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Everything posted by Rusty Muck
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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.
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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.
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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.
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There exists no such thing as "opt-in mandate" or "flexible standardization" or "unlimited freedom". This seems to be putting words in her mouth and making assumptions that her rebranding efforts -- which is reconciling the disparate brands of over a dozen stations in the entire group -- fell apart because of "unlimited freedom". Recycling voiceovers on KDKA from the prior package while the on-air appearance blasts you with "CBS News Pittsburgh" is not proving anything. Same with "WBZ News" being recycled here for the short term. I at least give Paramount Global credit for keeping their carbon footprints in check.
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Who knows why this interregnum is taking place, but tbh, the presence of two unrelated stations in the Boston market that both identify as "WBZ" is completely untenable. iHeart spent a lot of money to get WBZ radio and got an obscenely favorable brand licensing deal. You think they're happy about sharing the same brand as a TV station that is fighting for oxygen in the digital stratosphere?
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It's not terribly expensive to make station merch. Just saying... /sarc
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It looks like someone dug up the old WRCV logo which was used before NBC got yeeted from owning channel 3 in 1965.
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I’d pay more attention to WSB, now under the control of a disinterested private equity firm and with little incentive to have the station progress from being perpetually stuck in 1993.
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That runs entirely contrary to the core point of the restructuring, to merge CBS News into the O&Os. Plus WCBS-TV and CBS News have been tied at the hip since the days of Jim Freaking Jensen. The easiest explanation here is that WCBS management utterly and royally botched the rebrand. There is no excuse to keep any references to CBS 2 if the station outside of newscasts rebranded to “CBS New York” anyway. For the network flagship, this is just downright embarrassing. Wouldn’t be surprised if CBS gave KDKA the option to change the color palette to see if it could even be possible (and potentially incentivizing the graphics package as customizable to affiliates). And that’s pretty much it. In a few months, “KDKA-TV News” will be retired in favor of “CBS News Pittsburgh” (which is what it already is referred to in a visual sense).
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“From CBS News New York, this is CBS 2 News at 9” … god I felt sorry for Brian Lee having to read that sludge. And they didn’t rebrand away from “CBS 2 News” but the station is now “CBS New York”!?! How does THAT happen?? If I’m Wendy McMahon, I’m getting all the execs at WCBS-TV together and telling them, “You’re the flagship of the network. ACT like you’re the flagship!!” That file likely didn’t get cleared out of the master control automation in time. Not an uncommon occurrence after a rebrand.
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As if the bland-o WCBS graphics and Enforcer were any better. The uniqueness of KCNC withered away when CBS stripped out the last of the NBC look back in 2003…
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KDKA radio carries a format where the hosts are likely to say outrageous things. It wouldn’t have mattered if KDKA radio and TV were under the same umbrella, but they are not, and it’s a brand sharing with underlying liabilities. So of course KDKA-TV is going to remove the call letter branding and go by “CBS Pittsburgh”. It’s the path of least resistance. All this could have been avoided, by the way, if CBS ordered Entercom to change KDKA’s calls when it was sold. Sinclair made KOMO radio do just that when it was sold to Lotus, so nothing is sacred.
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It’s a brand that is shared with a now-unrelated AM station that created a PR nightmare for channel 2 when Wendy Bell was flapping her gums. “KDKA” became a liability then and it will when one of the other talkers on the AM station says something incredibly stupid and inflammatory. KPIX didn’t have a radio station sharing the callsign. That’s really why they kept the KPIX name for now. (WJZ will assuredly be doing the same as WJZ-FM doesn’t use the calls in their branding, but just have the equally boring black box logo.)
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KXTA is getting a rebrand? That’ll be interesting. Also the comment about “the star (in KTVT’s logo) is certainly the closest that we have to a logo across the group” by CBS’s VP for brand strategy and development… and it’s being RETIRED… that should really tell you something.
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Poker After Dark reruns from 2008 should be available on the DFS Program Exchange
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Looks like Greg Norman thought “Fool Us” was the CW’s slogan and not a show that actually airs on the CW.
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Because, as @Weetersexplained, the “KCAL” box is the only box meant to be a brand that could kinda-sorta last in the long term. So that streaming bug accommodates both brands and will do so OTA very soon. The “CBS 11” box is blatantly temporary and once it’s dumped, they’ll adjust the proportions. THE. CBS. 11. BOX. IS. GOING. AWAY. VERY. SOON. CHANNEL. NUMBERS. ARE. BEING. PHASED. OUT.
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I really don’t think that in-house look (which is incredibly chintzy) is apropos of anything.
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You’re talking about the late 1910s, when people were actively experimenting on radio transmissions before AT&T realized you could make money off of it.
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It’s literally the same dimensions for every other station using the package. If “Texas” was smaller in size y’all would be grousing over that.
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Well, if you get rid of the obviously tacked-on-at-last-minute "CBS 11" transitional box, the "CBS News Texas" box aligns perfectly.
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The “CBS 11” box literally feels like it was added at the last minute and will be tossed in a matter of weeks.
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The fact that they went on Roku etc. in the first place is a sign that even Nexstar knows the gravy train of cable retrans revenue isn’t going to last for too much longer.
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I can see it now... Cleveland's Own, NewsNation CW8. That might be news to WUAB as they use TitanTV, and LIV is MIA
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Until the competition copies what Nexstar does. Which is that extra layer of hell Dante forgot to write about.
