Gray Media - General Thread

[HSV cheesehead 99]

1 hour ago, Megatron81 said:

I think that Gray try's and gets Salt Lake City NBC from KSL since they for a long time wouldn't air some prime time shows on NBC for some reason. One of the few TV stations not to do that.

Plus the previous events (at CBS Detroit) show that it is still possible for a news station to be built from scratch in this day and age.

 

(albeit with some snafus along the way)

[T.L. Hughes 889]

Gray shut down KNEP's news department and laid off staff in certain other departments on the same day the Marquee swap announced. Since February 2, the station's in-house newscasts have been replaced by simulcasts of KGWN/KCWY's Wyoming News Now broadcasts.

[mer764KCTV5 150]

4 minutes ago, T.L. Hughes said:

Gray shut down KNEP's news department and laid off staff in certain other departments on the same day the Marquee swap announced. Since February 2, the station's in-house newscasts have been replaced by simulcasts of KGWN/KCWY's Wyoming News Now broadcasts.

That doesn't sound right. That's not okay especially in a smaller market like where KNEP-TV serves.

[nathannah 2428]

2 hours ago, mer764KCTV5 said:

That doesn't sound right. That's not okay especially in a smaller market like where KNEP-TV serves.

With all of the issues, it may have just come down to that there literally isn't much advertising revenue to support the station even in a part-time bureau state and they were completely under water with the station (over the years the transmitter alone was a money sink which kept breaking down in the core of winter). Some of these smaller markets are down to a state where they're stalled out to the point of ripping and reading from Nixle and Facebook for much of the show (because police and municipal authorities don't want them to go deeper than that and openly obstruct them from doing so) and the only original content left is weather (which can be outsourced) and sports (outside the high school football and basketball regular seasons just a vacuum of time).

[GoldenShine9 1513]

1 hour ago, mrschimpf said:

With all of the issues, it may have just come down to that there literally isn't much advertising revenue to support the station even in a part-time bureau state and they were completely under water with the station (over the years the transmitter alone was a money sink which kept breaking down in the core of winter). Some of these smaller markets are down to a state where they're stalled out to the point of ripping and reading from Nixle and Facebook for much of the show (because police and municipal authorities don't want them to go deeper than that and openly obstruct them from doing so) and the only original content left is weather (which can be outsourced) and sports (outside the high school football and basketball regular seasons just a vacuum of time).

 

One solution may be to have identical newscasts except for weather coverage, which can be accomplished by having 1 or 2 additional meteorologists at the parent station and a second green screen so they can go live there if needed.

[CircleSeven 1955]

Gray is about to expand its Investigate TV franchise to the Spanish-speaking audience.

 

InvestigateTV+ en Español will premiere on 2/26 on their Telemundo affiliates. 

 

Most of them will air it as a lead-in for its early evening newscasts. 

[Megatron81 258]

Has any TV station group taken Investigate TV or is this only Gray TV stations in the markets they are in. I know Gray said that they would be selling it to TV stations that wanted to air Investigate TV, I guess no takers for that cheap show. 

[TheRob 937]

I heard there were some creative services layoffs at our local Gray station. That was one place where Gray tried to staff up after Meredith cut the station to the bone.

[Howard Beale 57]

This somehow flew under the radar.

A news anchor at KMOV in St. Louis referred to Black homeowners as "colored" homeowners in a news tease.  The NABJ called out KMOV, and according to the group, "there have been multiple on-air apologies and KMOV management has met with local leaders."  I didn't see any apologies or statements on KMOV's website about what happened or why it happened.

Video of what happened: https://www.tiktok.com/@therealfoxyroxystl/video/7340308283971980590

 

[tyrannical bastard 3948]

On 2/28/2024 at 3:41 PM, TheRob said:

I heard there were some creative services layoffs at our local Gray station. That was one place where Gray tried to staff up after Meredith cut the station to the bone.

That's a shame, since Meredith basically decimated their creative service departments before their sale, and Gray had to literally re-staff them all over again.

 

Then again, KCTV has been a dumpster fire for quite some time.  Under Meredith, it was a great place for people to fall "upward".

Edited March 4, 2024 by tyrannical bastard

[GodfreyGR 652]

13 hours ago, Howard Beale said:

I didn't see any apologies or statements on KMOV's website about what happened or why it happened.

