Fox Business had around 6,000 viewers in 2007 when they debuted. No calls from TVNT to immediately shut it down. Newsy's cable channel currently gets about 6,000 viewers and they've been on cable for years. No calls to shut that down either. NewsNation gets over 10 times those numbers and it must shut down immediately. Interesting...

I do not understand how, after just a few days on the air, someone can declare, "this will not survive" or that "Nexstar's plan is just all wrong." This is a well-produced program that just launched. It is way too early to rule it a failure or success. If success was measured solely by a program's first week, the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric would still be on the air. Also, comparisons to Al Jazeera and NewsNet aren't really applicable. The biggest cost in launching a news organization is not the set, it is the news gathering infrastructure, technology, and staff. Nexstar had that in place with newsrooms in over 100 markets, offering access to more reporters than any start-up could hope to achieve. I think they have established a promising news group for a modest investment of $20 million. I don't claim to be able to predict success or failure, but from a business perspective it seems to have good ROI potential.

Apparently someone in the KPIX graphics department reads TVNT. Now roll this out across the O&Os!

Launched new graphics, music, newsroom and production software today. Lots of hard work behind the scenes to make it happen. Let's hope I don't mess it up tomorrow morning!

Did Perry Sook run over your dog?

Lot of strong opinions in here for a show that's three days old. They're laying the foundation for a cable news network. The writing is on the wall, and i have to wonder why some of you feel so strongly after three days that it's a failure. It's well produced, they have all of the right people and equipment, and Sook himself /claimed/ they broke even on startup costs by ending some shows that aired on the WGNA, and Nexstar isn't exactly hurting for money right now. They've got big ticket ad revenue, at least based on commercials, so there's absolutely no reason in the near term for anyone to think NewsNation will fail. This is a long term commitment, and Nexstar has no intention of selling any part of WGN. Some of you are so willfully ignorant and stuck in the past that it hurts. Let the media landscape change for once without kicking and screaming the whole way.

This is probably the slowest corporate television company graphics roll out ever, It should go in the Guinness Book of World Records!!!

Can't confirm this directly, but according to this post from a retired engineer, as of September 5th, Two Thousand and Twenty, almost 14 years since this thread was created... WDSU-TV New Orleans is finally HD, debuting a new fully-HD control room. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1425282661005351/permalink/1548173738716242/

YES! YES! YEEEEEEAAAASSSSS!!!! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! For bringing back that familiar melody (with the ABC News signature of course) from the Peter Jennings era! AND, for getting rid of that Damn Hans Zimmer crap you used since 2012, when Diane Sawyer was at the helm. What a relief and a blessing to hear that Score Productions/Edd Kalehoff theme again.

A Twitter exchange I had at 1am that turned bizarre led me to think a lot tonight about NewsNation and how it's playing to potential viewers. So far, most Twitter conversation about NN has been from the right-of-center to right. This is a consistent theme I have noticed monitoring social media in recent days, and I have identified several reasons this might be the case: Slogan promotion turns off potential viewers on the left. Looking at you, "balance, not bias". In trumpeting their adherence to this principle, they may be actually causing their viewership to become even more imbalanced. Casual left viewers might be hearing that slogan and feeling like this is a competitor to Fox News. In this moment, conservatives might be more inclined to sample a new news product they haven't heard of. It feels like people on the left and center-left want to stick to names they know (e.g. CNN, MSNBC), whereas people on the right are actively looking for new voices—particularly if they are disaffected viewers of Fox News Channel. If you're not familiar with Nexstar, as is the case for the average TV viewer, NewsNation looks like TV news startup #47. Nothing about it provides the cues that say "mainstream media" on a national level—even though, ironically this operation is as "legacy" as new news operations get, given its reliance on decades-old local TV newsrooms and people that once worked in them! This is one factor that might boost interest on the right but dampen it on the left. Is Antenna TV promotion hurting? The thread that got weird on me fast actually was about someone on the left who was skeptical about NN merely because it was being heavily advertised on Antenna TV alongside other "conservative grifters" and MyPillow. Is "both sides" a structural fallacy? From the bracket logo on down, Nexstar's "both sides" positioning might be flawed, and this is a macro problem well beyond Bradley Place. I think this is growing ever more common as a theme on the left, where most people and actors expect the two-party system of American politics to display some symmetry whereas it's actually becoming increasingly lopsided. The entire concept of NN as it is positioned might actually be playing into a structural fallacy. And it's one that generally doesn't bother local TV stations, from which NewsNation borrows so, so much in terms of content and presentation. Potential gatekeepers: It's so weird to think this, but in 2020, Nexstar has built a new news product that will in about a month go behind a TV Everywhere paywall. That will remove a lot of cord cutters—and young, left-skewing people—from the audience. (It also appears WGN America has lost some distribution here and there in its years of general irrelevance, and it doesn't seem to be on many vMVPDs.) Oh, and Nexstar REALLY needs to get WGN America's West Coast feed sorted out so this program airs live nationwide. The wind on this archery target might already have been pushing the audience to the right of the dead-center bullseye given the middle America focus. I was asked why I was even looking at tweets about NN. I know the #KHive people won't see this message, but I might as well say it. I've been interested in the local TV business since I was little, and I was practically raised on cable news. This is the most ambitious project related to local TV news in years. It's the biggest gamble of Perry Sook's career, and there is intense scrutiny on whether this will be a winner or a failure we file alongside News Out of the Box or This Day. When Sook bought Tribune, he bought WGN—which included a lot of extra studio and building space, people with expertise in national television production, and a directionless cable channel already in millions of homes that was an effective blank slate. All three are part of the NewsNation recipe, as are (of course) all the Nexstar newsrooms. And a personal note. I'm a news junkie! Of course NewsNation is not my only source of news. Certainly I consume content that would be recognized as further toward the left, whether that be CNN or The Intercept. But I also have found it useful enough as a complement to those other sources to follow and watch regularly.

