Scripps - General Discussion

[GraphicsMan 11]

18 hours ago, Rusty Muck said:

Why? Because they are dropping a name that hasn't really meant anything since Bill Bonds got fired 30 years ago?

 

Good lord, this fandom is so unbelievably out of touch with reality.

It called tradition, we need to keep them. Just like how WPVI the mother of the Action News brand would never do something like this and drop it. Or even worse drop Move Closer to your world. Jim Gardner retired from channel 6, in 10 years should we drop the “Action News”  branding and MCTYW? No. Because it’s tradition. WXYZ in Detriot caved to modernism by rebranding.

Edited April 20 by GraphicsMan

[Breaking News 802]

3 hours ago, ns8401 said:

If you tweak the name and leave the product exactly the same or nearly so… will anybody notice? That’s what I think they are up to. 

People always notice that funny part thinking they will forget. People will always remember. People were upset when WXIA dumped 11Alive moniker in the 90s.

[Rusty Muck 4165]

1 hour ago, Breaking News said:

People always notice that funny part thinking they will forget. People will always remember. People were upset when WXIA dumped 11Alive moniker in the 90s.

Contrary to the majority opinion in the fandom, I really don't think anyone but news nerds care about superficial things like that. They care if the news is treated like a joke or slathered with 3D graphics, dated music and trapped in amber since 1995.

[Rusty Muck 4165]

3 hours ago, GraphicsMan said:

It called tradition, we need to keep them. Just like how WPVI the mother of the Action News brand would never do something like this and drop it. Or even worse drop Move Closer to your world. Jim Gardner retired from channel 6, in 10 years should we drop the “Action News”  branding and MCTYW? No. Because it’s tradition. WXYZ in Detriot caved to modernism by rebranding.

Modernism is what will keep the industry from becoming a museum piece that only people 65 and older give a crap about. What you're advocating for is a one-way ticket to obsolescence.

[Weeters 1811]

I think the hyper-fixation on brand and music changes being some kind of driver for viewers to "get upset" and stop watching the station is kind of absurd, when you consider all the other things that can change in a TV news broadcast that the station really doesn't have much control over. Talent is a more important draw for viewers than music and brands, and retirements don't often move the ratings needle much. WPVI didn't see a massive ratings drop after Jim Gardner left, despite his status in the market. The same is looking true at WGN after Tom Skilling left, and I can't imagine a music change or branding would actually lead people to change the channel permanently. It's not 1996 anymore.

 

I'd also like to point out that a lot of these old 90's era "people were MAD!!!" claims come from newspaper columnists at the time. We cannot know for certain what they embellished on to make their column more interesting. "People were upset" that a station changed their branding the same way people get upset that Judge Judy was interrupted for severe weather. This doesn't mean the whole market was "rioting in the streets" like people around these parts like to think would happen if WPVI modernized MCTYW.

 

On that subject, the 1996 orchestral MCTYW was arguably just bad and was an abrupt, noticeable change. WPVI has been using new cuts of MCTYW from different composers for years at this point (there have been some new ones since the graphics debut!) and I have a hunch nobody but people involved with this community have noticed, largely because they don't sound as wildly different as the orchestral package did. 

 

[mer764KCTV5 13]

56 minutes ago, Weeters said:

I think the hyper-fixation on brand and music changes being some kind of driver for viewers to "get upset" and stop watching the station is kind of absurd, when you consider all the other things that can change in a TV news broadcast that the station really doesn't have much control over. Talent is a more important draw for viewers than music and brands, and retirements don't often move the ratings needle much. WPVI didn't see a massive ratings drop after Jim Gardner left, despite his status in the market. The same is looking true at WGN after Tom Skilling left, and I can't imagine a music change or branding would actually lead people to change the channel permanently. It's not 1996 anymore.

 

I'd also like to point out that a lot of these old 90's era "people were MAD!!!" claims come from newspaper columnists at the time. We cannot know for certain what they embellished on to make their column more interesting. "People were upset" that a station changed their branding the same way people get upset that Judge Judy was interrupted for severe weather. This doesn't mean the whole market was "rioting in the streets" like people around these parts like to think would happen if WPVI modernized MCTYW.

 

On that subject, the 1996 orchestral MCTYW was arguably just bad and was an abrupt, noticeable change. WPVI has been using new cuts of MCTYW from different composers for years at this point (there have been some new ones since the graphics debut!) and I have a hunch nobody but people involved with this community have noticed, largely because they don't sound as wildly different as the orchestral package did. 

