Rusty Muck

1 minute ago, sfomspphl said:

 

For Fox or CNN they never had the memory of a channel number branding visual or audio. There’s also no local vs national programming distinction.

Of note, Fox affiliate branding conventions came from how the MetroMedia chain identified themselves for decades. What had been “MetroMedia Channel #” was altered to “Fox Television Channel #” when Rupert bought the chain. By 1988, it was simplified to “Fox #”.

3 minutes ago, ColDayNews said:

Or, could Nexstar purchase WWHO outright? It'd be like a mini-reunion between them and WCMH, who managed WWHO until Viacom ownership

Why would Manham/Sinclair want to sell it? If Nexstar strips WWHO of the CW, they could still run the station as a diginet tree from a server in a broom closet at the WSYX studios. Put Comet on 53.1 or something.

6 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

WKYC wasn't broke when Tegna decided to "fix it".  They tried the standard Tegna approach for a short while before deciding to reinvent the wheel for the purposes of chasing younger viewers.  They've backed off in some ways, but they trashed the station in 2019.

With all due respect, this reads like a typical Scotty Jones “tHiS iS tEgNa” old-man-yelling-at-cloud post which got his blog banned from this forum’s Discord server in the first place.

PROVE to me with ratings data that the station was “trashed” because it’s Doing Things Different And That Is Bad, otherwise it’s just conjecture. My 69-year old mother watches all the local news (with divided preferences to WKYC and WJW) and she doesn’t care about the ownership of either. Whenever I see people, including some who live in other parts of the freaking country and would never want to see Cleveland, go on their typical “WKYC ruined themselves with that logo…” or “when they call themselves ‘channel 3’, I’ll care about them”, it comes off as ill-informed and silly and makes the TV hobbyist community look out of touch. (“No, it’s the children who are wrong!”)

The cold hard truth is that the vast majority of television news viewers are 25–54 female; the demographics here and on Discord do not match up with that in any way. It’s for a variety of reasons but it’s not like we’re doing anything to make either platform all that more palatable to them.

10 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

Had Gannett still been the owner of the Tegna stations, I think they would be slightly better off than they are today.  WKYC is a disaster under Tegna, when under the earlier guidance of Gannett, rose to the top of the Cleveland market for the first time in decades. 

How is WKYC a “disaster” under Tegna when the ratings position hasn’t changed much, if at all, since their 2019 revamp? Scott Jones’s hilariously biased anti-Tegna blog posts don’t count.

10 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

Gannett instead decided to become the Nexstar of the newspaper industry, acquiring virtually all of the major newspapers in Ohio except for Cleveland, Toledo, Dayton and Youngstown.  Their consolidation (under GateHouse) really consolidated their presence in places like Akron and Columbus, buying up the community newspapers (Dix) and the Beacon Journal (from Black Press), and using their existing Gannett holdings in Central Ohio to supplement their purchase of the Dispatch from the Wolfes.

Gannett split for only two reasons:

1. NBCO forced Gannett to assign quite a few of the Belo stations into shell groups until the split allowed them to buy those stations outright.

2. Who in their right mind wants to buy a newspaper? It’s nonsensical other than for the historical archives and digital assets.

And you think Gatehouse/Gannett is bad? The Plain Dealer, owned by the Newhouse family since the late 1960s, has only FOUR union employees on staff. Up to the early 2010s, it was a damn good paper. The Newhouses busted the union and destroyed it in favor of their Cleveland.com digital property, which has always been substandard ever since they launched it in 1998.

31 minutes ago, DirtyHarry said:

 

I don't think Media General was so bad. They had financial problems but their on air product was respectable, and they still treated WCMH and WFLA like their flagships. Outlet was a great owner. Everybody says the NBC years were good, but I wasn't a fan. When you're too cheap to build a new news set and have to get one second hand from Louisville, that's pretty shoddy. Likewise with their cameras. I think I remember them bragging about new cameras they were getting being used models from Rockefeller Center. LOL

 

 

MediaGeneral was doomed as a station group when Soo Kim and Deb McDermott forcibly took control of the chain, merged it into LIN and THEN tried to merge it into Meredith before dumping it all in Nexstar’s lap.

2 minutes ago, DirtyHarry said:

And furthermore, I can't think of any place other than Louisville, Birmingham and maybe Chicago where a UHF station has been able to drag itself out of the cellar it has VHF competition. By and large, low channel numbers are the most successful.

KVUE and KXAN are two UHFs that repeatedly beat KTBC, the biggest bust of all the New World—Fox stations.

1 hour ago, Breaking News said:

The audience who've been around will cling to a channel #.  They will see the # in the logo, because people only remember the abstract.

Including the very old demos that seek out cable talk channels regardless of the high channel number they are on?

6 hours ago, Bsean said:

I agree. I use YouTube TV and regardless of the channel number, the first channels that appear are CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox. I'm in San Diego, so the order isn't even in number order... 8, 10, 7, 5... 

