Rusty Muck

TitanTV confirms WWJ will start airing the 6am news next week…

This buildout is insanely quick.

4 hours ago, TheNewsTV said:

There's a CBS News Detroit at 6am on streaming. Any plans for it to air on TV?

 

Well if you’re looking at Zap2It right now, there’s a few gaps in the schedule starting next Monday as Drew’s show is being moved to WKBD outright (presumably in the 3am hour??).

Phil McGraw’s show at 3pm has also apparently been removed? :thinking:

21 hours ago, T.L. Hughes said:

The article’s wording is obviously misleading, considering this confirms that the CBSNS-owned CW affiliates won’t carry LIV tournament coverage, and the Nexstar stations summarized to have cleared the tournaments aren’t the CW affiliates in those referenced markets (and of those referenced, only WGN has previously been a CW affiliate). So really, LIV has been cleared on (maybe) 85-90% of CW affiliates, and received time-buy clearances on Nexstar-owned MyNetworkTV affiliates and independent stations in about 10-15% of the remaining markets.

Funny that LIV is not showing up on WUAB’s schedule on TitanTV, but Zap2It (which Nexstar owns) is showing it. The same disparity is also occurring with WKBD.

Who to believe? Well, the websites for both WUAB and WKBD link to TitanTV and NOT Zap2It…

46/17 could literally have unchanged ratings and yet is proving to be a runaway success targeting viewers less likely to watch OTA or want to watch news at unconventional times.

Nielsen ratings matter less and less with the rise of streaming.

4 hours ago, CircleWXYZ said:

Question is, will KYW get rid of its channel reference??

Well they definitely won’t be using the black box with “KYW” as 1) they haven’t called themselves “KYW” for a generation and 2) there’s this little thing called KYW NewsRadio, which now has a wide-ranging partnership with WCAU.

”CBS Philadelphia” sounds about right.

On 2/11/2023 at 12:33 AM, Georgie56 said:

WGN is airing LIV Golf events in Chicago in lieu of WCIU.

 

 

So Weigel apparently had the option to refuse carriage of LIV and Nexstar let them decline? If that's the case then Nexstar has no standing in their threat against CBS and they're free to.put the time-buy on stations they own.

22 hours ago, NEOMatrix said:

Same with KDKA. Hell, I don’t think they’ve ever used the “2” verbally since maybe the 90s. I would say it’s a Group W thing, but KYW hasn’t used its call letters in a long time.

It’s WJZ. Maryland’s News Station.

(even though the logo reads as “CBS 13 WJZ”)

Unfortunately, Tegna is likely going to undergo major cutbacks and freezes regardless of what happens. Having a private equity buyout fail to this magnitude certainly doesn’t help.

Of note, the streamer is ALSO being renamed "Paramount+ with Showtime".

1 hour ago, CircleWXYZ said:

Looks like WBZ isn’t getting rid of its channel reference.  Just saw a promo for CBS News Boston and the CBS 4 WBZ logo was in a box, next ti the CBS News Boston logo.

Most likely a transitional logo not to confuse anyone with the OTHER WBZ that iHeart owns.

Plus WBZ-TV doesn’t even use “4” in the branding verbally, they only go by “WBZ” and have for over a decade.

4 hours ago, DirtyHarry said:

 

Complaining about the involvement of the Saudis, a long time ally of the United States, seems to be a little hollow to me. Something else is going on here. We gladly take their oil and their money to buy F-16s, but we're going to reject their golf? Right. I think a lot of things going on at the same time, but don't discount collusion with the PGA. That's a big no-no if they didn't follow all the legalities and could cost everybody a lot of money.

 

There’s one nugget in Scotty’s post which makes me believe this “source” is in fact a CBS executive intentionally leaking this to make Perry look bad:

Quote

The problem is, CBS has had a decade long relationship with the PGA Tour and they don’t want to do anything that will strain that relationship.

Liv Golf has sued the PGA Tour and the PGA Tour has in turn countersued LIV.

CBS is not going to do anything that will cause harm to their relationship with the PGA and they will refuse to air the LIV Golf telecasts on The CW stations that they own.

You notice something’s missing here? Nowhere does it say that CBS wants to disaffiliate their CW stations over LIV, they just don’t want to air it because of an obvious conflict of interest with their PGA deal. Pretty clear-cut issue, doncha think?

This is making me wonder if Perry, or a Perry surrogate, started a “could CBS dump the CW over LIV?” rumor… fed it to Scotty, and Scotty ran the story because he doesn’t engage in critical thinking.

