C Block

I didn't realize until not too long ago that KCNC and WXYZ had almost exactly the same set in the late 90s from pencilogic. Looks like WXYZ got it first.

To be fair, I believe these simulcasts are being added on the second station in most, if not all markets – not the primary one. The hour is being added on KICU, not KTVU, and KICU's programming lineup in the middle of the day is a wasteland anyway and has been for a long time.

I suppose she could stay in the business with her husband quitting his job, but that still feels like a really uncomfortable situation. I have in the past and currently work with on-air personalities with spouses in law enforcement (and even I've at least gone on a date or two with a cop, not that it ended well), but the wife of the police chief union during George Floyd seems like a pretty hard sell.

Looks nice. What's not to like? Maybe it's obvious they took pieces from the Victory Park studio, but I found it hard to believe they would trash that set after it debuted not that long ago.

Does anyone have any more info about the streaming channels that the ABC O&Os are launching? I've seen some "streaming producer" positions pop up at some of the O&Os. I haven't seen anything written about it in the trade publications. I'm getting the sense it'll be like the CBSN local editions.

That's a corner of the newsroom. They put that duratran/mural up several years ago. It wasn't repurposed from any set piece. The original weather center shot framing wasn't super HD-friendly, so they moved the camera and desk back and filled the wall with that duratran.

I haven’t paid too much attention to KUSA lately, but I noticed they’ve rebranded their morning show from “Mile High Mornings” back to simply “9News Mornings.” They’ve also brought back the “Colorado’s News Leader” tagline, and it seems like they’re starting to use the KTVD callsign in the KTVD branding. It seems like they’re trying to go back to a more sober and authoritative brand unlike…*gestures broadly* whatever they’ve been doing the last few years.

I'll park this here – some more of the Linda Kane look for KWGN from 2000 has made it to YouTube. This was also shortly before a new news director took over who painted everything blue and wanted to make everything look as safe as everything on KUSA. Also, for you WABC fans, there's a peek at Amy Freeze in there before she hit it big.

The schedule always gets messed up everywhere around the holidays. I wouldn't put too much thought into it.

Uhhh.... Also, it's a bit weird to include your competitor's logos in a promo, even for a split second!

Looks like it might end up as more of a refresh than an all-new set, but work is definitely underway.

Again, I'm not shouting "here's the new O&O graphics package confirmed!" – I just thought this topical was interesting and worth pointing out!

Not to encourage people to take this and run a mile with it, but I did find this KCNC topical rather interesting. The graphics in this certainly match the wider CBS rebrand pretty well.

I wish I knew more about them. There doesn't seem to be much of a trace online left about them. I wasn't really paying attention to any of this with that level of detail back then. The KCBS and KCNC 2003 looks were some of my favorites, and in my opinion, probably the best of the 2003 CBS O&O rebrands.

I remember reading a long time ago about a group called Rudhoney. I believe they did KCBS and KCNC’s 2003 looks, and I think they designed something for KNTV that never made air. Does anyone know more about them?

Huh, I had no idea that Chris Reed was doing this. He's also the one who has uploaded the most Denver news videos on YouTube. Spirit is probably the best of Jerome Gilmer's work. That KCNC 1997 rebranding was pretty memorable. I can't help but wonder though if management eventually thought the theme was too light. Spirit lived on in some bumps and the 4pm First News open for a while, but they switched to harder cuts starting in 1999/2000 before going mostly with XTreme in late 2001. The Denver stations had a tendency to throw away anything creative after a while and copy KUSA.

Another case of Lieberman only getting the story 30% right and then making up the rest.

It really depends on the situation. Traffic/programming will have a plan and several contingencies. I've produced a handful of newscasts that never aired because a football game beforehand ran long. We were lucky to even go on the air for ten minutes (sometimes even less) after Thursday Night Football.

I really doubt that'll happen. Wendy McMahon, the new head of CBS TV Stations, was the creative services director at WBZ years ago when the station switched from CBS4 back to the callsign branding and a heavy local emphasis.

Seems a little weird that they wouldn't just move Judge Judy up to 3pm and have a 4pm news instead, though Judge Judy tied KTVU for #1 yesterday at 4pm, so I guess they have their reasons.

The “new” logo is almost but not entirely indistinguishable from the old. I doubt they’ll ever get to universal adoption of the new logo. I’m in LA this week and saw some billboards with the new KABC logo, but I could only tell is was the “new” one by the absence of all the gradients.

Not anymore. Fox used to have a blanket license where producers could basically play whatever music they wanted to play without having to worry too much about it. Now, it's limited to mostly only music that's 100% licensed under SESAC. I believe it has affected other O&Os as well. MO2 certainly loosened up after Fox and with the addition of the 9am hour, but now it has gone back to close to where it was. The 9 still has a lot of interviews and segments, but even that has been toned down a little bit. The weekend show tried to really go outside the box for a while, but it has gone back to being fairly similar to the weekday hours. KCPQ will be fine. Fox TV Stations is actually a decent company, and once people there stop freaking out about Fox and get some organized leadership to help, the station will come out of it in better shape.

One of the unusual things Fox did when they acquired KCPQ is that they didn't install their own people in key management positions. In the last 20 or so years, anytime Fox bought or started up a station, they almost always brought in a GM and ND from existing O&Os. As a result, I guess KCPQ has had a pretty rough transition to Fox. As has already been mentioned upthread, they have a new GM from KMSP, the ND is gone and has not yet been replaced, and the AND has been replaced with an EP from KTVU. Expect more people from other O&Os to be moved to some of the many positions that are currently open there, and then more changes will follow I'm sure.

What, Fox doesn’t believe in Q anymore? Trust the plan…

I'm pretty sure they commissioned that look before anyone else. Here's how it looked in 1992, about a month after they moved into their current building: