compubit

They could call it “Space City Home Sports Entertainment” and resurrect the legacy HSE brand…

I’m liking their implementation - mostly due to not using the extra bold fonts everywhere. (Though a little mixed case text wouldn’t be too bad). My biggest complaint on the font is that the M looks out of place, as the inside doesn’t appear to even go halfway down the letter… Jim

I’m not sure if they’ve fixed it, but in the opens, the blue “CBS News Colorado” covered up the station ID when the package was first released, making it look like the station was “NC-TV Denver”…

Since we don’t have specific dates, I wonder if the reason it was unaired is: - Just as they were going to use it, CBS rolled out their “We’ve Got the Touch” series of promos - There was a management change who didn’t like the jingle/theme - Something else… (not going to take it any further into Speculatron areas on my part…)

What I found interesting is that although MTN is a statewide brand, the various stations still do their own newscasts (KPAX, KTVQ, KRTV, KXLF/KBZK, and KTVH) during the evening hours at least.

I concur on the font - it just looks too “chunky” (the only word I could come up with). The “SIOUXLAND’S NEWSCHANNEL” font is fine, but there are much better general L3/GFX fonts available. Even going back to the basics (Helvetica/Univers/DIN 1451/Frutiger/Myriad/News Gothic) would look better, IMHO. Just for god’s sake, please do not use Arial!

I would think an 11pm rebroadcast at 4/4:30 would work - the only thing I would consider would be to record a toss to morning weather for a little more current info. West coast is weird, in that a 4am would work better, as some folks out there work work east coast times, so are more likely to be up earlier. Also being in DC, a 4am newscast didn’t help one of my coworkers: he left home at 3:30am to beat the traffic from Culpeper (70+ miles away). He did stream the 6am news from WDAY (his hometown station…) at the office…

While they’re adjacent, I’d think they’re far enough apart to have shared virtual channels, but I’d let the FCC decide that one, But then you have to consider Philadelphia/New York/Hartford, where you have duplicate Virtual Channels: New York/Philadelphia share 2,4, 6, 7, 8 and 10 (with both 2 and 8 also in the Hartford/New Haven market) - and that’s on the “VHF” band. “UHF” virtual channel numbers (14-69) also have a lot of duplication… Whereas DC and Baltimore should be a “No Go” in my opinion, considering the main transmitters are about 30 miles apart…

Branding can be whatever they want to use. The only legal requirement is the Top of Hour ID which requires just Call Sign and City of License.

Or could they go with something like KiAH has - traffic, weather and headlines in the morning and leave the 10pm to WPVI?

Question about YouTube TV and Nexstar CW stations. I’m visiting Huntsville, AL, and when I go to CW, I get “Unavailable in the location” - but the station is an OTA station here (WHDF/15), as well as on 19.2. Any thoughts on this? I get WDCW/50 back home in DC… Jim

I read this as “They’re not expecting the writers strike to be ending quickly, so let’s import stuff to air - even if it’s available streaming” [because we’re Nexstar and we don’t believe in streaming]…

I like the color selection: Dark Gold and Dark Teal - I don’t recall seeing it used anywhere else, plus it feels very apropos for the ABQ/NM market. Jim

Just playing catch up with watching WCBS: right now, they seem to be all over the map within a single newscast. I’m hearing: - CBS 2 News - CBS 2 News New York - CBS 2 New York - CBS News New York All depending on who’s speaking - and that’s in the first 5 minutes of the newscast… It seems that they’re headed to CBS News New York - just stumbling there along the way, rather than making the hard cut… (and I’m taking to the theme music and graphics…) Jim

