ns8401

Some management shuffling in Detroit…
WJBK GM Greg Easterly is retiring. He had been with the station since 2019.

WJBK has parted ways with its News Director, Laura Moore, who had been with the station since 1998 in various roles. They’ll do an internal and external search for a new News Director. 
 

WJBK has also eliminated its Director of Community Service position which was held by Katie Fehr who had been there since 1996. 
 

Their new GM is Paul McGonagle who had been the VP and News Director at WTTG in Washington D.C. since 2014.

https://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/television/2025/07/01/fox-2-detroit-new-general-manager-search-news-director/84430915007/

WDIV is opening a coffee shop in the western Detroit suburb of Plymouth with the oh so clever name “Fourgrounds”. 
 

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2025/06/24/local-4-to-open-coffee-shop-community-space-in-downtown-plymouth/

Longtime WDIV reporter Hank Winchester had his home searched on June 13th and he has been placed on administrative leave. Apparently he was studying massage therapy and made unwanted sexual advances towards a man during a massage. He’s been at the station since 2001. 
 

WJBK is blasting this as the lead story on its website. Classy. 
 

https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/home-wdiv-local-4s-hank-winchester-searched-police

4 hours ago, Archiva said:

It is now confirmed that 11 One/Music is behind the new music package for the Scripps look.

https://11onemusic.com/post/scripps-rebrand-2025-11-one-music

This is about as generic as you could possibly get I think…

1 hour ago, ABC 7 Denver said:

 

Why? Because they keep hiring SAM.

Inergy was pretty good I thought… 

36 minutes ago, MediaZone4K said:

I was surprised to hear Bill say that he'll be on Eyewitness News at 6 for years to come. Although it's customary for semi retired anchors to ride the 6pm until the end, in this cost-cutting climate I'm surprised they didn't make him fully retire instead of paying him to anchor for 30 minutes a day. Regardless it's cool to still have another veteran anchor around for a while longer. 

 

I grew up watching Bill and Liz together at six,  so it's nice that she will be his final partner.

If he’s 75 now the odds of him simply disappearing one day aren’t near zero anymore. Sometimes you just gotta know when to hang it up. 

17 minutes ago, rkolsen said:

It’s something the ABC stations have done since they broadcasted online. I assume they’re fearful about rights but other chains have no issue.  

With ESPN in the family you would think they’d figure something out as a workaround. It always annoys me when I dip into a newscast from an ABC O&O. 

59 minutes ago, MediaZone4K said:

Agreed. I like the second ones more except for the flying box.

 

The Brown graphics admittedly were not the best but I maintain that they were still more imaginative and lively than what we have now.

 

This is perhaps the best thing Scripps ever did graphically...

 

 

 

Those are quite impressive. 

52 minutes ago, MediaZone4K said:

My thoughts exactly. Who is the consulting firm that advised Scripps to strips their newscasts of any zest and turn them into generic waiting room/airport kiosk feed newscasts. Old Scripps packages had a lot more color and life. 

 

The gold one was one of the worst things ever devised by mortal man. Those colors belong in a 1970’s car dealership.  The other one was good except for the silly flying box on the left. That got old after a while.

3 hours ago, newsman123 said:

The current music pkg isnt even music. Its weak boring..  nothing. A few lame sounds to put you to sleep.

 

This is at least a music pkg with some style. God.. why have the Scripps stations become so boring and vanilla. They are unwatchable. No energy. WXYZ is the worst offender. Is that on purpose? 

It’s probably to counter the stupid, over the top, full of yourself presentation of WDIV. And besides. It’s the best thing they’ve put out product wise since all the old folks retired. That and they can put out a cleaner product than WDIV, which it is, and try to capitalize on that sinking ship over there. Do I wish they had some of the old O&O style energy? Sure. It’s it the most mistake free in the market? Probably. 
 

This new music package with the goofy string sound just sort of repeats variations of that and it sounds kinda weird after a while. WFTS played about two minutes if it today and it really never even gets off the ground. It might make a great BREAKING NEWS bed but it’s kinda lousy theme music. 

This is the 7 day forecast graphic. It looks pretty decent me thinks. 

8 hours ago, mre29 said:

I like it. The "Covering Hillsborough County" graphic reminds me of Hearst stations, so it must be the same font.

 

That said, the audio in the video clip makes it sound like the music is rather....lethargic?

 

The current music is rather... lethargic too. I really miss Inergy at this point. This music won't fit everywhere if thats the required opening cut. Maybe there is something better in the package. These graphics look pretty good though I hope they keep the concept of the transitions featuring the station logo between stories. It was a nice touch. I am glad to see there are no text bubbles or crazy flying boxes or other insanity this time.