I do think that Nexstar legitimately made a threat to disaffiliate his stations from CBS, but that’s more him holding a grudge over the network yanking their affiliation from WJMN and putting it on the .2 of a heretofore diginet tree.

1 hour ago, ABC 7 Denver said:

 

Notice they had something different underneath the path in '85

 

Station priorities at the time were not to change their slogans often. We're in different days. We don't lock in slogans to the logo because the slogans will change more quickly than the logo does.

WJW’s used the “Cleveland’s Own” slogan continually since 1988.

In fact, there’s another station that we all know of which uses their (very) long-standing slogan in their logo:

33 minutes ago, CircleWXYZ said:

I remember when WOIO started it’s news operation in early 1995.  They only had a 6 and 11 pm newscast.  For years, WOIO not only struggled, it was always treated as a step child to WKYC, WEWS, and WJW.  Took years for it to expand but they did.

 

So far, WWJ is off to a much better start than WOIO did in 1995. 

I know @Samanthadid the progression for the other new affiliates earlier in this thread, but I looked up the timetable for WOIO when I redid that station’s Wikipedia article:

WOIO’s news service launched on February 5, 1995, with a 6pm and 11pm seven days a week, as an outgrowth of WUAB’s 10pm news. Noon and an hour-long 6am newscast were added in December 1996. 5:30am on WOIO and 11:30am on WUAB were added on October 1997 (the latter cancelled less than a year later).

It wasn’t until January 2002, just before the Action News relaunch, that WOIO added a 5pm news. A 4pm followed in 2003. The 3pm and a 9am news (the latter coming over from their OTT service and reformatted as a general newscast in March 2020) were added in 2019.

To be honest, it’s almost unfair to compare this launch effort with WOIO or any of the other newly-launched news departments between 1994 and 1996 and the New World-Fox fallout. Everything—the audience, the resources needed and procured for a news service, and the means to measure television audiences—are totally different. As is what Paramount would define as a success for CBS News Detroit… or WOIO in the present day.

On 2/8/2023 at 8:15 PM, The Frog said:

https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2023/2/7/perry-sook-vs-cbs

 

Sources tell FTVLive that CBS will decline running the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Tour on the CW stations that CBS owns. 

 

CBS is not going to do anything that will cause harm to their relationship with the PGA and they will refuse to air the LIV Golf telecasts on The CW stations that they own. 

 

This will put CBS in violation of their CW contract and that will give Perry Sook the option to pull the network affiliation from those CBS owned stations. 

If this is actually true (and it is Scotty Jones, so it must be 100% put under an air of suspicion) a few things:
 

1.  CBS pulled their affiliation from WJMN and literally put it on the .2 of a diginet tree. Uncle Perry might think he’s going to be a tough guy to retaliate in kind, but don’t underestimate the network. And do you really want to come off as an immovable bully to the other networks, Uncle Perry? 

2. There will be a settlement of some sort—CBS might even get to yank their affiliation off of WTTV/WTTK and put it back on WISH, where it belongs—but it’s kinda obvious this was floated to Scotty, and he published it without any sort of critical thinking.

3. If CBS refuses to air LIV, Gray and Scripps will follow. That will severely limit Nexstar’s options for replacement CW affiliates in multiple markets they don’t own a station in. Why would a WMYD want to take the CW if they have to run LIV and after Scripps refuses to run it?

On 1/20/2023 at 3:40 PM, ABC 7 Denver said:

 

You NEVER include a slogan in your logo. Amateur hour.

Well, ESPN won't be on the block, but Iger all but telegraphed that Disney is close to offloading their majority stake in Hulu.

Quote

Pressed by (CNBC) host David Faber on whether he’d be interested if Comcast CEO Brian Roberts inquired about buying the Disney stake, (Bob) Iger said, “We will be open minded.” Faber noted that the going assumption has been that Disney would buy the remaining stake in Hulu. “And I think I am suggesting that that is not necessarily the case,” Iger said.

The problem with late-night talk shows is that they have all been largely using the same exact formula for decades, a formula that Johnny Carson largely set in motion:

• A live announcer to introduce the program, announce the guests and cue the host to enter.
• A live in-studio audience.
• An in-house band.
• A desk for the host with adjacent couches or chairs for the guests. Maybe it includes an old-timey microphone!
• A monologue by the host, varying in length depending on the host.
• A second segment (either after the monologue or the first commercial break) with an extended series of comedy bits. Could be live in-studio or via tape.
• The guests come out one-by-one for extended interviews and (depending on the host) softball questions.
• A stand-up act or musical number by a guest band or singer to conclude the program.

