caliwxdude

Well, this is big... and something you'd expect from Sinclair in small markets, but now it's coming to the middle markets too. Sinclair is consolidating KTUL news production with KOKH in Oklahoma City. Sounds like a few on-air folks have already been let go, but the axe will likely continue to swing as KTUL's Tulsa facility basically becomes a newsroom only with broadcasts originating from OKC beginning December 11. From the Tulsa World article: I can't find anything about this on the KTUL site, so it sounds like it's being kept sortof quiet. Given the fast developments, I'm guessing the KTUL and KOKH shows will become something like "Oklahoma News Now" statewide shows, and not truly local to either market. What a shame, and a sad end for one of the foundational TV and journalism brands in the state.

Since ESPN is running the technical production for these games, I think you'll be seeing the ESPN look for the foreseeable future.

Pretty sure the Raiders produce these games and syndicates it to KVVU in the Las Vegas market.

Nah, I think the primary "West Coast edition" feed of the national shows is still at 5:30pm PT. For a long time, only the LA market aired the national shows in the East Coast-style 6:30pm timeslot, but it's kindof all over the place now. However, if you look around markets out West, the hour-long 6:00pm show (with national news at 5:30) is still pretty commonplace.

Makes sense in the Bay Area, especially if KRON dumps most of the primetime news block for CW network programming. Not sure how the numbers have been doing as of late, but the 9:00pm hour was usually faring pretty well. Back when KRON first scrapped 9:00pm news for MyNetworkTV in 2006 (a huge mistake) KGO was pretty fast to pick it up over on KOFY.

Basically the same arrangement in Fresno, with KSEE and KGPE under one roof but maintaining separate brands and competing in the same time slots. However – KSEE/KGPE have one news director over both brands; if the Times article above is to be believed, KUSI's ND Steve Cohen doesn't have plans to go anywhere and I'm sure KSWB's ND Rich Goldner feels the same. Going to be a fascinating integration between the two, especially if they fully merge the newsrooms as was done in Fresno.

I've been to Fairbanks... and if I'm one of the rare new college grads these days with a broadcast journalism degree and my only option is KTVF, I'm probably going to either stay in school or go get a job at my local Starbucks. I'm surprised they just aren't simulcasting stuff from KTUU.

This is also an agriculture-driven small market that sees a lot of severe weather, so weather coverage dominates. Makes perfect sense to tightly integrate the weather center into the main news set since they'll be in wall-to-wall weather coverage at least a few times each spring.

Always a bummer to see local ownership selling to a larger corporation, but the economics of it just don't work anymore. The press release also mentions Hearst will be taking over the existing SSA for WZVN as well. It'll be interesting to see if Hearst continues to operate WZVN as its own distinct news operation, or if we'll start to see more cross pollination between the two newsrooms.

Yeah, it's pretty bad. Thought Sinclair might have opened up the budget for a station in a rapidly-growing market like Austin, but money is tight across the board these days. To be fair, it does shoot a bit nicer than the wide-angle pics posted upthread—but it's still super boring and uninspired. Makes me wonder what else they did in the five months they were in the makeshift studio since there's no way this took that long to assemble. I'm sure CBS/Paramount wishes they could go back to 2007 and have hung on to the station (I wish I would have bought my house here back in 2007, too), but it was a much different landscape both in local TV and in Austin back then.

KEYE morning anchor tweets that today was their last morning in the temporary studio, so it would seem like the new set debuts during the 5:00pm show today.

Ah yeah, I forgot this was part of a greater remodeling project on the building. As someone who's currently scoping out some home renovation projects, totally get how the dependencies and phasing work! Looking forward to seeing how all the work turned out.

Curious what's going on over at KXAN. They're still using the temporary studio, going on a full month after the new set's cameo during the Austin mayoral runoff debate. Guess now they're just waiting for the February book before moving in?

Yes, that's what they're doing, titled "KCAL News on CBS Los Angeles." The primetime news on KCAL remains: KCAL and KCBS have always been one news operation since 2003, but with separate on-air brands (visual identities were basically the same). So nothing has changed with who "produces" the news, but now it's just all unified under the KCAL News brand.