Thank you. Perry's here for the long haul.

They literally just launched. I don't get the rationale of assuming something is a failure when they haven't even been on the air for a full week. So far I see them as a success. They have a high-quality product and a robust operation with an entire broadcasting group to support their content. Let's give them time. It will take time to get a permanent audience, but that's perfectly normal. When someone pulls the plug on something early, then they are in the wrong line of work. Experienced business leaders know that it takes time to build success.

Wow, who called it that they would actually do a talent open? Because THEY DID IT.

Nexstar is pumping money and new sets into all their markets. Its refreshing. WBNS is unwatchable now. Literally. Thats a story in itself. Im not alone on this, right? 10-15 years ago they were incredible. High energy music, graphics, top tier talent. Looked like a top 20 station. The light and fluffy tegna opens and stuff doesnt fit a hard newscast. The newscasts have no soul or identity. And now.. they replace a legend with some trendy 12 year old from Toledo.

I'm waiting for "KIEM Tonight", I've paid for a front row seat to see that.

There are a few things that everyone needs to keep in mind. 1. NewsNation does not have the benefit of "star power", a big-time name personality with automatic recognition a la Shepard Smith. Really, Dean Reynolds (CBS) and Rob Nelson (World News Now) are the only air talent with previous name recognition. It's both a good thing (less salary and less worry about ratings right away to justify the salary) and bad (the lack of a big draw that results in people tuning in out of curiosity). But sometimes... generic is good? Look at “no-frills” supermarkets like Aldi and compare them to Kroger. 2. WGNA is a network that is now in a transition mode. The west coast feed only came about when the channel finally rid itself of the last few vestiges of anything Chicago beside the name. But what has been the purpose for WGNA since 2013? They had something going with original scripted programming until the Sinclair takeover attempt killed those plans, since then it had been programmed with blocks of procedural reruns and a few sitcoms. I'm not sure NewsNation benefits from having Last Man Standing as a lead-in, nor is it really necessary to run Blue Bloods episodes on a loop during the daytime. (That’s what Ion is for lmao.) The intent is clear that WGNA will shed the remainder of their rerun inventory and replace it with more news and information programming, thus making the west coast feed unnecessary. As to when that happens? Well, it should have been this past Tuesday, but I have no idea if contractural agreements with satellite distributors are causing or resulting in a hold-up. 3. Perry’s stance on “news, not bias” sounds somewhat kitschy (if it’s repeated endlessly for brand reinforcement), but it’s clearly with purpose and with merit. He’s basically going the total opposite direction that Sinclair had gone with their “must runs” and overt focusing on news from a partisan lens, and is doing it on purpose. Case in point, a memo he sent to his stations in early June during the initial protests over George Floyd’s murder that called for them to not go down the path of “endless adrenaline shots of conflict.” It’s more than being fair, it’s about de-escalating alongside objectiveness. And I’m gonna be blunt, the cable nets did a ton to escalate that unrest because they had no reason to be dispassionate. They were playing to their audience. 4. It’s about the advertising. Nexstar is able to get blue-chip advertisers for NewsNation that are not going to buy with Fox News primetime (for obvious reasons) and/or MSNBC. In that sense, they’re already better off than they had been with previous entertainment fare, plus they can keep the money outright instead of paying the entertainment programming distributors. Shedding that inventory has helped allay the cost of building out the operation, and they’ve been very forthright about that. Ratings may initially be down now but it’s making more money with a totally different audience to boot. 5. One thing that is kind of striking is how Nexstar hasn’t slacked off on the presentation of NewsNation one bit. There would have been so many ways this could have gone sideways—either from a reporting/anchoring perspective or from a visual perspective—and they didn’t. Perry Sook and Jen Lyons’ commitment to this is deeply visible as it wasn’t pushed back drastically or abandoned due to covid, and it’s obvious he sees something good in this for the industry, not just his conglomerate. I kinda joked that Perry’s running this effort as if Nexstar is the successor to Tribune, not a company that merely acquired Tribune. 6. The biggest flaws are totally out of the hands of anyone in Chicago, the technical aspects, the online distribution of the program post-September, and the overall state of WGNA. Nexstar’s gonna have to learn the hard way about the benefits of OTT streaming for all of their stations and for NewsNation. Expansion of the news production is inevitable as syndication contracts run out. That west coast feed is problematic. And then there’s the channel name itself and how that factors into this overall evolution. All that being said, this program wasn’t built for ratings right off the bat. And that’s the point. Ted Turner wanted to think big with CNN and Headline News because news gathering meant and means a lot. This program does think big and should be allowed to do so. I hope it succeeds, even if their definition of “success” is much different from other applications of the word.