Even as James Corden used Graham Norton's setup of having the guests come on all at once, he still used a house band and had a monologue. CraigyFerg didn't have a house band--or much of anything--but he still did a monologue (many of which were deeply compelling and riveting), interviewed guests and had a robot as his announcer. While Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and (especially) Seth Myers are exceptionally political, they all follow the formulas to some degree. But at least you can tell one Jimmy apart from the other Jimmy.

The only thing I’m curious about is if National Press Club says anything about this, or do they keep quiet?

i guarantee you that if this was a Gray or Scripps or CBS or even a Sinclair employee, the NPC would be (rightfully) raising a stink. But none of those groups chose to affiliate with LIV…

Bob threw the other Bob under the bus during that conference call, big time. ( h/t @channel2)

https://deadline.com/2023/02/bob-iger-says-espn-not-for-sale-1235253913/

26 minutes ago, 24994J said:

 

 ?

AND

KILLER UMBRELLA! On the next Inside Edition!

1 minute ago, GodfreyGR said:

Allow me to clarify- I did not mean to suggest Gardner would have cared or not- but habitual viewers (I think the term rusty was thrown around earlier this week) would whine and complain if there was too much change at once (again, to clarify, are the possible complaints valid? I don't think so). They probably also call complaining that Ken Jennings is not Alex Trebek.

The majority of the “rusted dial” complainers are well over the 25–54 money demo. They’re the people who Sam Watterson markets to when pitching Old Glory Robot Insurance.

56 minutes ago, nynewsguy said:

WABC will not change the channel 7 branding as long as they broadcast over the air. It’s the only of the O&O stations that the ABC# didn’t work when the Disney mandate pushed through years ago. 

WABC’s branding is such an atrocious and inconsistent mess that it’s a miracle they’re number one in anything.

The “Disney Mandate” reads like another “CBS Mandate” to me, tbvh.

1 hour ago, bpatrick said:

Regardless of whether or not CBS goes somewhere else, I plan to drop dead if WANF passes WXIA for third place in Atlanta news.  I haven't seen WANF's new look, but my gut tells me to keep an eye on the battle for third between the two.  For me the last good newscast on 11 Alive was "Pro News" in the mid-'70s; Virgil Dominic lived up to the newscast's name.

Reference my earlier post. WANF isn’t doing this for conventional ratings because they’re targeting people whom Nielsen left behind. It’s no secret that Nielsen is a broken system and some broadcast chains have already moved on from them.

So even if WANF’s ratings “don’t improve”, it doesn’t matter. Same with WWJ. They’ve already found a good target audience and will make money on their new ventures.

Local ratings? It just doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter! I’m telling you, it just doesn’t matter!!

Atlanta News First is taking, note-for-note, what Gray did with WOIO-WUAB and fusing a bit of the CBS News playbook to it. WOIO was one of the first stations to embrace over-the-top streaming and rolling coverage online prior to 2020, championed by the same Eric Schrader heading up WANF. Schrader not only wowed Gray brass in demonstrating the simplicity of WOIO's OTT setup--it really doesn't use much resources--it played a role in their embrace of digital streaming and likely got him the Atlanta gig.

Conventional ratings at this point don't matter for WOIO. What matters is targeting an audience that will easily access their newscasts, and by and large, they've been very successful. That's exactly what they've implemented at WANF and is exactly what CBS is doing with WWJ (you could argue that CBS News Detroit is more a Xerox of WOIO's digital strategy than WANF is). But it also underscores the democratization of television journalism. You don't have to be beholden to Neilsen's television ratings--a rather ancient and increasingly inaccurate method for audience membership--if you can make money and find viewers with a product that can be done with both efficiency and care.

To that point, I think a market like Atlanta can support more than one digitally-based news services. If CBS wanted to make use of WUPA for an in-house news operation, it can 100% co-exist with Atlanta News First and both can thrive.

38 minutes ago, GodfreyGR said:

That was already tried in the MySpace era.

That was 15 years ago. The industry and the consumer is not the same today as in 2008 and admittedly, Fox may have been way ahead of their time.

41 minutes ago, GodfreyGR said:

Let the whole Jim Gardner retiring thing settle before they start making other changes to the newscast, but to your point yes- it's likely they will make some modifications to the newscast at some point.

 

To be honest, I don't think Jim Gardner would have cared if they changed to "ABC Philadelphia News" and unveiled a redo of MCTYW by Made Music a week before he retired.