T.L. Hughes

As of the date of this writing (January 8), Showtime has officially rebranded as Paramount+ with Showtime; interestingly the name change only applies to the primary channel. Paramount Global wisely chose not to rename its six multiplex channels, keeping the standalone Showtime brand on those channels rather than applying what would be a janky and unwieldy naming scheme to them (meaning, for example, SHOxBET didn't become the math equation sounding Paramount+ with SHOxBET). Confusingly though, that means the linear network now has two separate brand schemes (the Paramount+ co-brand for the main channel, and the standalone Showtime brand for its other channels). The screenshots below illustrating the two-tiered naming scheme are from my YTTV account: The Showtime-branded multiplex channels continue to use the promo graphics introduced in August 2022 for their "up next/tonight" bumpers.

WPIX reporter Mary Murphy has announced her retirement from broadcasting after a 40-year career. Murphy began her career at WPIX in 1983, spending four years there. After a seven-year stint at WCBS, she returned to PIX11 in 1993, where she has remained since (spending 14 years of that tenure as weekend co-anchor, before moving back to an assignment reporting role in 2009).

Sinclair has announced agreements with CBS News and Stations to offer its four diginets on several of the Paramount-owned unit's CBS O&O and independent stations: Comet: New York — WCBS 2.5 San Francisco — KPIX 5.5 Charge!: Los Angeles — KCAL 9.3 Chicago — WBBM 2.5 Philadelphia — KYW 3.5 TBD: Miami — WBFS 33.6 Philadelphia — WPSG 57.2 San Francisco — KPYX 44.2 The Nest: Los Angeles — KCAL 9.2 San Francisco — KPYX 44.4

TVNewsCheck's Harry Jessel has his own opinion on the updated rules.

Actually, the bulk of the station's syndicated programming seems to be concentrated on weekends. Looking at TVPassport, the vast majority of the weekend schedule will be filled by barter shows: * Six of Allen Media's current first-run and off-network weekend shows: SOS: How to Survive, Cars.TV, Kickin' It, The World's Funniest Weather (and two Weather Channel shows I wasn't aware AMG had sold into OTA syndication) Top 10 and Deadline to Disaster; * Heartland (the long-running and still-running CBC family drama); * Forensic Factor; * Raceweek; * Just for Laughs Gags * Country Fix (apparently a music video program); * and Positively America with Ernie Anastos (a show from Alex Paen's Telco featuring interviews and "uplifting" stories) In addition, E/I shows Awesome Adventures and Wild About Animals will fill additional E/I commitments outside of the One Magnificent Morning block on Saturdays.

In the midst of the other diginet changes (between The365 and Outlaw's debuts, Dabl flipping from lifestyle to Black sitcoms, Circle going streaming-only and Twist shutting down), Allen Media's two multicast networks have also changed their schedules, with both This TV and TheGrio having apparently severed their licensing agreements to air various theatrical and independent films. For This TV, this has resulted in that network reaching the "total abandonment" phase of its network decay (to borrow from TVTropes), as movies have been a staple of the network since Weigel and MGM launched it in 2008. Under Allen, most of its film rights leaned toward indies, although it did air some older theatrical films (the balance leaned in the other direction under Weigel and Tribune ownership). AMG had already dropped older MGM series (which usually occupied overnight and early morning slots, again dating to This' launch) from the network's lineup in 2022, in favor of airing its in-house syndicated shows. To fill the former movie slots, This TV has added several Weather Channel originals (Top Ten, Weather Gone Viral, Highway Through Hell and Storm of Suspicion) and The World's Funniest Weather, and added extra airings of ES.TV and RecipeTV (the latter two shows as well as AMG's court shows are the only holdovers from the old movie-centered general entertainment format), while TheGrio has added sports in prime time and extra airings of AMG's court shows, Funny You Should Ask, Comics Unleashed and morning repeats of TheGrio News.

This was mentioned, but in a different thread. Thing is, KFFV would have to keep the KVOS simulcast, considering that its Grade B signal contour (as the FCC contour map indicates) basically stops at the northern end of downtown Seattle. Given that KFFV's transmitter is based in Seattle proper and therefore provides city-grade signal coverage throughout the Seattle metropolitan area, it would have made more sense for Weigel to put Univision on KFFV's main channel and move MeTV to a different sub (presumably DT2). Oklahoma City has a similar odd setup where its Univision affiliate, KUOK, has its full-power transmitter based near Woodward (~140 miles away, with a signal that doesn't even extend into central Oklahoma), forcing it to rely on a subchannel simulcast on its Telemundo-affiliated sister KTUZ-TV and a low-power translator (all are owned by Tyler Media Group) to provide city-grade coverage within the Oklahoma City area.

KOMO anchor Steve McCarron, who's been tapped to helm a new morning program on KUNS using the ARC brand (running from 8:00-10:00 a.m.) when that station switches to The CW on New Year's Day, answered this on X/Twitter: BTW, it looks like Weigel's KVOS will be taking over for KUNS as Seattle's Univision affiliate.

Technically, not all of the series on the new lineup are exclusively female-led: * One on One had Flex Alexander (Flex Washington) and Kyla Pratt (Breanna Barnes) effectively as co-leads until the show's Season 5 retool, when fellow original cast member Robert Ri'chard (Arnaz Ballard) was promoted to co-lead status alongside Pratt. (Alexander guest starred in a few episodes after the show's setting moved from Baltimore to Venice Beach.) * The Game technically qualifies as both a female-led and an ensemble series, since there is roughly equal emphasis on female and male characters (given the premise mainly focuses on the players of the fictional San Diego Sabers football team and their significant others, as well as the "momager" of one of the players).

