Jess

The best Fox affiliate music has always been the X and X2. It's too bad more stations didn't pick up the X2.

Same. The X2 package brilliantly used the best part of the 20th Century Fox fanfare.

Though there are certain non-Fox specific themes that worked great on Fox affiliates. Stephen Arnold's News Edge, for one.

Philadelphia, December 1991

KYW was simultaneously running two separate formats: Eyewitness News at 6pm and The News Tonight at 11pm, even with different reporters on the same story... I have no idea what other dayparts were running (early morning and midday - if they even had a midday newscast). By February, everything was was new format/theme/graphics.

To answer your question, mornings was new format (branded as "NewsDay"). There was no midday newscast, just hourly updates. (I believe those were branded "The News Now", and used News Tonight graphics.) I think weekends were branded "The News Saturday/Sunday" (using the former weeknight team sans Steve Bell). The only place Eyewitness News remained was 6pm on weeknights. In that clip, MAN does it stick out like a sore thumb. The only thing that indicates the 6pm and 11pm aired on the same station is the mic flag. Why they didn't immediately kill EWN to begin with remains a mystery - I have a gut feeling it relates to Steve Bell's contract but that's just me.

Anyway, Steve Bell and Eyewitness News were out by the first week of January. Bruce Hamilton was in for NewsBeat. Even that didn't last. By the end of 1992 they paired Hamilton with 11pm anchor Jennifer Ward, and all evening newscasts (weekday and weekend) carried the News Tonight name. Branding coherency returned in 1994 when Larry Kane, Stephanie Stahl, and the blue set all arrived with KYW News 3.

Per

, it wasn't until the next month- January of 92- that NewsBeat replaced the 6PM EWN. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't NewsBeat start at 5:30? One of Phillyvideofan's old videos (before the whole channel got taken down) seemed to imply that.) There wasn't a noon newscast at the time (no idea if they'd ever had one), but one did debut during the KYW News 3 era after the switch to CBS (no clue what was running in the slot before).

They did have a noon newscast during the Eyewitness News days - not sure when it was introduced or how long it lasted, but there was a midday news. That was canned during the revamp in 1991. KYW did reintroduce it with the switch to CBS, with a far better lead in.

The KYW talk here shouldn't overshadow the presence of peak Action News. The opens have the best master of MCTYW that they've ever used, the "newsmat" set is classic and the anchors are in peak form. This was the newscast I grew up with and the nostalgia here is STRONG.

Went down the rabbit hole a few days ago looking for classic Philly clips and found this gem:

Action News Issues and Answers. That was one of their two Sunday morning interview shows (the other one being Inside Story, which lasts to this day). I mainly bring it up because of the close. I LOVE that rambling piano cut from MCTYW they use here.

NewsActive3 just uploaded some classic, classic Roger Grimsby/Bill Beutel stuff from 1978. Earliest full newscast I've seen with both of them. As with all classic WABC stuff... PUMP IT INTO MY VEIIIIINS.

EDIT: Oh, man, it begins with a Milt Lewis report! It just can't get any better than that!

Oh God Philly After Midnight! I forgot about that one!

Basically that was a reincarnation of their old AM Philadelphia/AM Live talk show. WPVI would pre-empt whatever show ABC was running right before noon to show it. When ABC launched The View, they kind of told 6 that, yeah, you kind of had to air it. So the show was moved to 12:35, after Politically Incorrect, and renamed suitably. It stuck around for a few years, until I think another Disney/ABC mandated syndicated show took it off the air for good.

And niiiice on the Action Newscast that followed it. They "evolved" a lot of the elements of that 1998 look all the way up until they got the new set and graphics this year... almost twenty years!

No it won't.

 

See: WPXI's 10PM News on WPGH.

 

Sinclair, for all its faults, doesn't want to mess with a good thing.

I'm gonna side with TSSZNews here. Unless Sinclair offloads the station to Fox for some reason, they're not going to cancel it. It does too well for both parties here.

And man on Nora Muchanic's retirement... all of the familiar faces of WPVI past are slowly going away, one by one...

I assume they will take the traditional male/female route. History seems to say so. When Rob Jennings retired from weekend evenings (where he also went solo) he was replaced by an anchor pair (only on Sundays though). At WABC, I don't remember if Bill Beutel added Diana at 6pm before his retirement or if she and Bill Ritter were his replacements.

Diana was added to the 6pm about a year before Ritter succeeded him, IIRC.

Really? I don't see the Look F in that package at all... it looks more like what KIRO is using more than anything. The weather gfx DO remind me of KNTV/WCAU though.

Wow! I think that News 5 open goes right up there in the Essentials thread... great music and a beautiful flying phoenix motif. I love the station ID at the top too.

