scrabbleship

Hasn't WHEC already used This is The Place for a few years? Hubbard NBC affiliates thinking alike? Oh lord, heaven help if that is foisted on WNYT. I know Keynote is getting a little long in the tooth but that wouldn't be the solution at all.

Didn't they own KTVH for a hot minute between Sunbelt/Intermountain West and Cordillera? I think they're frozen out of Montana unless they can get their hands on Cordillera or Cowles. Both groups fit Gray's profile well and the latter has zero conflicts.

WVNY is another (nominally) Nexstar station that does the same. Given their apprehension of programming a 5:00 hour, I wonder if they shed an hour and enter the 4:00 game too.

After being sacked in the "Black Monday" purge when Young took over WTEN from Knight Ridder, Doug Myers began a long career as spokesperson for Albany International Airport which he holds to this day. Somewhere on YouTube there is a 2015 video from WRGB of him remembering former colleague/fellow purge victim Ed O'Brien.

Who leaves or gets bumped to NECN then?

The opens were the exact same as the 1997-2002 opens, only with a font change. The talent opens were roughly the talent in front of a blue/purple gradient screen. The L3's were a very bad imitation of the NBC News graphics of this time and in their cheapness the background of those had "WNYT NEWSCHANNEL 13 LIVE LOCAL LATEBREAKING" ghosted in the background. The perfect package for a time where WNYT was uncharacteristically unstable. Fun fact: The reporter on the right of the 2-box demonstrating this abomination is Elizabeth Scarborough, daughter of Chuck whom was hired straight out of college. She later would go to WCMH and KPRC before leaving the business. This package went live about three months before the Sinclair package and Curves/Glass started to roll out. It makes me wonder if this was either the original concept Sinclair was coming up with or a "Plan B" for markets where they have two practical news operations such as Mobile and Eugene. I will daringly say this: Out of every package I remember, going back to the last "Action News" intro seen when that 1987 newscast was unearthed, the best graphics/theme combination is what they have right now since Inergy fits it and them like a glove.

WHDH's Christa Delkamp has left the station after 14 years.

The ticker towards the end of the story mentions New York's indoor smoking ban taking effect which Google dates to July 24, 2003. If the woman at the end looks vaguely familiar to any Boston viewers, that would be a blonde Sharman Sacchetti, later of WFXT and now of WHDH. That pairing was criminally underrated and was a breath of fresh air from the "middle aged man and his meteorologist sidekick robotically yucking it up" shows going on at WRGB and WNYT at the time.

Gough's last day was yesterday. This was reported a while back, he's going on a sabbatical to pursue other projects ranging from writing a book about assorted childhood abuses he survived to focusing on a Sunday morning show he created and produces, Wine About The Weather. The fun question is who will fill his shoes because his doing the late news was an insurance policy for if Bob Kovachick were to retire. They really have no weather bench anymore since their hires the last five years either a) left the market [WFXR's Jason Caterina and KKTV's Jordan Sherman] or b) are longtime vet retreads [Andy Gregorio was at WTEN forever and Neal Estano did THREE stints at WRGB with stops in-between at WJXT, then WBAL]. That morning move is a path of least resistance as who else do they really have? The person they wanted in such a role left the business and all apologies to the weekenders but they've kind've calcified into that role after so long. Asa's a caretaker of sorts.

Charlie Van Dyke was phased out in mid-2007. The exact date for this would be September 6, 2006 judging by the top story being the "first day of school" (two days after Labor Day in New York). This would be the day after they expanded the 6:00 back to an hour in fact. Image wise, the rough period of 1998-2008 were a great time for WRGB with four good theme/graphic combos going from InSink to the first version of Impact. That package getting destroyed by going HD hurt it a ton and the package that replaced it was so bad the Sinclair package was an improvement.

I'm surprised that when WLVI added Buzzr that clearance on a WSVN sub didn't come with.

John Gray and those opens never existed at the same time. Gray left at the end of 2003 after being passed up as Ed Dague's replacement, a position which everyone assumed he would get and probably would had Ed naturally retired. The Gray vs. Jim Kambrich vs. Phil Bayly competition for Ed's 6/11 position was pretty fierce and dramatic in hindsight. In terms of freshening up the market, WNYT made the best move. Gray going to WXXA gave them a shot in the arm they needed badly and took the title of "#1 Late News" until Newport came in (and WRGB started a 10:00 on WCWN). Greg Floyd being exiled to weekends there gave him the fuel to go to WRGB, giving them the stable lead male anchor they had lacked since Ernie Tetrault retired over a decade earlier. Win-win for all involved. Those opens were scenic and creative. The plain station logo/"Live at [TIME]" open was unoriginal as heck. It was still better than the mess NBC Stations had become prior or that Keynote is starting to get long in the tooth though the cold open cut for the 10:00 still sounds good three years after it debuted.

