114 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
199
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Articles
Everything posted by Rusty Muck
-
WBBM-TV also does not have anything close to a reputation or heritage that WGN-TV or WLS-TV have… or even WMAQ-TV, certainly not since Bill Applegate left in 1993. They’ve had the negative connotations of being a laggard or bottom-dweller. It’d be insane to think of WLS-TV becoming “ABC News Chicago” and stripping themselves of the circle 7, but WBBM-TV literally has nothing to lose. And it speaks volumes about how much of a project this actually is for CBS, we’re not talking about just mere brand architecture, but systemic changes in multiple news operations (or in the case of Detroit, literally building up from nothing).
-
The anchors are opening all newscasts with, “thanks for watching WCCO (or WCCO News), streaming on CBS News Minnesota”. The opens and most graphics show “WCCO News” fairly prominently. In fact, the only thing that has definitively disappeared is the “4”. The intriguing part is that, aside from the color scheme, KYW still rebranded themselves in line with the majority of the O&Os. The “3” is only there as a visual and marketing tool; all on-air references to “CBS 3” or “channel 3”, especially from a verbal standpoint, are gone anyway. And this came about with as many as 40–50 KYW staffers helping with this rebrand! If channel numbers mattered to them (and they work there, so they’d know), wouldn’t there be more to the “3” we’re seeing right now? KYW managed to pull off a rare feat. They adopted virtually all of the new CBS O&O branding conventions and yet are now looking like more of a “Philly station” than they have ever been, certainly since the CBS takeover.
-
They kept their old, dated look for far too long solely because of their longtime GM Jay Newman, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he refused to work with Dunn and Friend on much of anything. As soon as Newman retired, they got a new set and everything.
-
Okay this is actually really cool, custom M&Ms made for KYW that also include "Philly Proud". Whoever is in their promotions department is a genius.
- 1254 replies
-
- 12
-
-
And here you go
-
WOWO radio in Fort Wayne still uses it nearly 40 years after Westinghouse sold off that station. And once WJZ drops it, WOWO will be the only one left.
-
They'll never admit to the trades, "we went with a logo that hadn't seen the light of day since NBC was thrown back to Cleveland in 1965" because it would be insane to say. BUT it's pretty clear they looked long and hard at the station's history, saw that "3" and felt it would be better than the Westinghouse font or that Helvetica "3"... they went with the throwback on purpose.
-
Dropping that Helvetica "3" was totally intentional. It had too much negative baggage connected to Dunn/Friend and it was absolutely boring to boot. If WCBS were to swap out their current "2" for the Eurostyle-ish font with no eye and put THAT in their box...
-
@24994Jdid a mock in the Discord for WBBM with the Bears colors, and it actually looks good! (I won't share unless he'd want to lol) The aforementioned B+C article did have this quote from Adrienne which is making me think "open source" more and more... Basically, this feels like it's a "sum of all parts" among the stations, and KYW might have served as an ice-breaker. Ironically this has the feeling of something @Samanthasuggested to me once: the idea of a station group (she was thinking about Gray) creating a graphics package or branding conventions with different colors for different regions.
-
KYW-TV is CBS's pet project in more ways than one, it's fully repudiating and excoriating the past Dunn/Friend regime. Making Ukee Washington the literal face and voice of the station (in more ways that one) speaks volumes. If you didn't see Ukee deliver KYW's new mission statement during the 5pm newscast, you really should seek out the airchecks. What if the varied color palettes are intentional? What's to say they want the O&Os to try various color schemes and this is being worked out open-source between the stations? Of course I'm a Browns fan, so Eagles green >>>>> Steelers black-n-yellow, sorry yinz all lmao
-
A breaking news stinger ran at 4pm with the new look (didn’t mean to post within seconds of you @Georgie56)
-
KYW is doing everything they can to make Ukee Their Franchise(tm). He’s living proof that good guys DO finish first.
-
Having seen the demo, I actually give it a 9.5 out of 10, if it was JUST the 3 with no eye in that box, it’d be a runaway 10/10 and the best execution of the package yet. In fact, it already is better than KCAL
-
Yup, Ukee took over for Brian Lee voicing the opens a few weeks ago.
-
If you had to choose between the old Helvetica 3 (with the double CBS eye, no less) and this 3, which would you go with? I would go with the new 3 three 10 times out of 10.
-
Thing is, I can’t think of a commercial station in the market that has used a color scheme like this. Maybe WCAU in 1995 when they were a lame-duck CBS O&O? I know WIP-FM has that color scheme and blatantly so, being the Eagles radio flagship and all. To wit, WPSG has a logo that reads “CW Philly 57” but is identified verbally as “The CW Philly”. This is actually on-brand for them.
-
@HulkieDand I were spitballing last night over a possibility this usage of Eagles green might be tied to a forthcoming broadcast rights deal of some sort with the team. I can’t think of a single TV station in the entire market that’s ever used the color scheme, nor could she. And to be honest, the O&O graphics will look a lot better with Eagles green and teal as opposed to black-and-gold. That typeface needed to be retired in 2003 and would be even more obsolete in 2023. Using this weird “3” for what it clearly is — a simple marketing tool for CBS News Philadelphia — is actually not that bad an idea. (“Tune in to CBS News Philadelphia on Channel 3!”) Plus it’s more visually appealing than that ungainly Helvetica “3” KYW-TV has been saddled with for far too long.