Why would they need to? If you found this video on their website you could surely find the supposed multiple on-air apologies in the newscasts as well.

 

Sounds like the station and staff worked to correct a wrong... Poor word choices, yes. Learning opportunity, Certainly! Career-ending move? No. 

[Howard Beale 57]

37 minutes ago, GodfreyGR said:

Why would they need to? If you found this video on their website you could surely find the supposed multiple on-air apologies in the newscasts as well.

 

Sounds like the station and staff worked to correct a wrong... Poor word choices, yes. Learning opportunity, Certainly! Career-ending move? No. 

I didn't find the video on their website.  Someone else did and posted the video to TikTok.  I searched KMOV's website and did not find the initial video or any subsequent apologies.  However, from what I've read online, Cory Stark did apologize.

"Poor word choices" is an understatement.  Yes, mistakes happen, but we're talking about an outdated and racist term for Black people that somehow made it into a news broadcast in 2024.

[nycnewsjunkie 1439]

1 hour ago, Howard Beale said:

I didn't find the video on their website.  Someone else did and posted the video to TikTok.  I searched KMOV's website and did not find the initial video or any subsequent apologies.  However, from what I've read online, Cory Stark did apologize.

"Poor word choices" is an understatement.  Yes, mistakes happen, but we're talking about an outdated and racist term for Black people that somehow made it into a news broadcast in 2024.

So instead of using it as a learning opportunity for everyone in the newsroom, let’s fire/cancel the guy? I fail to see how that helps anyone. It’s far more productive to heed the lesson from this experience so that people avoid repeating similar mistakes in the future.

 

Not to mention, this cluster f goes beyond one person. If I’m not mistaken, scripts are supposed to be written, edited, and reviewed before going to air. Something went seriously wrong with that process if no one caught that phrasing before hitting air, and work should be done to correct that process. Unless this was done with malicious intent (which by all accounts, it wasn’t), they don’t need to go on a pink slip crusade.

[Howard Beale 57]

29 minutes ago, nycnewsjunkie said:

So instead of using it as a learning opportunity for everyone in the newsroom, let’s fire/cancel the guy? I fail to see how that helps anyone. It’s far more productive to heed the lesson from this experience so that people avoid repeating similar mistakes in the future.

 

Not to mention, this cluster f goes beyond one person. If I’m not mistaken, scripts are supposed to be written, edited, and reviewed before going to air. Something went seriously wrong with that process if no one caught that phrasing before hitting air, and work should be done to correct that process. Unless this was done with malicious intent (which by all accounts, it wasn’t), they don’t need to go on a pink slip crusade.

 

I don't think there's a need to "fire/cancel the guy."  If this was an honest mistake, treat it as such, and learn from it.  But don't sweep it under the rug either.  I doubt many people would have known about this if the NABJ didn't issue a statement.  KMOV owes its audience an explanation of how and why this happened.

Edited March 4, 2024 by Howard Beale
Added extra line break for formatting.

[nycnewsjunkie 1439]

1 hour ago, Howard Beale said:

I don't think there's a need to "fire/cancel the guy."  If this was an honest mistake, treat it as such, and learn from it.  But don't sweep it under the rug either.  I doubt many people would have known about this if the NABJ didn't issue a statement.  KMOV owes its audience an explanation of how and why this happened.

Understood, and I totally agree with you there. They should be transparent with viewers about this and shouldn’t pretend it didn’t happen.

[Howard Beale 57]

On 3/3/2024 at 11:58 PM, Howard Beale said:

This somehow flew under the radar.

A news anchor at KMOV in St. Louis referred to Black homeowners as "colored" homeowners in a news tease.  The NABJ called out KMOV, and according to the group, "there have been multiple on-air apologies and KMOV management has met with local leaders."  I didn't see any apologies or statements on KMOV's website about what happened or why it happened.

Video of what happened: https://www.tiktok.com/@therealfoxyroxystl/video/7340308283971980590

 

Here's an update from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  In short, KMOV's GM said the script originally said "homeowners of color" but "was inadvertently changed and mistakenly read on air."