It's really hard to call these new graphics since they are almost 2 years old.

One of us. One of us. One of us. One of-

While we didn't build the set, BDI did tap us to produce the coffee table with the Cleveland logo... Pretty happy with how it turned out and glad to know people like it!

I would not stampede into a national morning show right now. Work on the three hours you've committed to at night. Let it mature, knowing you'll be slaughtered in the ratings out of the gate. If anything, with people working from home or not working at all, the next logical step, years from now, would be a midday/early afternoon national newscast for your local stations.

TJ Holmes joining GMA3 as co-anchor starting Monday

Maybe Dado simply doesn't have the budget to find something to record better than bandicam, who knows. It's none of our business to ask about Dado's financial situation anyway.

That only works if you're within range of the TV signal. Recording off the Internet is trickier. I'm grateful for those who put in the effort to upload news opens and such, regardless of the means of recording it.

Putting your own logo watermark on content you post but don't own is tacky as hell.

Well, if Wikipedia says it...

I guess the most analogous example would be Newsy. Their cable channel had access to 25 million households at its launch in 2017 and currently sits at 40 mil. Yet, their primetime numbers are considerably below NewsNation's (20k vs 60-100k). I don't live in a Scripps market so I can't say how much they market it on their stations. Sure you can factor in the fact they have an online stream, but anyway. The point I'm trying to make is that even though NewsNation didn't have millions of viewers out of the gate, it doesn't mean they should just give up after 2 weeks. Plus, in this day and age of political tribalism and waning numbers for cable overall, one shouldn't expect them to come super strong out of the gate. Sure, if after a number of months they still struggle to pull a decent viewership, then they should review their options, but 2 weeks is far too soon. They spent millions on this, I don't think they should throw it all away based on a slow start. As with many things in life, persistence is key. Actually Scott Jones is reporting that the numbers are starting to perk up. This past Wednesday, according to him, they averaged 105k viewers, the first time they reached six digits since the premiere. Maybe a one-off, maybe the start of a trend. It's far too early to say. Just like it's far too early to say they should shut down right this instant.

That was at my urging. If you can't read the bug, whats the point of having one, right?

Yes!! Good to have the quasi old theme back. The 1978 version followed by the late 90s/early 00s were my favorite. Now if only we can get John Williams' theme back on NBC's Today.

WGNa wasn't salvageable to begin with. Did you miss reruns of Blue Bloods, In the Heat of the Night or movies? If so, just say it. But you don't have to be pissed off too much. @CalItalian2, who hurt you?

Really? A new color scheme and text size take a year and a half? WHAT!?