From November 2004, the first KYW newscast with their WNBC-esque Pyburn Films package. Plus I let the recording go over at the end, so you get to see some WPVI circa 2004:

Do you want that advertising money and viewers going to your own station with up-to-date content, or for those viewers to scoff as you run Byron Allen barter junket product that's free to run but makes you look no better than Logo running Golden Girls reruns as an alternative viewing option to the NFL?

 

Even in the Central Time Zone I'm seeing more and more stations looking for more current content in that dead zone; some stations re-run their local public affairs stuff for awake audiences rather than what the syndication industry insultingly calls their 'original weekend content'.

Plus I should mention that WPVI's new 5pm weekend newscasts are replacing paid programming, which is another weekend programming option. Better to get that ad money flowing on the weekends.

WPVI has quietly debuted Action News at 5pm on Sundays, anchored by Walter and Sarah, and it is not a special edition as it is listed in the coming Sundays too.

Huh! I was wondering why they were actually on instead of network coverage... they actually started it with a mention of "extended coverage of Hurricane Irma" but they are clearly doing a normal newscast. Interesting.

WABC had a bunch of sets in the late 70s/early 80s that were designed in house by Gene Fabricatore... I especially liked the one used from 1982 to 1985 - very curvy and stylish for that era. Unfortunately it lost a LOT when it was painted blue in early 1985. They replaced that set with the one used on KABC since the late 70s (also used on WLS)...

This has got to be the cheesiest campaign I've heard in a long while...probably a good reason we've never seen any off-air recordings of it in use. Yeesh.

I love those "The Team 4 News" promos. So, so cheesy. And I like cheese. Here's the original one:

Dunno if this got posted here but this is a full KUSA newscast from 1993, with a full close with some of the best B-roll editing I've seen on a long close.

And I hate to be controversial here, but There's No Substitute > Third Street Music theme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=cfcGLmWMWXU;m=49;s=58

Yeah, the logo in the render absolutely looks like it's an evolution of the current stuff but it's *absolutely* not the same. The set so far looks great, I hope the graphics just do it justice.

And this should put to bed any rumors of ABC standardizing...

So, after a decade of use(!), I figured it was time to move the goalposts a bit. This has been something I've wanted to do for a while and since I still can update the original threads I decided to tweak it.

Long story short, anything before 2008 now goes in Classic Video. Anything after 2008 goes in the "modern" Video Thread. I chose 2008 for a reason. Not only did standardization really begin around this time, but many stations also went HD around this time, making a delineation pretty easy.

Why the change? Well, the answer is time! Stuff from 2001 was six years old in 2007; it's now sixteen years old in 2017. To a new generation, songs from the 80s now classify as "oldies"... so stuff from the late 90s and early 2000s now merits "classic" status.

Now, don't let this change deter you guys. The Classic Video Thread has unearthed some real gems. Keep posting them. But if you see something interesting from the turn of the century feel free to put it there too.

Given it's been a decade since it first got posted, and I can edit the OP and thread still, I moved the goalposts a bit. This thread is now good for anything past 2008. Anything before can now go in the Classic Video Thread. I chose the date here because A.) standardization really began at that point, and B.) HD became standard around this time.

This thread doesn't get as much usage, but continue to post stuff that you want to post here.

Given it's been a decade since it first got posted, and I can edit the OP and thread still, I moved the goalposts a bit. So, just as oldies/classic hits stations have added more recent music to the playlist, this thread is now good for anything up until 2008. I chose that date because that's A.) when standardization really began, and B.) HD became a standard.

Keep posting those older videos, though! That's what makes this thread shine, and I don't want that to be lost like the older songs on said oldies/classic hits stations.

IIRC, that was both demo and households.

If I remember right, though, that was Monday-Friday for the win. If you looked at all seven days WPVI still came out on top.

I didn't know there were any still. I knew there were some during the Live Well era.

I know they do Inside Story from the second studio. That setup is pretty basic, though.

Is it weird that I kind of like the temp set better than the outgoing set? I just hope we get a decent set. None of the Philly stations currently have great sets, and I hope that changes.

Sinclair made page one of the NY Times...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/business/media/sinclair-broadcast-komo-conservative-media.html?src=twr

WHTM in 1993:

 

Just gotta say, I love how it starts out with that 1992-93ish ABC Sports close that I love so dearly. Is that Edd Kalehoff? I'm pretty damned sure it is... I would give a kidney for a clean listen of this, I really would.

Only tangentially related to TV news, but Sinclair is apparently looking to sell Ring of Honor wrestling.

I won't name the likely buyer, but its name begins with the letter Vince McMahon.

From the Twitter:

[MEDIA=twitter]837749359391408129[/MEDIA]