nathannah

For the most part, most everyone you see on-screen on a newscast has been vaccinated because they didn't want to broadcast from home or be distant on the set any longer, and already had their celebrations of such in April and May; I know of nobody in eastern Wisconsin who has left their station outside of the regular old reasons and openly shared when their teams were all past the inoculation period. The hold-outs seem to be that side of broadcasting that think of it as a 'calling to God' and that they can somehow convert people reporting on a five-car accident or consumer reporting (the type that seem to pack a lot of 'news/talk' conservative radio station newsrooms), and think they're just that 'one big story' away from getting on Fox News or will personally oust Raymond Arroyo or Pat Robertson. Outside a few true exceptions where they cannot actually get the shot due to medical reasons, and along with the general public, they are few and far between, but can get the news on their side since they know the emotional tricks of doing so.

The after-SNL time period where I am used to be filled in the 80s, 90s, and early 00s with either It's Showtime at the Apollo, Soul Train, or on the comedic side, Night Stand with Dick Dietrich and America's Dumbest Criminals, and of course KING-TV had Almost Live forever, and it was always a fun topper to a late night. Now...a local church called Time of Grace bought out every post-SNL timeslot in the area (and beyond) for their 'how do you do fellow kids' ministry. It's the perfect cure for insomnia. The Saturday night newscast on an NBC affiliate in-season is usually a dirge. You lose five minutes of show you have the rest of the week because of SNL, governments are closed, the crime roll is shorter, and it's packed with stories where you basically have to get people out to go to festivals and funruns, and network/corporate must-runs, along with weekday junk you want to burn off ahoy. You also never have the rights to the local college football team in most cases since all NBC's got is Notre Dame, so outside WMAQ and WNDU, why care beyond the highlights? Most of the audience isn't even really watching because they're out or watching football at their local favorite bar. Outside of Notre Dame nights where you pray they don't go into overtime and Uncle Lorne rages in a press release Sunday morning about starting at 12:42 a.m., there's no excitement to them (except for the one time where that Kansas anchor said 'let's get the f**k outta here!'). I admit...I laughed quite a few times at this show, and I've laughed at Mike Polk's YouTube stuff often. It is a good alternative to the umpteen football games on (which for the area outside a couple of ABC weeks, never involves an Ohio team), and so WOIO wins the night; most of that audience from 48 Hours isn't in the demographic anyways. And when Pat Tomosulu did this on WGN in the exact same time period, it seemed to be fine, but suddenly it's a network affiliate and the death of the Fifth Estate?! (shakes head) I've seen much worse weekly local content, and better this than a 'bonus' edition of the midday advertorial show 'after dark'.

I'm really not liking that they now have their ticker in primetime. Morning I can understand; primetime is a white flag saying they could cover these other scrolling stories in detail, but they won't because they need to get Dog's tacky "Where in the World is Brian Launderie?" search more airtime (and that he's kept in touch with Nexstar despite his WGNA show being cancelled).

I wonder if that Tom Tucker (since he was in Palm Springs) inspired the same of the Family Guy news anchor . Also I understand privacy concerns and all that, but you'd have to think he's re-paying his contract because he held back he wasn't compliant with their policy coming in the door and they had to waste all that money promoting him and now are starting at square one after a month. Meanwhile Chris Berg reading that 'back story'...insufferable Al Bundy/past glory vibes . I'm sure he won't be missed at Gray, and the radio industry thanks that company for being blunt with their policies so the immuno-compromised know they need not apply there.

Nothing is going to change with any Univision station until the Televisa sale closes (if it does, of course). They also have coverage gaps in the market due to systems preferring the revenue the local breaks the national feed offers for them over WQHS carriage, so that would also have to be addressed.

Watching The National Desk in primetime for the first time; I think it'll take a bit to get used to the format, but things like having weathercasters in each region do the weather instead of just one guy is a unique feature, and it seems a lot more focused on basic news (with the caveat of Hunt Valley's interference) than NewsNation, which is starting to feel like HLN when they began to slip away towards 'big news only'. And while we're here; Sinclair's out of the radio business with the Seattle stations officially sold off.

Is it the same space used for Law & Crime? No station airs his shows around here (and I avoid Mediate and their sister sites because their ads are obnoxious), so I have no reference.

Gotta get that Gray trademark on everything (WBAY launched a "First Alert Fastcast on Facebook" this morning, which I'm sure Jeff Laurence loved to say )! I'm surprised the smoke alarm company hasn't challenged them for dilution despite their different industries.

Going by what it was before WRNN bought them out, this looks like a good-faith purchase; the programming statement from Allen basically says ShopHQ is gone the moment the sale goes through, and they'll try their best to restore the old Filipino/Japanese schedule. I really hope this is a good sign that RNN is beginning to realize that throwing home shopping on their stations isn't doing anything for their bottom line. And going by this last note on their website where KIKU's staff basically threw them under the bus (rightfully so), Richard French and friends will not be getting a friendly Aloha out the door from the people actually staffing the station. And for all that we feared Byron would start a court-show only network and ditch major network affiliations, he's been a good steward and been wise about where and when to put his shows on these stations otherwise.