The person who wrote that is one of those WNYT lifers who got hired right out of college and has stuck around for their entire adult life. At the time that post was written, he was their Webmaster, becoming their Digital Manager when that job became a bit more complex. Part of that post makes me wonder. And this might be part of why their 1995 backdrop is immortal...

I know the updated look came in right before the Athens Olympics started. I was out of the area when it happened and when I came back it was a little shocking how well they did it. The 2002-04 "sub look" they wedged into the 1997 opens was flat out awful, a horrible blue/purple gradient, Arial fonts, just a massive mess and unless you poke around the Internet Archive largely invisible. I know that those beautiful opens that went with the first generation of L.A. Groove were junked when the second generation came in. Outside of all of their images in the NewsChannel 13 era, next to the Prime News era those were their best bar none.

Some more WNYT promos, all from the 2003-04 timeframe. "Born to Zap" [MEDIA=vimeo]18426227[/MEDIA] "Bob at the Track" [MEDIA=vimeo]26771993[/MEDIA] A school closings promo that lasted until at least 2006 [MEDIA=vimeo]18953316[/MEDIA] "How did Bob Kovachick become interested in the weather?" [MEDIA=vimeo]18426403[/MEDIA] "Playing With Fire," a Fall 2004 promo with current, glossier, peacock-on-the-13 logo. [MEDIA=vimeo]21548013[/MEDIA]

Isn't KNPN in a smaller market?

That promo is from sometime in 2004 as it was after when Bob Kovachick shaved his mustache and the weather center had already been redone yet were still using their 1997 weather graphics. Here is another promo from the same time period for the same doppler. [MEDIA=vimeo]18968925[/MEDIA] In fact, going through this person's Vimeo account there seems to be a LOT of late 90s-mid 2000s WNYT promos. A pre-1998 station promo [MEDIA=vimeo]53071157[/MEDIA] A 1996 Olympics promo, complete with clips of Chris Kapostasy (Jansing)'s Torch Relay run [MEDIA=vimeo]94070913[/MEDIA] "No one has more experience than Ed Dague", someone in 2000-01 [MEDIA=vimeo]18426083[/MEDIA] More later!

The next few years are going to be interesting for WNYT. Most of their old guard is reaching retirement age and their bench is a bit thin. For a station that is the epitome of stable, it will be interesting to see how they proceed. Come to think of it, this is the first time WNYT has dealt with an actual, planned retirement ever. Ed Dague had health reasons and a six-month saga full of drama, Bob McNamara had his hissy fit over bowling scores and resigned, Hubbard cuts ended Capital Region Backroads and Steve Scoville's career. Sure, there were people who left for bigger things (Chris Kapostasy/Jansing the biggest) or went to the next realm (Norm Sebastian), but this new ground will soon become familiar ground.

I know Sinclair reupped their CBS affiliation contract not too long ago but I wonder how much work it would be to undo the 1995 KUTV/KSL swap. Sinclair has all the leverage to get what they theoretically want in this case.

It's amazing to see how much Albany news changed in a mere 18 months, especially looking at old news articles and realizing that almost every newscast had some sort of turnover between those timepoints. Those WTEN opens have me welling up from all the nostalgia, they may have been the #3 station by an actual margin at that point and their graphics and music were a bit chintzy but they went out and did their best against a growing WNYT and WRGB careening into its dork age. To WRGB's credit, that closing cut of Making a Difference was WRGB in the 90s and survived until the station had a total image reset for their 70th Anniversary in 1998 when it was pushed aside for InSink.

Albany has a habit of keeping old themes alive after a theme change. WTEN did just this as I remember some promo cuts of Primetime News sticking around after Momentum News came in. WRGB was a big offender of this, using some cuts from the mid 80s Freedom package for promos and random stings as late as 1993 and some v.1 Enforcer cuts stuck around for the whole time then-News in Focus was in use. This doesn't even get into WNYT using cuts from Image IX and The Tower just for promos here and there.

Weren't KJEO and KIDK sisters under Retlaw and, for a short time, Fisher?

I wonder what this means for WPXT long-term. With the Top 8 rule poised to go away, you would think that Tegna and Hearst would be chomping at the bit for WPXT at minimum if not Gray using it as a trojan horse to enter the Portland market if no other avenues open up.

13 minutes of WRGB's 6:00 PM from 12/6/89, featuring a post-WABC/pre-WTEN Tracy Egan and a pre-WYFF John Cessarich.

WNYT's had a little bit of a rough week. On Monday, morning anchor Phil Bayly announced his retirement after 31 years, 14 in mornings and yesterday 10:00/11:00 meteorologist Jason Gough announced that he was leaving at the end of January after 13 years. I wonder if this is the point in which a lot of the old guard starts stepping down.