Ugh, I saw this too and was afraid this might be the case. Not sure why they didn't just put "Afternoon Edition" or "Evening Edition" in there, but guessing it's a hard-coded element that can't be easily changed on the fly. It's a total waste and looks terrible. This graphics package is highly templatized, and every other O&O will have the "CBS News [City]" lockup in that blue rectangle, a la KPIX. But since the CBS LA duo wanted to do their own thing and adopt the "KCAL News Los Angeles" brand, they had to put something in that spot. Creative director: "...so that blue box can't go away? Should we just stick 'LOS ANGELES' there?" Designer: "Yeah, sure, that'll work. Done."

Home of Disney's Digital Center 3, where ABC network feeds originate and MC for the ABC O&O group.

If they're producing promos for a "new KCAL" with the existing KCAL9 lockup, doesn't seem like they're moving away from the KCAL9 brand anytime soon. Also who launches new stuff on a Thursday?

Just adding in that it's a really nice rebrand. The overall downturn in local TV news has hit KPIX especially hard over the last few years, and the product has really fallen into the cellar of the Bay Area market. Yeah we'll miss the old Group W-style 5 (however it was starting to look really old), but I can't tell you the last time I used the channel number buttons on my remote now that almost all of my linear TV viewing is via streaming services. All in all a nice step up for PIX.

KFSN is the farm league for ABC's O&O group, so they don't get a ton of budget to play with. The last set was nearly 16 years old and only received a minor update for the station's HD conversion.

Awesome to see the great Ian Darke back calling World Cup games on US TV. Missed him for the 2018 World Cup coverage, glad Fox was able to pick him up for 2022. Now I just hope we get to hear more of the Pete Calandra soccer theme that Fox inexplicably shelved for the boring and uninspiring custom composition they used in 2018.

Gus Johnson was the biggest loss, IMO. Wish there was a way for CBS/Turner to bring him back just for March Madness coverage. Still going to be weird not hearing Nantz call the Final Four and championship games, but it makes sense. Fascinating how sports TV is turning over to the next generation over the past year, with new play by play voices in the lead spots for most networks. Ian Eagle is great (as is his kid Noah) and he'll be a solid lead PxP voice for CBS moving forward. I'm sure he's being groomed as the replacement for Nantz in the NFL lead booth at some point down the line too.

100%. I'm sure Bristol isn't too worried about things since MNF will still be a ratings juggernaut, but gotta wonder how they're going to compete in the overall production department with this. I'll stream TNF for Al Michaels... Joe Buck, not so much.

More than just the scorebug... the entire show is basically NBC Sunday Night Football on Thursday on Prime. Which is a really good thing for both football fans and the NFL—it uplevels the entire Thursday night game package into something that you'd want to watch week after week, instead of being an afterthought like it was in the Fox/NFL Network eras. The matchups were always crap in those days, and the production matched in quality. I'm sure the Fred Gaudelli/Al Michaels combo has a lot to do with the increase in overall quality, but also I thought Kirk Herbstreit was really great in his first true NFL role. Al makes it look easy, but he and Kirk already had great booth chemistry from the opening minutes of their first game. New music is awesome, too. The matchups still might stink, but at least the TV will be great.

The bones of this set look exactly like their old KUSA hand me down set, which FX zhuzhed up when they went HD in 2008. It looks like they're also retooling their presentation style by moving out of the "content center" and back into the studio. I haven't watched a full KXTV show since last November, but they were mostly single-anchored shows from a standup desk in the newsroom. Seems like this would signal a return to a more traditional dual-anchor style broadcast.

It's likely a glitch on the DirecTV side. Back in the early pre-spot beam era of DirecTV local channels, you'd occasionally see random out of market affiliates unblocked for a couple hours at a time due to a software glitch. From the late 1990s onward, DirecTV distant network services were always either from New York or Los Angeles. The Denver thing stems from the old old days when stations in that market were available free to air to C-band satellite users and part of the Primetime24 subscription service.