This is just me, but I know what I like and I know what I don't and I like NewsNation and I will keep watching it and I know in time people may possibly see the benefit from it and realize on those other cable shows in primetime that the news matters first not for their name to be in the title. And personally I don't care about the ratings as should a lot of people. News matters first.

It really was a year unlike any other for syndies. The impeachment hearing resulted in an unprecedented volume of daytime preemptions, and it wasn't long after that that COVID hit and led to more preemptions and an abrupt halt to the year.

That's their Investigative unit package. They've had it for a while. From what I've heard from people "in the know": -The weather graphics were only changed to the CBSN local package because most stations don't have the resources to maintain two looks. -Any plans for new graphics are indefinitely on hold due to the Viacom takeover and COVID. I'm considering closing this thread, it's becoming a "graphics speculation" thread where people just point out any random oddity as a "sign" of new graphics.

Here’s the final set of pics for the night. Overall, solid start. And however bias this may sound..I love hearing.. ‘Live from Chicago.. This is News Nation... Your News Your Nation’.

I think NewsNation should run hourly newsbreaks in between regular programming on WGNA and break in if necessary to cover breaking news events before showtime.

The graphics and music are absolutely beautiful. The only odd thing to me is how the bug is lower on the screen than L3. It almost looks like there should be a ticker down there. The “Your Vote: Your Nation” branding is perfect for them. Loved that talent open!

I am watching it right now and the newscast is amazing. What I love about the newscast is the presentation as well as the stories. I will say that NewsNation is going to do great things, and I am interested in seeing how NewsNation will do in the days and months ahead.

Today marks the 24th anniversary of the launch of ABC 33/40 in Birmingham. At the time, it was a merger of WCFT TV-33 in Tuscaloosa and WJSU TV-40 in Anniston, coupled with a low-powered station in Birmingham, WBMA-LP. This also merged the two markets into Birmingham, and eventually made WBMG (now WIAT) the sole CBS affiliate for the now-combined market. WNAL was supposed to be the "second" station, but that went to WJSU instead....they served as the CBS affiliate for the remaining tenure of Anniston-Gadsden's time as a separate market. Allbritton would continue to run the stations until their merger with Sinclair. "33" and "40" were sold off to Howard Stirk at the last second after Sinclair tried some antics to "own" them outright, but decided to give up the licenses unless a buyer was found. Today, the station is avaiable on WBMA-LD, WABM-DT2, WDBB-DT2, and is still simulcast on Stirk-owned WGWW-DT2 (the former WJSU or "40") Several staff members are still there today, including anchor Brenda Ladun, and of course, the venerable James Spann who had departed WBRC for their switch to Fox as part of this launch.

Muir surely was on last week, and the week before that. Where you've been?

It’s not going to stop. They’re the most watched program across all of television, not just news, but across all television. They’re unlikely to change anything about their current formula.

Also, is anyone else creeped out by the CBS eye in this shot?

Meredith is reeling from the COVID pandemic and it's effects on an already dying magazine industry. They may be worse off than Media General was a decade ago since there may not be a savior in the wings like Warren Buffett to buy away the money-losing print publications. At this point, the company is going to have to cast off their TV stations to keep the lights on for a quarter or two, than it's likely going to end up in bankruptcy, and probably an auction of the remaining assets.

I was just watching a video on WPXI.com which has a new big story FSG and new L3s. I watched WPXI on tv this morning but they are using the older graphics still. Could this just be an online look? Or maybe they’re testing new graphics online first? If these are going to be new on-air, they look better than the black/gold KDKA graphics. https://www.wpxi.com/news/top-stories/activists-say-actions-protesters-captured-viral-videos-does-not-represent-justice-movement/6T6FEZFZUVGKLDJ5ZV5Y6JLI24/

They’re fine to me. Unplug your router then plug it back in. Then see if the quality is better.

Good for David! It's about time. Now that means 11am and 5pm are wide open. Wonder who it'll be. Maybe Adam and Gilma? Stay tuned.

TVNewsCheck states that David Ushery will anchor the 4 & 11pm broadcasts starting in October.

Nice touch with the mountains in the background. Adds a bit more depth. A suitable color scheme for Colorado, really, given how cold it gets.

The few times I've watched CBSN (mostly back when the 10pm show on KBCW was still a thing), the slight misalignment between the bug and lower-third bar drives me crazy. Can't believe no one has fixed this yet.