 

Exactly! It's absurd that people would go crazy over an... rebrand that the station did. 

[Breaking News 802]

1 hour ago, Rusty Muck said:

Contrary to the majority opinion in the fandom, I really don't think anyone but news nerds care about superficial things like that. They care if the news is treated like a joke or slathered with 3D graphics, dated music and trapped in amber since 1995.

Spoken like an executive out of touch with the audience. You'll be surprised at what the audience actually knows about the stations ins and outs. You have a segment of the audience that a hardcore fans of everything about the station.  If WABC or KABC ever dropped Eyewitness News-wonder what would be the take on this board, but the audience would definitely have something to say a well too!

[Rusty Muck 4165]

1 hour ago, Breaking News said:

Spoken like an executive out of touch with the audience. You'll be surprised at what the audience actually knows about the stations ins and outs.

Excuse me? You really think Joe Sixpack of Anytown, USA, really gives a damn about the set design of Channel 2 News or the graphics or the music or if the station has the network logo in your preferred use? Come on.

 

The TV fandom is a fringe community of people who have a massively oversized feeling of self-importance they don't deserve and posts like these are ironclad proof of this.

 

And for the record, I am not an executive. But at least I have a job and a life.

1 hour ago, Breaking News said:

 If WABC or KABC ever dropped Eyewitness News-wonder what would be the take on this board, but the audience would definitely have something to say a well too!

With all due respect, this is just ridiculous. The local news audience—what little of it still exists altogether—would not care. At all.

[ns8401 846]

6 hours ago, GraphicsMan said:

It called tradition, we need to keep them. Just like how WPVI the mother of the Action News brand would never do something like this and drop it. Or even worse drop Move Closer to your world. Jim Gardner retired from channel 6, in 10 years should we drop the “Action News”  branding and MCTYW? No. Because it’s tradition. WXYZ in Detriot caved to modernism by rebranding.

I hate to break it to you but all three major stations in Detroit will have now rebranded at least once. It happens. Folks in this market seem to like the hype of WDIV and absolutely nothing 7 has tried seems to work. They have been stuck in second since 2009 and there for 22 of the last 28 years. Even though their newscasts are really well put together now they spent years in the doldrums quality wise and never really followed the format to begin with even in the 1970’s. Their newscasts weren’t so different from KABC or WABC or WLS that we should say they reinvented the ABC local news wheel. It’s not the tradition it is in Philly or something either. If it means better graphic elements and a new voiceover and maybe talent opens and a new style that’s probably a positive on aggregate. Their focus is gonna be on using 7 and Channel 7… they don’t even have a slogan anymore. I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with. 

Edited April 21 by ns8401

[Samantha 2878]

At Scripps, nothing is trapped in amber. It's a virtue and sometimes a vice.

 

Television stations are like any other business, especially given that they are facing the biggest change in consumption habits in their history. Scripps knows this. Their hometown headquarters station is feeling it. John Kiesewetter got these figures from Cincinnati:

 

Quote

My analysis of May TV ratings from 2018 to 2023 showed that the 11 p.m. local news audience dropped 45%, the 6-7 a.m. local news audience fell 42% and the 6 p.m. local news audience dropped 36%.

 

Scripps has very good values, usually, in journalism. They probably have the most value-driven approach to news operations of any major operator (aside from Sinclair, where the values are not beliefs about journalism but often about national politics). The broader problem is that tools originally conceived to make the process of assembling newscasts, or building out news extensions, are turning into tools to reduce headcount, which seems to be causing morale issues at some stations.

 

Ion Media has done okay, but national advertising has been soft. There's a story there. Scripps has higher exposure to the national advertising sector than its peers, and that has been an underperformer because digital has been cleaning TV's clock as advertisers that are not political rethink and retrench their budgets.

 

A decision this big is not done without studying the market. At some point, TV news cannot go on doing the same old things. You would have to assume, and I'd want to hear about this, that research was conducted. Perhaps people identified the Action News brand with an older style of newscast or one that didn't appeal to them. Perhaps adding "Detroit" was seen as necessary for SEO reasons.

 

That said, if "7 News Detroit" is installed without a brand proposition or other points of differentiation from its competitors, then it will get lost in the sea.

[Weeters 1811]

If stations have these "fans" who are concerned about their branding, music, and graphics, then it stands to reason that the less popular (at least around here) newscast formats we've seen lately also have fans. Somebody's watching Scrippscasts, somebody is watching Tegna stations. Maybe that's because they like what they see. 