 

More info: https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/kmov-apologizes-after-anchor-uses-colored-to-describe-minority-homeowners/article_35c21cca-da56-11ee-b988-9b2d028d026b.html

 

 

[aandersen93 5]

This week KNOP ended production of their own morning show. They are now airing sister station KSNB's morning show in its place, inserting North Platte news and weather into the show, and now giving 2 hours of news to North Platte versus the 1 hour show they produced before. No KNOP on air staff left, as they are still on air for the the midday show in North Platte.

 

On KNOP, they now show a Local 4 on News 2 logo and still have the KNOP ticker that was there before.

 

This comes on the heels of sister KNEP (which KNOP produced the morning show for and provided weather for all shows) shutting down their news department and shows.

Edited March 9, 2024 by aandersen93

[tyrannical bastard 3948]

So does KNOP have any local North Platte newscasts left?

 

Since Glendive hasn't done any local news for years, this could be the smallest market that produces a local newscast of any kind.

 

Alpena's WBKB only does a 6:30 morning show and newscasts at 6:00 and 11:00.  They reintroduced local weather but relied on NewsNet for a while (probably due to staffing shortages).

[Samantha 2895]

3 minutes ago, tyrannical bastard said:

So does KNOP have any local North Platte newscasts left?

 

Since Glendive hasn't done any local news for years, this could be the smallest market that produces a local newscast of any kind.

 

Alpena's WBKB only does a 6:30 morning show and newscasts at 6:00 and 11:00.  They reintroduced local weather but relied on NewsNet for a while (probably due to staffing shortages).

 

All they did was cut mornings; they are still producing their midday and evening news.

[aandersen93 5]

9 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

So does KNOP have any local North Platte newscasts left?

 

Since Glendive hasn't done any local news for years, this could be the smallest market that produces a local newscast of any kind.

 

Alpena's WBKB only does a 6:30 morning show and newscasts at 6:00 and 11:00.  They reintroduced local weather but relied on NewsNet for a while (probably due to staffing shortages).

They still air a Midday at 11:30, 6pm, and 10pm show.

 

A 5pm was never added to KNOP, because at one point they produced a 5pm on KNPL 10/11 North Platte that was very short lived as a result of Gray buying Hoake the year after they stood up their own NP station, which has been cut for years now.

[Guest]

On 2/1/2024 at 6:15 PM, GoldenShine9 said:

What value does KCBU have for Gray though? Unless they acquire KSL (and there's no indication Bonneville is selling), it's an isolated asset with no real value.

I think the state's main cable operator Comcast might be in a wild card to add KSLTV5 (if Bonneville is ready or not to sell) since they have a local Telemundo O&O in the NBCU O&O station porfolio.

[GoldenShine_10 96]

Transcript from Gray's Q1 2024 call. At this time, any significant M&A looks out of the picture, as they are focusing on paying down the debt and building their core. (Although they have plenty of space with the UHF discount).

[Guest]

 

Another station using GrayONE graphics and another Gray station dropping the CBS eye if not all (see KKTV, WCAX, and WABI).

[TennTV1983 804]

3 hours ago, dzonershow said:

 

Another station using GrayONE graphics and another Gray station dropping the CBS eye if not all (see KKTV, WCAX, and WABI).

 

We have a thread for that: 

 

Also, welcome to the forum!

[PTVNews 194]

On 12/27/2023 at 11:30 AM, tyrannical bastard said:

Is Gray still planning on keeping their stations logos as they are, or was their network logo "purge" a ploy by Gray to hardball their networks into renewals?

 

Based on my observations, ALL of their NBC stations removed the NBC logo, and some of the CBS stations no longer have the CBS eye as part of the logos. 

 

ALL of the ABC and FOX stations owned by Gray have the network logos intact.  Same with any CW or MyNetwork stations.

 

Any market where Gray has NBC along with other networks also stripped the network branding for most all  the other ones they carry as well.

 

I'm not sure if this was ever confirmed or not, but after reading this when posted, I've been on the lookout on KPTV for signs of change.

 

This past week they debuted new mic flags with the brand of "12 News", which is definitely new for them. Still uses similar styling. No other graphical or audible changes. Everyone is still tagging out with "FOX 12 Oregon". I'm guessing this probably is an indication of a larger branding change, (and in my opinion dumb), otherwise why the new mic flags? Maybe trying to introduce it slowly and fade out "FOX" slowly?

 

 

 

Edited May 28, 2024 by PTVNews