Dabl rebranded/relaunched as a Black-focused comedy network a day earlier than the linked schedule indicated, switching formats at 6:00 a.m. ET today (December 29) with two back-to-back airings of The Parkers. This is the new logo: (Also, this Dabl discussion should probably be moved to the Paramount thread in "Corporate Chat".)

Doubtful that happens, but it opens up channel space for The365 and Outlaw to fill in non-Gray markets when they launch New Year's Day.

Here's WNDU in action:

So, what graphics system does GrayONE run on (presuming it wasn't developed to be compatible with other systems) and what system does KSNB and KNOP run their graphics on?

WVVA has updated its logo, and is now using a secondary slogan, "Here for You", which is not referenced verbally in the opens (unlike the primary "Two Virginias' News Leader" slogan). The station has also replaced "The Rock" with "Stream". Note the error in the voice track, compared to the open used, and the text misalignment/overlap in the time/temp bug: KSNB and KNOP have also adopted new graphics, but, curiously, what they adopted isn't GrayONE, but what appear to be modifications to the graphics they introduced in August 2022, with new opens in tow. Both stations have also changed news themes (swapping one Warner-Chappell package for another): KNOP switched from Gari's "The NBC Collection" to 615's "Seize the Day", while KSNB switched from said Gari theme to 615's "Tower V.6".

Given that Fox has historically had more rigid branding conventions than the other major networks (the only ones to deviate from using network-centric branding including WSVN, KHON, WDRB and KVRR), I think culling network references from Gray’s Fox affiliates would be much harder to implement. ABC has apparently been requiring affiliates to include the “circle” logo into their station logos, making it also unclear whether they can pull network branding.

Veteran WICU-WSEE anchor/reporter Emily Matson has died at 42. She was killed after being hit by a train in her hometown of Fairview Township, PA, in an apparent suicide, as determined by the Erie County Coroner's Office.

WTVO/WQRF has adopted NDC-3: Along with it, they switched SAM music packages: replacing “This is the Place” for “Unite”.

So, what about weekend newscasts? KOKH only produces a 9:00 newscast on weekends (although the Saturday edition is usually delayed, often running past 10:00, due to Fox Sports event telecasts). Most TV listings still have KTUL airing early evening and 10:00 p.m. newscasts on weekends.

I’m not fully convinced it’ll be a fully cable/satellite-exclusive network. TBN’s various networks—Inspire, Smile, Enlace USA and Positiv—are available on its OTA stations (they are pay-TV-exclusive in markets where TBN doesn’t own or have an affiliation with an OTA station), so there’s a decent probability that Merit Street ends up getting a subchannel slot on its O&Os, either as a new subchannel or as a replacement for TBN Inspire or Positiv. Merit Street does plan to offer FAST channels, whether that includes the main network is the question.

WSFA may be the next to switch to GrayOne. A user on Logopedia uploaded what appears to be an updated version of their logo:

Nexstar CEO Perry Sook now says the company expects The CW to break even by the end of 2025. That would require a lot of legwork, especially considering the cancellation of legacy series in favor of cheaper content could risk them ending up in the same situation as News Corporation did when it acquired The Family Channel and rebooted it as Fox Family (now Disney-owned Freeform): chasing away some of its existing viewer base as a result of removing virtually all of the programs it inherited from the previous ownership and, barring that it can generate hits from newer scripted (which it’s now open to develop as the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes are over) and unscripted content, winding up struggling to replace its core audience.

WPKD’s upcoming 8:00 p.m. newscast now has a premiere date and a title: Primetime News on KDKA+ will replace the interim 8:00 and 8:30 runs of Family Feud on January 8.

It should be noted, though, why it wasn’t clearing Days in pattern and only airing syndies in the early afternoon before NBC News Daily debuted. It’s believed that the show’s storylines involving the coming out of Will Horton (Sami and Lucas’ son) and his subsequent relationship with eventual husband Sonny Kiriakis didn’t sit well with KSL management (citing less-than-progressive attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community among sections of Utah’s Mormon community), prompting them to bust the show to the 1:05 a.m. slot—which it held for the rest of Days’ NBC run—in 2013. (KSL parent Bonneville International is owned by the LDS Church, and some of the church’s beliefs have seeped into the station’s programming decisions during its affiliations with CBS and NBC, contributing to certain network shows being preempted because of content that management deemed objectionable.) This continued after Will and Sonny left the canvas in 2020 (only making short-term return appearances thereafter); although the show had a similar same-sex relationship storyline involving Will’s younger half-sister Allie in the final year of the NBC run (that continued into the first year of the Peacock run, before the actress who played Allie left a few months ago). It is also theorized that KSL wanting to boost ad revenue by having more control over its daytime schedule, and the overnight slot making it easier for Days fans to record episodes without being subjected to breaking news preemptions that would often occur in the afternoon (supposedly reducing viewer complaints) were reasons for the move.

Thing is, season-to-date average viewership (1.15 million) runs pretty close to what Days was pulling in before it was shifted to Peacock, so that metric doesn’t seem to have changed much for NBC News Daily. The only ratings improvement that it has shown over Days is likely in the 25–54 demographic, and in viewer retention from lead-in local programming. Otherwise, NBC remains in third place among the Big Three networks during the afternoon, as it has been since c. the mid-1980s (when the network had four soaps—Days, Another World [which was then beginning its steady decline after showrunner Paul Rauch and head writer Harding Lemay left], Santa Barbara and Search for Tomorrow [which got cancelled for a second time in 1986]—plus game/talk shows in daytime).

So, I stumbled across this article in The Desk, from the same day the cease-and-desist was sent to Scripps, in which Adell explains his side of the story on WADL sale/CW affiliation dispute: