TheOneManHerd

Ladies and gentlemen, the next mayor of Jacksonville:

I thought it was a late April Fool's joke at first, but I'm sure the staff there is breathing a sigh of relief.

That is, quite honestly, a very good idea. It's well known that the only thing many people still turn to linear TV for is live sports. If I was running an independent station, I'd most definitely be looking into some local sports rights...if the price is right.

What a find: Chris Thomas' last sportscast at WBAL before leaving for an illustrious decade and change at WFLA. A bit of melancholy seeing him with Vince Gibbens, seeing how they both died so tragically young.

I think they might have actually managed to out-happy WPVI's "happy people" open.

WESH newscast from September 1990, with one of the clunkier slogans I've heard. It didn't last long, the slogan that is. Also one of the only newscasts I've seen outside of New England that opens with the lottery numbers from earlier in the day.

I don’t know if anyone knows the composer, but you probably remember it from this WKBW promo.

Did they have a staffer voice those opens?!

I don’t think there’s an affiliate in America that wouldn’t approve of this. I’m sure they’d all love to have an hour-long 10.

Well, the one thing people watch local news for more than anything these days is for the weather. Even with that in mind, 7 or 8 mets on staff seems like overkill; but then again I'm not the one hunkered down in the weather center during a EF5.

I followed him on Instagram, though I didn’t even know his name. After all, it wasn’t his account, but the helicopter’s account. Nonetheless, a wonderful ambassador for WFLA.

The list of locally-produced sitcoms is, unsurprisingly, short. A lot of people in the TV business know of Park Street Under, the sitcom produced by WCVB that's believed to have inspired Cheers and is still remembered by Bostonians of a certain age. On the other hand, you have this: Hamtramck, a production of WDIV in Detroit. A disaster according to almost everyone, it caused the station to be inundated with phone calls from offended viewers, mostly from the Polish community. In fact, according to Mort Crim's memoir, word of the show and it's portrayals made it to Poland itself, and those Poles who heard of it also hated it. In fact, when Crim was on assignment there, his interpreter nearly deserted him when she learned that he worked for WDIV. She stayed on only after Mort and crew convinced her they had nothing to do with Hamtramck. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IZiVLneyHRpQqQuEXlUgRZW8tasZIaEt/view

One of the all-time great station campaigns, WJZ's "Pictures In The Skies". A campaign that, hilariously, Al Sanders did not like. "What does that mean?!", he would exclaim. That tidbit just adds to the campaign's charm, IMHO And I might as well shoehorn this in too, a version of "Pictures" with the incomparable Ernie Anderson.

"Pittsburgh is not a sports town." Yeah, and New Yorkers aren't picky about their pizza. If these are the kind of people CBS are hiring to run their stations, some of you might have a point about a possible sale down the road. These are the actions of a company that doesn't see broadcasting as a priority.

It's an update to a previous theme KPRC used between 83-86, and it's a theme that sounds a lot like Telesound.

That's some unfortunate foreshadowing coming from that logo.

Good luck finding an aircheck this old in this good of quality. WTMJ April 10th, 1968.

Paywalled. Here's the free Yahoo! version: https://news.yahoo.com/bidding-war-cbs-nbc-could-140024162.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANUOyWS8FP7dIQrNS91Y5MxCj1tjEddWwXVdXUBZ4CgTWc2ST5a8XfIGM9GKb0vsPDV9jXdNguFAYJkqh2wxhQlc0I_GQTgAoiwGZgJAVlSw4ylEHEP30j8Jc896No2US4NBHNxRThJb7rUqhEG4cyPncWgqq1lfbORURAlCaw-f I'm sure some of you remember that the Fox O&Os made a significant push for Wheel and J! last time those shows were up for renewal. It's really a testament to the format, and the genre as a whole, that there's such a desire for the shows even to this day.

There's No Substitute...

The Lehigh Valley is one hot market.

Still super weird seeing Clayton Vaughn in New Joisey.

It's just a guess on my part, but maybe Hummingbird Productions?

The weatherman? Dr. George Fischbeck (or simply Dr. George); holder of AMS Seal #92, a bit of an unusual thing to have in LA.

Well, Ernie would get his “revenge” (in a manner of speaking) four years later when he voiced the open for a CBS affiliate. Maybe they were allowed to do voice work for another network’s local stations.