22 hours ago, Howard Beale said:

Graham Media might be trying out a new way of managing stations.  Per Rick Gevers, Graham’s WKMG in Orlando, Florida will not hire a new general manager, and  “department heads [will] report to their corporate supervisors.”

 

It reeks of Scripps and its station manager concept, where many stations replaced GMs with an existing department head who added “station manager” to their job title…while still running their respective department.

 

The common link here?  Sean McLaughlin, the ex-Scripps news VP who landed at Graham.

Everything they have been doing lately has an early 2010’s Scripps vibe to it. I mean… who would hire the guy that brought “The Now” into existence and burdened the local stations with it?

Lauren Kostiuk has joined WDIV in Detroit as a reporter from WTHR in Indianapolis. 

2 hours ago, Chicago2008 said:

Could it depend on weather the station uses a company such as AccuWeather? AccuWeather sometimes does alert days. 

When WXYZ switched to the 7 First Alert Weather branding in 2011 they started “7 First Alert Weather Days” not long after. They’ve been gone for years now. WDIV then rebranded their weather to “4 Warn Weather” and started doing “4 Warn Weather Days” which is executed in a ridiculous overhyped fashion. Apparently nobody got the memo there that it’s so last decade. 

On 4/3/2025 at 4:35 PM, MichiganNewsGraphicsJunkie said:

WXMI is joining the Scripps-ification movement -- less anchor desk time, more "neighborhood reporters"

The neighborhood reporters thing isn’t actually a bad concept. WXYZ is giving its plethora of reporters each a beat. And it’s sending them out to rustle the bushes for stories in their assigned area. All but a handful (5 or less) of their air talents are not from Detroit so the reporters they are hiring know the area. If you do it right it’s pretty workable. They haven’t reduced anchor time and the quality is much improved overall. So if done well it’s a win. Certainly an improvement over all the failed Scripps ideas. 

4 hours ago, 24994J said:

 

Middays on 670AM The Score is his main job, these days, so pinch-hitting at 7 is good exposure, but not an upgrade or downgrade, per se. It's just another in the notable history of sports radio hosts filling in on TV, and vice versa.

Good for him getting out there like that then. 

12 hours ago, 24994J said:

Dionne is in Milwaukee for the Illinois game on Friday, so she did the 6 from the arena, so Marshall was only on at 5 & 10.

 

Too bad they clip sports out of their on demand recordings. Is third fiddle at WLS a step up from Sports Director at WBBM?

WXYZ has added Jolie Sherman as a reporter. She came from WVIT in Hartford, CT. 

On 3/15/2025 at 9:43 PM, Action Newsroom said:

Especially when this L3 graphic appears at the start of some episodes.

No wonder you need a microscope to see Live! On their logo. 

7 hours ago, channel2 said:

 

Scripps has had some presence or another in Denver for more than a century (barring 2009 to 2011). KMGH wasn't just some random clunker they ended up being stuck with.

 

 

They seemed to think Ion was another Food Network...

 

I feel like the company that had the ingenuity to put HGTV on the air and fleece Belo out of the Food Network is basically gone. The current Scripps Networks is not particularly inventive like the previous iteration was.

Well actually the fact they had a prescence in Denver and that they bought McGraw Hill’s stations in 2011 are unrelated. Unless you know something the rest of us don’t. 
 

All shots aside… when Scripps Networks Interactive spun off the TV stations was when things started falling apart. Those purchases just put lipstick on a pig. 

1 hour ago, MediaZone4K said:

Don't forget to call it a "DANGEROUS rainstorm".

 

Where are my manners? Good point. 

1 hour ago, tyrannical bastard said:

With things so bad at Scripps, they may have to file for bankruptcy protection.  And even then, are they so far gone that stations could be auctioned off or go dark in a nationwide shutdown if they run out of cash?

I would imagine a fire sale would be in order and the stations would be spread to the four winds ownership wise. The networks would be behind apoplectic if stations went dark. 

21 minutes ago, MediaZone4K said:

There are good but underutilized elements of the current set. For a change,  It would be nice to see Muir stand next to this giant monitor BBC style going forward. 

They can leave every days report on millions impacted by a sprinkle in their old digs too while they are at it. 

I bet Scripps gets broken up at some point. Expanding with the crappy groups they purchased over the years was dumb. 
 

No offense to the KMGH or WTMJ fans out there.