 

I'll also add, that's the default, but you can customize the order of the channel listings by putting your most watched at the top. So in the end, that channel number really doesn't matter 

 

Surprised that no one has pointed out that those channels are listed as “CBS”, “ABC”, “Fox” and “PBS” … not “News8”, “10News”, “Fox 5/69” or “KPBS”. The generic displays on YouTube TV lend themselves DIRECTLY to CBS’s new branding convention.

7 hours ago, 24994J said:

Dammit. That combined CBS2 in the box branding looks awful.

 

I get that they don’t want to confuse themselves with WCBS NewsRadio 88 or 101.1 CBS-FM, but this is why you don’t even bother with the black box.

Good grief.

On 1/14/2023 at 4:21 PM, bpatrick said:

What happened to docudramas?  Remember in the '70s "Pueblo" and "The Missiles of October," to name just two?  Why can you not find a program like "The World at War" on a broadcast station?  I even remember one year in the '60s when ABC had "FDR," CBS had "World War I," and NBC had "Profiles in Courage" either in prime time or just before.
My students have a very limited knowledge of history; shows like these could entertain as well as teach, and perhaps we teachers could use some of the made-for-TV movies to point out factual errors.

That’s literally what PBS does on a daily basis.

I’m trying to understand the logic of debating the importance of channel numbers when they’ve been falling into irrelevance since the DTV switchover… and will further become irrelevant as ATSC 3.0 is rolled out.

This isn’t 1994.

1 hour ago, Georgie56 said:

Must be a streaming-specific bug then.

Even if it is just that, I highly doubt that you’ll see a branding disparity between OTA and streaming last for long.

For one, February sweeps is forthcoming. No better time for the CBS Los Angeles name to be gradually phased in with the KCAL name so OTA viewers can connect the two brands.

6 hours ago, Georgie56 said:

KCAL has modified the bug to say CBS NEWS LOS ANGELES.

 

Gee, it’s like I might have been on to something…

On 1/16/2023 at 10:45 AM, Myron Falwell said:

My hunch is that you’ll see the KCAL brand get slowly phased out over the next few months, if not a full year. It’s capitalizing on their existing brand equity while associating it with the “CBS Los Angeles” branding.

Ready to claim my prize lmao

On 1/11/2023 at 1:40 PM, Nick said:

It was a jolt to go through the Web site and see every reference to CBS 2,  CBS 2 News,  KCBS, etc absolutely gone.  The station that revolutionized local news in 1960,  the station of Dunphy,  Bill Stout, Clete Roberts,  Joseph Benti, Connie Chung, and others deserves something a little better than that --  even if its news ratings have been at the bottom of the heap for a long time.

KCBS-TV hasn’t been relevant since Bill Applegate made it an über-tabloid schlockfest in the early 1990s. “CBS 2” only serves to remind of how they’ve been trapped in mediocrity ever since.

Just because a station “revolutionized local news” — and the term is fairly subjective and varies wildly on a per market basis — doesn’t mean that branding should be trapped in amber and prevented from evolving.

A station logo that doesn’t look like it’s been trapped in amber since 1993 or looking like a generic McStation, what a concept!

4 hours ago, 24994J said:

Channel numbers only really matter to legacy brands, where the number transcends the dial and is the cornerstone of the identity (certain stations with a certain, stylized 7 come to mind). Call letters CAN fall into the same group. CBS Detroit and too many other CBS O&O's have little-to-no such legacy, unless you count decades of falling in 3rd place...or 4th...or 5th.

Or even in the case of WCCO-TV, KDKA-TV and WBZ-TV, the mere fact that they have to share their call letters with unrelated radio stations. For KDKA-TV, it’s already shown to be a liability.

9 hours ago, DirtyHarry said:

 

I'll gave them the solution. They could probably buy LPTV Channel 3 very cheaply. I doubt that anybody can even pick it up over there with rabbit ears. Once you have a virtual Channel 3, FCC rules say that every signal you own in the market can have the same channel number. They can become CBS 3 with a snap of the fingers, right along with Fox 2 and NBC 4.

WWJ has one of the biggest signals of any full-service television station in Michigan and they have good cable placement. They don’t need a superfluous LPTV. They just need investment.

Weigel has “CBS 58” Milwaukee and “ABC 57” South Bend and you don’t see them being embarrassed about those numbers because they invested in the stations and have tried. CBS never did that with WWJ for a garden variety of reasons, and wound up making “62” a tainted brand by negligence and inaction.

On 1/23/2023 at 9:02 PM, atlnewsfan03 said:

The CBS News Detroit set doesn't look too bad.  Graphics is okay.  As is the new This Is CBS News Theme.

With WWJ-TV returning to in-house local news production, I kind of pick up a WIAT 42 Daily News type vibe with the new CBS News Detroit newscast, from the starting out with 2 daily newscasts (at 6PM and 11PM), to having a small reporting staff.  Hopefully CBS has plans to grow its presence in Detroit, considering local news/programming production is typically cheaper to produce and more profitable than acquiring nationally syndicated shows these days.

