timanny

On 9/29/2021 at 4:12 PM, RCA TK47 said:

Some May 1987 KOVR 13 NEWS promos (8:55) with anchor Dan Gray supposedly explaining why he moved to California and KOVR's GM Ed Pfeiffer asking viewers for feedback on how to make the then ABC affiliate better station.  I remember seeing these when KOVR originally aired them way back when 34 years ago and thinking to myself "This will never work".  This look didn't last long at KOVR... Neither did Dan Gray.  Although I think Gray was a pretty good catch for them though.  I still think he and Jennifer Whitney might've been able to right the ship there at KOVR a little bit if they were given some more time.  P.S. And a brief Rush Limbaugh cameo on the right @ 9:31. 

 

  

 

 

That look didn't last at all...but Dan Gray was there for a few years. They kept changing his co-anchor though; he went through three before they even got to Jennifer Whitney, each lasted about a year. Then they tossed him. He got a raw deal. 

20 hours ago, SFTV said:

Sandra leaving was the ice breaker and John speaking out opened a lot of eyes along with multiple shots fired.

 

it’s been a while since I checked on my hometown market. It’s sad in the direction KUSI is going. A few weeks ago they had Mark Mathis clowning about the governors restrictions calling him King Newsom. 
 

I understand most of the staff at KUSI is old and trying to be the “cool parent” in the mornings but that was beyond out of bounds. 

KUSI is like a mom-and-pop local version of Fox News to a degree. It's more Fox News than Fox 5. Remember, this is the station that let John Coleman go off about global warming. They clearly have a slant. Then again, that is their audience.

On 11/28/2019 at 5:19 AM, Info Junkie said:

Hey, it’s the weird KOVR news open again!

 

Is that actually a cut of Earwitness News or not? Doesn't sound like it. Only other place I've heard it was, believe it or not, an old Kids in the Hall sketch. I assume it was some kind of generic package from a library, which would fit with KOVR's general MO of the time.  

More KOVR with the short-lived 1987 graphics:

On 2/7/2019 at 12:37 AM, C Block said:

 

For ratings purposes, I'm fairly sure that Fairfield is considered the San Francisco DMA, but Vacaville is in Sacramento's. That means, for example, that KOVR doesn't get credit for anyone in Fairfield who might be watching them.

 

There are a number of odd overlapping carriage situations in the two markets that mostly date back to older cable deals or some other reason. KCRA is still on the Comcast lineup in Contra Costa County, and I'm 99% sure that's a leftover from the KRON/KNTV/NBC spat. KTVU can also be seen OTA and on cable in the Eureka/Redding and Monterey/Salinas markets, though a lot of that also stems from its superstation era in the 80s.

Fairfield is in the Sacramento DMA, it's Vallejo that's in the San Francisco DMA.

What's this!? Another KOVR surprise — a piece of a noon newscast from November 15, 1988, using a news theme I've never heard. Is this related to EarWitness News?

 

I don't know if it's related to Earwitness News but they seemed to use it interchangeably with Earwitness News. I also heard it once in an early Kids in the Hall sketch.

Honestly, it sounds like the perfect theme for a Ron Burgundy newscast.

As to the lack of an open, KPNX never bothered to produce a new open for the 10pm show when Linda Álvarez left for Los Angeles.

 

This was the 10pm open that belonged to that set:

 

 

They were also at that time in the middle of a two-phase brand transition. Around November 1985, KPNX debuted the sung We're Going Where You're Going image song and began using it as a close. Keep in mind that this accompanied not only Álvarez being replaced with Patti Kirkpatrick but also

(Dewey Hopper left and then resurfaced in Sacramento — his media career was best described as bizarre). There were very good reasons for KPNX not to have a 10pm open.

 

The April 1986 change was much more wholesale — revamped news set, new logo, end of Action News — and included a more comprehensive news package composed around the WGWYG theme. It was in 1989, again in two phases (apparently), that KPNX phased it out for work done by TVbD. As in 1986, the second phase included a new logo, but set changes did not occur until 1992.

I believe Dewey Hopper ended up at both KTSP and KTVK in the two years between leaving KPNX and arriving in Sacramento.

There's a missing KOVR era here, and it's missing because it did not last long at all...

Jackpot.

the logo in your avatar got ditched in 87 for the kcop one when they moved to west sac... then they realized the new one sucked and debut a refined version of the previous logo around 1990... that logo is still painted on their helipad...

 

KOVR has a unique history... and the internet hasn't documented it well...

The logo in my avatar was ditched in 87 for the logo you see in the screenshot I posted- white with the pink background. That logo was then ditched in early to mid 88 for the KCOP knockoff, which was then ditched in the fall of 89 for the logo that is still on the helipad. Wikipedia is wrong, KOVR didn't move to West Sac until 1989 or 90. They were still on Arden in 87 and 88.

Things are very poorly labeled. This is actually Jon Fox's broadcast demo from 1990 which includes the WTVJ and WNBC redesign reels, plus KHOU, KOVR, KIRO and a KPNX "Town Hall"

 

There are two KOVR opens in there; the first, at 1:36, is extremely rare, and the graphics package has been discussed in another post here. Does anyone know if the full open is out there somewhere?

Those were huge lower thirds, especially with the large pink background behind the KOVR 13 NEWS text. I've tried looking for clips on YouTube with that branding, but have had no success. It was super short lived.

I don't have a lower third example, but I do have a promo tease with Don Strickland that has that text on the top, which is the same size as the lower thirds. This is from family VHS tapes, it's not on YouTube anywhere.

I do have a recording of Good Morning America that includes news cut-ins that show both the huge lower thirds and the set with the same text branding. I need to digitize them; these tapes are all at my parents' house in Pahrump.

Thanks for the reply Metrodonmartin! I remember seeing KOVR debut the set above in April of '87 (or '86.. my old timer memory escapes me at the moment) and thought it was a huge step up for them at the time. But the desk was a leftover from their prior chromakey set; they must've been too cheap to get a new one fabricated to match the new set. Lol

It was definitely '87, that's when they did the rebrand, ditched the logo we both use for our avatars, and brought in Dan Gray (who is clearly amused by Santa up there). Cheap is right- that KCOP knock-off logo wasn't introduced until later, initially it was just "KOVR 13 NEWS" in a bold, italicized version of the font CBS News used for lower thirds, odd for an ABC affiliate but perhaps foreshadowing its future as a CBS O&O?

And speaking of lower thirds, during the initial period of that set, while using the CBS-style font, the lower thirds were ginormous- almost like lower halves!

KXTV just got hit.

http://www.sacbee.com/news/business/article73343367.html