scrabbleship

WENY seems to have been on the same "older than it is" kick that then-sister station WMGM was on. At least WMGM in 1993 tried to act like the current year, even WENY's local ads looked like they were made a decade earlier

[quote name='Ramona']Aarons went from WGRZ to WROC in the summer of 1996 (and his contract was not renewed there when it wrapped in 1999).[/QUOTE] He was gone from WRGB shortly after that 1994 intro aired, to answer the question @Info Junkie asked. Between having big shoes to fill and a total lack of chemistry he was a dead man walking regardless.

During her anchoring days, Sue Nigra was a huge deal as she was seen as the Next Big Thing and her departure from WTEN to WRGB in 1998 led to her suing Young Broadcasting as they tried to block her from leaving. WRGB put her on a pedestal, hiring her husband* and having her host the local wraparounds for the 2002-03 syndication bomb "Life Stories" among others. Her departure in 2006 was seen as a bit of a shock though seeing how Liz Bishop won't retire may have been for the best. * Fun fact: She met him working at WNYT; she was an intern, he a camera operator. He has since gone into nonprofit management and was back in the news when the health clinic he runs had an Ebola false alarm a few years back.

WCAX's "The News" (6:00), 12/1/1990. This was during a series called "First Republic, Fourteenth State" in celebration of Vermont's bicentennial.

I don't know what's sadder: That UNO nuked its football program in order to go D1 in everything else (perhaps at the coaxing of UNL) or that WOWT's graphics 25 years ago can be seen as slightly better as their graphics today. For perspective:

The midday newscast nobody wanted that won't do anything in the ratings when there were bigger news fish to fry? They could've gotten more viewers at 7:00 with no competition than taking two established newscasts at noon.

After seeing this is from the same person who uploaded the snippet from February 2002, I could not hit the Subscribe button fast enough. That graphics change was a real downgrade and looks even worse with 15+ years of hindsight. I'm compelled to mention the forgotten fact that the entire time Today was three hours that the 9:25/9:55 weather was prerecorded. This explains the signoff at the end of this update.

The WCAX newscast is also from November 6, confirmed by the highlights of Celtics @ Heat from the night before.

Could they still swallow up Meredith before reaching 39%? Such a deal would add the few areas Gray currently lacks a presence (Pacific Northwest, southern New England) and beef up others (Tennessee, Georgia, Mobile).

I wonder two things: 1: Might the new Upper Valley bureau be shared with WMUR? 2: Would this finally drag WPTZ kicking and screaming into the HD age?

OAD: 2/16/2002, confirmed by the Albany @ Boston University basketball score. It's interesting to see how whole hog WNYT's graphics went for the 2002 Olympics. I know none of their packages since have gone into full Olympics mode for the entire Olympics. Their 2012-18 package did have special L3's solely for Olympics-relevant stories but had the regular L3's otherwise. Also, the stilted way that they had to plug Rodger Wyland's radio show on WOFX to not mention the Fox Sports branding it carried on-air was always laughable.

Didn't years ago WTVC do a newscast that was very similar to this, blatantly calling it "NewsChannel 9 For Women"?

This is a return to Ion for WSFJ, which had aired Ion (and Pax and i before them) programming before the sale to TBN a decade ago.

There's been a huge dump of 90's/2000's-era WFSB on YouTube and with it comes some questions of what themes they used and when. For starters, here's Mika Brzezinski doing a tease for the noon news the day after much of their viewership was saddened by the Patriots loss in Super Bowl XXXI. The bumper music in the background is the music that serves a the NMSA sample for "News Package II", their 1997-2002 theme which came into play once Meredith took over from Post-Newsweek. Problem is that this clip was 8.5 months before that transfer took place. Funny thing is I remember this being used after Meredith took over as well which begs the question of which theme being which. Also, this clip from the Blizzard of 1996 (or in Hilton Kaderli terms, "Ginger"). And from the file of the other WFSB vet now working on a national morning show:

This reunites Paul with Jim Kambrich, who was anchoring mornings at the time Paul went there from weekends. It'll be interesting to see if the chemistry they had on mornings sticks in evenings 15 years later. Replacing Caiano on mornings is current floating meteorologist Neal Estano who is no stranger to mornings in the Albany market. He was the first ever morning meteorologist in the market when WRGB started a morning newscast in 1988 and later came back to that time period from 2008-2012.

This may be in the wake of getting Jackie Layer from NECN/WBTS a couple of months ago. For their output WHDH seems dead set to not go beyond four meteorologists.

Do sunchannels count in this equation? Doing a count of both markets I don't think a fifth place was possible.

Translation: He'll end up at WNYT when he gets bored with radio. He wouldn't be the first person to go that route.

I thought that the WAVE newscasts were discontinued. Looking at WBNA's schedule all I see is the delayed replay of WLEX's 6:00. Also, if memory serves me right, WSFJ was a lot more secular at that time than WLJC is now.

There is the problem right there. It's similar to if ten years ago someone said "4:00 news can't work in NYC because WCBS failed twice". Some station/timeslot combinations just don't work. NYC is way too play it safe for its own good. That said, a 7:00 worked 30 years ago. Why would it not work today?

There's nobody doing a 6:30 or 7:00 in NYC and Fox sees that going after 2 and 7 at noon is the better move? What is it with this market?

Nobody in NYC is doing a 6:30 or a 7:00, a hole Fox could easily fill, and yet their gift to the market is to go against two other stations at Noon. I don't get the play-it-safe nature of the NYC market, especially given it's size and that there would be more of a market at 6:30 vs. the network news/Feud/reruns or 7:00 vs. Inside Edition/Extra/Jeopardy/Feud/reruns. This is the same market that dragged its heels with 4:00 news to the point that many medium markets had that first too.

The latest entry into the NMSA is that of WLJC, a religious independent in the Lexington DMA, randomly picking up This is the Place. Somehow earlier this week, WTVQ began producing a 9:00 newscast for WLJC and that WLJC took the Antenna TV affiliation for Lexington off of WTVQ's overwhelmed hands. This is the first news sharing arrangement I can think of which a secular station has produced news for a religious station though WLJC's other subs include GetTV and This TV. I wonder if Morris is gearing up to buy them or to set up a situation where Morris cashes out and a new owner of WTVQ then buys WLJC and probably moves MyNet programming there. The owners of WLJC also owns two FM stations which are among the few KLove and Air1 stations that EMF hasn't gotten their paws on yet.

Parting words for the curious. And Dan Levy is as boring as he was when he did mornings at WTEN at the turn of the century. On the same front, former WENY morning meteorologist Craig Flint has indirectly filled the hole left by Jason Gough stepping away from meteorology. Flint is now doing weekend mornings with Neal Estano paring down to solely the noon and fill-ins.

Morning and noon anchor from September 1990 to May 1993, this Schenectady Gazette blurb on his departure will give some insight. His departure cleared the way for John Gray to take the anchor desk in mornings and for Benita Zahn to return to it at noon. In the spirit of this thread, a Live at Noon segment from November 4, 1991 with Brandon Brooks and assorted reptiles and one of the few cases of footage of their secondary set of the period.