WWJ is simulcasting the streaming service CBS News Detroit, which will ultimately be in operation from 4am to 11:30pm every day. The original and current plans are to offer up to 40 hours of simulcasts a week on channel 62 (and presumably WKBD can also simulcast in other hours. Supply chain shortages delayed everything and resulted in a soft launch so a presence of some sort could be had for the February sweeps.

Even with just a 6 and 11, it’s still far more local news than anything CBS has ever done with the station and the most local news output on 62 since labor unrest shuttered Big City News on WGPR in 1991.

On 1/23/2023 at 9:02 PM, atlnewsfan03 said:

I don't know what to make of CBS going in the direction of "CBS News (market name)" for local newscasts, when viewers would be used to the "CBS (channel number)", or station call letters, or the "Eyewitness Action News" brandings on local newscasts.

This brings up a point @Weeters has raised before and I agree with. It’s 2023. What good is it to identify your news operation with EWN or Action News, which date back to 1959 and 1970, respectively?

Plus “CBS 62” has long been a negative and a liability and an embarrassment for the network—they were basically forced into buying an obscure indie from the Free Mason that was the first-ever Black-owned TV station in the mainland, and because of continued upheaval at the network and it’s corporate parents, couldn’t do anything with it.

12 hours ago, NEOMatrix said:

“Cleveland’s Own Channel 8”

 

Nexstar would be doubly stupid to basically gift wrap the Fox affiliation to WUAB.

Fox is basically a sports programming service with a forgettable primetime block of crappy reality shows—including 33 different shows that Gordon Ramsey can scream in and 9 different iterations of The Masked Singer (a fad that has long passed its expiration date)—and The Simpsons and Family Guy, two shows that will never die. That might be the goal Nexstar has for the CW, but they’ll never get anything close to the NFL or MLB.

So why NOT turn the station into a O&O for a sports programming service that you own?

1 hour ago, DirtyHarry said:

https://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/television/2023/01/23/detroits-cbs-affiliate-wwj-tv-news-broadcasts/69830403007/

Can't believe Ronnie Duncan is still bouncing around. 

What's with nobody there owning a necktie?

He’s also the father of CBS Weekend News anchor/senior correspondent Jericka Duncan. 

On 1/21/2023 at 9:30 PM, EVVTV12 said:

Streaming? That’s just a fad. Betamax, that is the future.  

"Why do people want those darn videotape players? It's stealing our content and a chance for us to make even money"

-- Perry Sook, found of Nexstar International Telephone, Telegraph and Phonograph

On 1/21/2023 at 11:16 PM, mrschimpf said:

The Mannix and Cannon fans who have their shows pre-empted on WOIO's .2 would love this to happen. Of all the places to burn off MyNet, why choose the Me sub?

WOIO-WUAB's MyNet contract is the Bobby Bonilla of Cleveland television affiliation deals.

On 1/21/2023 at 11:55 PM, tyrannical bastard said:

IF The CW bolts WUAB for WJW 8.2 (or even, heaven forbid, Nexstar buys WBNX to make them a CW O&O)....WUAB would probably morph into 19+, since it's basically been the overrun station for WOIO, and the patent disregard of WUAB itself goes all the way back to Raycom...

 

It's best hope now is to be a news-intensive station to compete against WJW.

 

Then again, if WUAB gets stripped of the CW for WJW, it would leave BOTH WUAB and WBNX without affiliations.

 

The upfronts are going to be REAL interesting this spring....what will Nexstar have up it's sleeve?

Moving the CW to a WJW sub would be smart. Unfortunately, this is Nexstar, and they'd probably wind up dumping the Fox affiliation for the CW.

10 hours ago, Drew said:

I would be surprised if Paramount cut ties with CW on their stations. I bet the sale of the network to Nexstar it had something about not pulling the affiliation for a certain length of time or something similar. 

There actually exists legitimate provisions in affiliate contracts in case the network was ever sold (no, I do not have them on hand, but it was discussed on Discord a few months ago).

Despite the nominal 12.5% stake, Paramount really doesn’t need the CW anymore.

29 minutes ago, ABC 7 Denver said:

 

Their local stations are so understaffed that they are already as stretched as they can be.

What’s to say they can’t do the Memorex treatment like Scripps is?

12 minutes ago, ABC 7 Denver said:

Gray has a harder path toward cutting ties with CW. Local News Live is their latest attempt, but I'd argue that they simply just don't have the investment in national news to completely program  independent (or would-be independent) stations. They are investing in production facilities which could be used for a national news product or other long-term entertainment scaling, but given the current sustainability and debt/equity ratio questions that many groups have, including Gray, I do wonder if this is the best investment for the immediate future of their business model.

Gray CW affiliates could plug in whatever’s airing on Circle or go the local news route, depending on market size. Or backfill with cheapo syndication like MyTV as an interim.

16 minutes ago, GoldenShine9 said:

 

Could some CW affiliates decide to skip the network coverage as a result?

I’d be surprised if you don’t see Gray, Scripps, Sinclair and CBS just cut ties with the CW outright. Not because of LIV but because those groups all have their own in-house options to replace the primetime block.

LIV merely greased the skids.