-
With all due respect, wishcasting for call signs and numbers to remain as brands and promoting equally speculative theories like “variable standardization” and “opt-in mandate”—which are complete oxymorons and make little sense—and disguising this speculation as “objective facts” has me rooting for the elimination of ALL local branding conventions and the complete collapse of the network-affiliate model.
-
Thanks to the M&A rolling thunder of the 2010s, local ownership no longer exists outside of a handful of people (Sunbeam, Griffin, Capitol, Bakahal, Forum). It’s limited to Nexstar, Gray, Sinclair, Tegna (which doesn’t want to exist), Scripps, Hearst and Graham. That’s it. And if Nexstar wants to turn their stations into nothing but CW O&Os and brand their news departments as “NewsNation (City)” then there’s nothing management at those stations will be able to do to stop the future from coming to pass. To be brutally honest, I don’t see how the U.S. network-affiliate model even survives within the next three years, if that. We are bound for major and massive brand consolidation like ITV did in the late 90s and 2000s, ultimately erasing all of the local franchise brands within their network and becoming “ITV”. All the heritage in the world couldn’t save Granada or LWT or Yorkshire. This includes CBS ultimately exerting soft power over the affiliates and inducing them to adopt the new branding conventions… the power ultimately being taken away on the local level.
-
Aside from KCAL they are all temporary idents and not reflective of anything long-term. KTVT and WFOR have entirely dumped their prior brands in favor of “CBS Texas” “CBS Miami” and those number logos are being flung into the sunset. Even WCBS has renamed themselves “CBS New York” despite their temporary retaining “CBS 2 News” and their newscasts visually blaring “CBS News New York” to anyone who can read. Those old logos are headed for the trash can. They are all temporary identifiers and will 100% be phased out in year or less outside of KCAL. And even then, KCAL dropped the 9 from their branding and KCBS dropped “CBS 2” altogether!! So much for channel numbers meaning anything in market #2… As for KYW, who the hell knows what is going on there. It might even change 20 times from the point that leaked Vimeo post began circulating. There is a good chance that that “3” — which is a total non sequiter and has nothing to do with any heritage or past logos or has any connection to the new “CBS Philadelphia” branding — is there as a visual crutch in promos and nothing else. It doesn’t fit anywhere else and never will.
-
We’re not in 1993 anymore, nor 2003 or even 2013. This is 2023 and local OTA isn’t even 25% of a typical American’s viewing consumption. See here: What’s the value of “legacy” and “unique complex patchworks” and “decades of local branding” when streaming is now outdrawing OTA and outdrawing cable? Not much at all, to be brutally honest. Trapping oneself with easy answers rooted solely in the past is not how any of this works.
-
I genuinely don't buy that excuse for a second because there’s always people who confuse the affiliate as being the network. How many times have you seen an average viewer link a local Fox affiliate with the Fox News Channel? Or people get confused when a station changes network affiliations? Or the EPGs that don’t show the local logo for an affiliate but the network logo? Does the local branding really help and not become an impediment? WFXT de-branded to “Boston 25” because they explicitly wanted to remove any connection to Fox News as per what their audience believed and now we’re assuming that CBS, which wants to link CBS News to the O&Os, is giving up on doing that to WBZ? Come on. This whole “us ‘mericans are too good or not ready” for television branding conventions literally used in every other country on the planet comes off as a mere excuse not to even try. Who cares that diginets and the CW and Ion effectively rendered that excuse moot? People know MeTV is a thing and don’t need a “channel 69.13” brand slapped onto it.
-
wbz.com is a redirect and a cosmetic move and will remain that way for the long term; CBS has perpetual ownership of the domain name per the SEC brand licensing guidelines (iHeart has to use "wbznewsradio.iheart.com"). The servers still point to cbsnews.com/boston. Except the rebranding is ongoing anyway. They're already beginning the process of renaming it "CBS News Boston" and, contrary to a lot of people wishing to think otherwise, "opt-in mandate", "flexible standardization" and "unlimited freedom" do not exist.
-
A half-hearted rebranding that happened 15 years ago is not really applicable in the present day. NBC-WBTS was a nightmare mess of a station until they got to piggyback on the WGBX spectrum, and even then, they downgraded going from "NBC Boston" to "NBC 10 Boston" (10 of what?). WFXT was taken over by ownership that knew nothing about the Boston area and they sabotaged themselves. They're already pushing "WBZ News on CBS News Boston" both visually and contextually. It is very likely that the brand is slowly going to be phased out on a gradual basis until it is ultimately retired soon. The channel number is gone already.
-
You may think that iHeart doesn't care, but they do. They easily could defect to WCVB or WBTS for news and weather partnerships if they can make more money off of it just like KYW radio did with WCAU. There is nothing binding WBZ with WBZ-TV, especially if a better content sharing deal comes forward. And what does WBZ-TV do then? Continue to share the same branding as a competitor or get with the times and distinguish yourselves for once? And honestly, the biggest mistake Les Moonves made during the sale of the CBS Radio stations was making that brand licensing deal with the shared call signs which forced this rebranding effort among the O&Os in the first place.