 

If viewers "cared about tradition" the way some of us like to think, we wouldn't be seeing 45% of the news audience disappearing into thin air.

[Recovering Producer 100]

39 minutes ago, Rusty Muck said:

Excuse me? You really think Joe Sixpack of Anytown, USA, really gives a damn about the set design of Channel 2 News or the graphics or the music or if the station has the network logo in your preferred use? Come on.

 

The TV fandom is a fringe community of people who have a massively oversized feeling of self-importance they don't deserve and posts like these are ironclad proof of this.

 

And for the record, I am not an executive. But at least I have a job and a life.

With all due respect, this is just ridiculous. The local news audience—what little of it still exists altogether—would not care. At all.

 

I'll back this up with a line I heard repeated in research presentations at TV stations across the country under multiple ownership groups in an era when viewership was higher than it currently is: The most reliable viewers in the key demographics stations target watch one or two quarter hours of a newscast a week, across all stations and all dayparts. I am sure that time spent watching has only decreased since I last heard a research presentation just before 2020 turned all 2020. 

[C Block 1488]

Branding is important in every industry, but there is such a thing as overthinking it. Of what viewers we still have, I think all they really care about other than the news content is that the branding isn't distracting. I think all that most viewers care about is that the news content is of quality, that the anchors and reporters look decent, that the lighting in the studio is crisp, and that the newscast isn't riddled with production errors.

 

Viewers no longer care or have any attachment to anachronistic branding devices. I'll never forget a conversation I had with two acquaintances in Los Angeles a few years ago. They were musicians and did not watch television and thought that "KTLA," "Eyewitness News," and "Good Day LA" were all the same station, and they assumed that local TV news was still stuck in those 70s-era trappings.

[Brother 81]

As a spry 134-year-old crackpot, I am still personally offended and outraged that those whippersnappers Huntley and Brinkley replaced the beloved Camel News Caravan. Even more than Actions and Eyewitnesses, we want our news delivered on drab sets in glorious black-and-white by chain-smoking anchors. That's the sort of tradition that will bring The Kids These Days back to broadcast television in droves.

[mer764KCTV5 13]

9 hours ago, Samantha said:

A decision this big is not done without studying the market. At some point, TV news cannot go on doing the same old things. You would have to assume, and I'd want to hear about this, that research was conducted. Perhaps people identified the Action News brand with an older style of newscast or one that didn't appeal to them. Perhaps adding "Detroit" was seen as necessary for SEO reasons.

Yea, and it relates to me in Kansas City when KSHB decided to rebrand as KSHB41/41 News. Maybe because they were convinced that it wasn't doing well, (despite the whole 6-7 washing machines sinkhole meme) given the KSHB's 4th place ratings.

 

There has to be at least research involved in WXYZ making this extremely big rebrand, changing it from Action News to 7 News Detroit. I do hope WXYZ the best in this case.

[GodfreyGR 494]

2 hours ago, mer764KCTV5 said:

Yea, and it relates to me in Kansas City when KSHB decided to rebrand as KSHB41/41 News. Maybe because they were convinced that it wasn't doing well, (despite the whole 6-7 washing machines sinkhole meme) given the KSHB's 4th place ratings.

 

There has to be at least research involved in WXYZ making this extremely big rebrand, changing it from Action News to 7 News Detroit. I do hope WXYZ the best in this case.

I can appreciate this comparison, and it ties into what @Samantha was saying earlier about Scripps' values in journalism. The KSHB rebrand did a great job at utilizing the channel number as the brand and slogan- I end up in KC a decent amount and remember seeing the "News For Every One" (Stories, A Voice, A Community...). I remember thinking the approach was unique and built a community-minded angle that seemed to take a stab at first-place KMBC/Hearst, where many stories in the newscast are introed "covering (location) tonight". The positioning for KSHB also is a good setting/base for ScrippsCast (can argue that later).

 

Has it pulled KSHB out of 4h place? Not sure. Would love to know if there was a dent made. If northing else, there is likely a greater brand awareness for Channel 41. However, to the point, there are now 4 newscasts in Detroit. if WXYZ is not in 1st place and ratings are lagging or sinking, this might be worth a shot. Including Detroit as the brand might also be a stab at CBS (Again, has WWJ made any dent in the ratings or is there any trend showing they are on track to?)

[LexTVandRadio 412]

I keep waiting on Scripps to ditch the LEX18 name and just go with 18 News or something like that. 