Related to this, WISN's generated ticker on ATM/GMA is also utilizing the new logo version as the between-headline divider, so it's across all of their generated logos, and likely for others that overlay the national ATM/GMA ticker. Because WISN's current logo took gloss notes from the '13 logo, having that gloss and then the flat ABC ball in the color version just clashes somehow. It's slightly less apparent with WBAY because of the more subtle gradient within their 'circle 2'.

It looks like affiliates will also be rolling out new after-break logos during network time, at least. WBAY and WISN changed theirs today.

It's parallel to the left edge of the '4', which means it'll be used for the dynamic/moving part of the branding.

I'm wondering if they've tried to sell out their rights to other networks, and failed as their program mix skews very old and there's no true place they can go outside Pop. And they can't go to Rewind because they're cable-only rights.

Will note this elsewhere...but Real Milwaukee isn't actually dead! It comes back at 10 a.m. on the 27th, now led by Rob Haswell.

Huh...that's the same one which popped up during Steelers pre-season games, so there's a change in the making for sure.

This probably explains why WITI or KCPQ hasn't switched weather graphics from their Trib packages; why do it when the Fox Weather package would be coming after a few months anyways?

Every big network logo refresh, Wikipedia gets folks who have to be 'first' to update a logo...and then upload terrible 'point at 80s TV' screenshots, fakes, or tiny 40px versions of the 'new logo' that nobody can really use, or Logopedia-sourced garbage from those false television station wikis that think WNBC was founded by Sony or something. Trying to say 'no, ABC isn't going to revoke an affiliation because a station didn't update their logo' is like taking to a wall with them.

Another article said it was where they 'had channel space in legal states'...which makes no sense, because if that's the case, they'd be voiding their contract with Weigel to get Movies! off KLAS-DT3 and getting it on there at launch to get on the big casino screens in Las Vegas. That, or they're playing a long game with the rollout; roll it out too fast and it might catch the attention of state authorities and the FCC, then the channel has to air multiple state gambling PSAs and can't make money. And going by an uncensored "Pat McAfee Show" on the Pluto feed...yes, it'll be a bit different.

KTLA is in hot water for not giving one side of the SAG-AFTRA national elections equal time as Sam Rubin is campaigning on a certain slate, and had candidates for that side on the "Morning News". If the other side doesn't get equal time, SAG-AFTRA could redo their election and force Nexstar to pay for it.

Brad Spakowitz of WBAY is moving into semi-retirement; he'll still do severe weather and fill-in coverage and his daily 4:30 "Three Brilliant Minutes" segment, along with BTS work for the weather department. One of the best and he deserves the rest!

Someone on Wikipedia tried uploading what they said was a new 'universal ABC7 logo' for NY/CHI/LA/SF' to the said articles, but it was removed as they didn't source where it was coming from (doesn't help when you say 'own work' in the rationale' and it literally looks like it was pasted on over the KABC logo in MS Paint).

This is why they're beginning to consolidate their affiliations onto one channel and are all-in on ATSC 3.0; they're beginning to get way too greedy for their own good. And I will never subscribe to Dish, but tying Bally and the Tennis Channel to CW and MyNet affiliates is a losing proposition for SBG.

For how good, yet low-profile Newsy has been for Scripps, they knew having it as a traditional cable channel wasn't working and ended it in June for a streaming-heavy model, along with OTA coverage on the Ion stations. I wish Nexstar would realize the same thing, along with cannibalizing their station's audiences in primetime (If you hear about Newsy on a Scripps station it's usually for their investigative reporting, not generic crime/human interest roll stuff like NN).

I think this is equivalent to the situation they have in Denver, where their networks got booted thanks to Scripps, Nexstar and Tegna, so they bought KREG to make sure their networks had a place in the market, while keeping MeTV on KCNC. Hearst (and ViacomCBS) is a big Weigel advocate and outside the ShopLC, Estrella, Cozi and True Crime Network deals sprinkled throughout the chain, isn't going into the subchannel business themselves and are happy to take the DRTV split. Likely this is more about getting H&I, Start and Movies! a constant home in the market, since outside Hearst, the rest of the market is Scripps/Nexstar/Tegna and their networks, and the days of them giving space to Weigel are sadly over (same in Salt Lake with Nexstar/Sinclair/Scripps, thus the purchase of KCSG). MeTV will stay on KCCI, but both Weigel and Hearst don't want to bit-starve stations to get the sister networks on the air, in turn.

It certainly doesn't help that a portion of the Fox affiliate base is owned by Sinclair. I know the difference easily even with a Fox O&O in WITI (and they do their best to split the difference since they were able to dodge the majority of the Ailes takeover of the O&Os), but one market over where WLUK is now well insulated into their SBG ownership, there's hardly any difference between their local operation and the SBG/FNC must-runs since they're going hard into the current corporate mandate that crime is seriously up everywhere (when it's just more population in the market=more crime). For a subchannel Fox station though which is mainly all-entertainment (say, WGGB), it's easier to know 'yeah, they just run whatever during this 10 p.m. newscast because it's the Fox daily business rundown where ABC or CBS's report would usually go'.