[mer764KCTV5 13]

8 hours ago, GodfreyGR said:

I can appreciate this comparison, and it ties into what @Samantha was saying earlier about Scripps' values in journalism. The KSHB rebrand did a great job at utilizing the channel number as the brand and slogan- I end up in KC a decent amount and remember seeing the "News For Every One" (Stories, A Voice, A Community...). I remember thinking the approach was unique and built a community-minded angle that seemed to take a stab at first-place KMBC/Hearst, where many stories in the newscast are introed "covering (location) tonight". The positioning for KSHB also is a good setting/base for ScrippsCast (can argue that later).

 

Has it pulled KSHB out of 4h place? Not sure. Would love to know if there was a dent made. If northing else, there is likely a greater brand awareness for Channel 41.

Really good point you said there. It might have not gotten KSHB out of 4th place but it did lead to an better community support of the station.

[ns8401 846]

9 hours ago, GodfreyGR said:

I can appreciate this comparison, and it ties into what @Samantha was saying earlier about Scripps' values in journalism. The KSHB rebrand did a great job at utilizing the channel number as the brand and slogan- I end up in KC a decent amount and remember seeing the "News For Every One" (Stories, A Voice, A Community...). I remember thinking the approach was unique and built a community-minded angle that seemed to take a stab at first-place KMBC/Hearst, where many stories in the newscast are introed "covering (location) tonight". The positioning for KSHB also is a good setting/base for ScrippsCast (can argue that later).

 

Has it pulled KSHB out of 4h place? Not sure. Would love to know if there was a dent made. If northing else, there is likely a greater brand awareness for Channel 41. However, to the point, there are now 4 newscasts in Detroit. if WXYZ is not in 1st place and ratings are lagging or sinking, this might be worth a shot. Including Detroit as the brand might also be a stab at CBS (Again, has WWJ made any dent in the ratings or is there any trend showing they are on track to?)

They been stuck in 2nd since 2009 overall and third in the demo… they have nothing to lose.

[wofchristian 24]

On 4/20/2024 at 7:02 PM, Weeters said:

I think the hyper-fixation on brand and music changes being some kind of driver for viewers to "get upset" and stop watching the station is kind of absurd, when you consider all the other things that can change in a TV news broadcast that the station really doesn't have much control over. Talent is a more important draw for viewers than music and brands, and retirements don't often move the ratings needle much. WPVI didn't see a massive ratings drop after Jim Gardner left, despite his status in the market. The same is looking true at WGN after Tom Skilling left, and I can't imagine a music change or branding would actually lead people to change the channel permanently. It's not 1996 anymore.

 

I'd also like to point out that a lot of these old 90's era "people were MAD!!!" claims come from newspaper columnists at the time. We cannot know for certain what they embellished on to make their column more interesting. "People were upset" that a station changed their branding the same way people get upset that Judge Judy was interrupted for severe weather. This doesn't mean the whole market was "rioting in the streets" like people around these parts like to think would happen if WPVI modernized MCTYW.

 

On that subject, the 1996 orchestral MCTYW was arguably just bad and was an abrupt, noticeable change. WPVI has been using new cuts of MCTYW from different composers for years at this point (there have been some new ones since the graphics debut!) and I have a hunch nobody but people involved with this community have noticed, largely because they don't sound as wildly different as the orchestral package did. 

 

Since the graphics debut? I haven't heard any new ones. Just the same cuts introduced in 2017.

[Weeters 1811]

4 hours ago, wofchristian said:

Since the graphics debut? I haven't heard any new ones. Just the same cuts introduced in 2017.

Must just not be listening close enough. They're on some of the stinger transition animations. 

[ns8401 846]

Well… they got some nifty new preview graphics in a light blue color:

Also a new background for use in a multiple person box, not sure how well it shows up but it’s using some of the same light blue color. They’ve had the blue on their jackets for years now. It’s about the same shade that Honda uses for its commercials. Lower Thirds are the same. 

 

Sports sponsorship bumper showing new sports logo:

 

11pm Open complete with some actual movement with the logo:

7 News Detroit Sponsorship Bumper:

 

Edited April 23 by ns8401

[LTSC1980 96]

That 3D logo made the stations looks so 2000s

[LexTVandRadio 412]

3 minutes ago, LTSC1980 said:

That 3D logo made the stations looks so 2000s

To me, it just doesn't go with this flat graphics package.

[ns8401 846]

1 hour ago, LTSC1980 said:

That 3D logo made the stations looks so 2000s

That might have been the idea… their 2000’s graphics package circle 7 spun like that.