My 2 cents: - There is a heritage in the primary local stations, often tied to channel number, call signs city and network(s). It’s up to the marketing and ownership to decide how they want to brand. - You can’t compare local NBC/ABC/CBS/Fox stations with MeTV or Bounce (or other diginets). The local stations often air local content (news/public affairs/infotainment), to help distiguish themselves from each other; the diginets are basically pre-programmed filler for the spectrum with ad opportunities (and yes, I’m aware some stations may opt out of a program or 2 for local content, but in general, they have no say on the programming). - The US market is different, in that it is still mostly affiliate-based. European countries started with a government-owned or managed model on a nation-wide basis, with private broadcasters starting relatively late. Canada was similar to the US, until consolidation resulted in basically each station is effectively owned by a network. (and I do wish that CTV would make an attempt to differentiate between CTV National News and CTV Local News… CBC and Global do it…) - As for local news titles, stations have changed newscast titles frequently and people seem to find them (such as changing from Channel 37 News to Eyewitness News to Newsactive 37 to WZZZ News to UPN 37 News to WB 37 News to 37 On Your Side News and back to Channel 37 News). - Some stations want to be linked to networks (NBC 4 News) and some don’t (e.g., Boston 25). It’s management’s call, not ours, and if CBS wants their O&O stations to use “CBS News New York” rather than CBS 2 or Eyewitness News, so be it.

They’ll probably get a direct feed from Nexstar… yes, the WDVM signal in Arlington over the air is crap (and I refuse to pay Comcast’s extortion fees just to get WDVM - I can get the rest, including WJLA 24/7 OTA, plus Baltimore stations to boot.). As for the content, they’re a small market station trying to fit into the big city as a major player. I enjoyed WHAG better when they were focused on “not DC” - turning into DC News Now doesn’t make it interesting to me - I’ll stick with Channel 4… (though with the recent wave of retirements - but there are still plenty of familiar faces) Jim

Couple of comments: - IIRC, the purpose of New Neutrality is to prevent operators from “charging extra” for certain services (e.g., competitor’s IPTV offerings). It didn’t prevent discounts to vendors. I know there have been some legal challenges - not sure where they stand… - Most cable is digitally provided, and most likely IP-based ( but is most likely a proprietary format - I don’t know all of the specifics now, but set top boxes are basically dedicated computers programmed to display video programming to TVs…). Except for a few rare cases left, there are very few analog systems remaining. - The area in which I live is split between jurisdictions. One (the county), has the franchises for TV and voice with Comcast and Verizon Fios. Both offer voice, data, and video services. The other part is in the city, which has Cox as the TV provider and Verizon as the voice provider. Verizon hasn’t implements Fios in most of the city, but they did in our area. Folks living in the city (where it’s available) can subscribe to Fios, but cannot get Fios TV, because Cox has the exclusive TV-provider rights in the city. In this are Verizon offer Fiber voice and data, and “for your convenience” YouTube TV as an option (from Google, conveniently rolled into your bill (same price as direct from YouTube…) - Access from multiple vendors comes down to access of the “right of way” - who can basically run the signal from their plant to the end users - which isn’t he US is pretty much going to be the cable TV franchisee, the phone franchisee, the power company and/or the water utility, unless the area has a government who will grant right of way status to other providers… J

Comcast in DC charges $25.40 for broadcast (which I can pick up with a paper clip on my TV…) and $12.40 for sports… Nearly $38 above the quote price + various taxes… J

It sounds like KTVT is now CBS News Texas - but they've kept the CBS11 logo "in the box"...

Visiting Denver for the weekend and had to tune in CBS Colorado News. While the CBS Colorado box in the lower left is designed with the rest of the L3 in mind, I find it a bit large and distracting. Several times it covered up content on-screen, plus it sits on top of their legal ID, so all you see is “NC-TV Denver” I also chuckled at Jim Benemann’s comment that the “graphics and music showcase our community” - generic graphics and nation-wide music don’t showcase the community. Music from a local composer (going back to the Jerome Gilmore days) more fits that IMHO… I see that they’re using the term “Community Journalist” - wondering if they have renamed reporters this, or if certain reporters have certain “beats” that they cover, or if this is a case of a contract stringer… Jim

Now if they would add them to YouTube TV… J

This isn’t the first time DFW stations used just “Texas”: WBAP: The Texas News (Pre KXAS) WFAA was “The Spirit of Texas” (not North Texas) - though not in the title of their newscasts KXAS: The Texas News Channel KDFW: News 4 Texas KXAS: Texas News 5 Now is’s 11’s turn to use Texas. But IMHO, streaming on the FAST systems (Pluto, Xumo, Roku, etc.) is probably why - pick up a few eyeballs outside of DFW for additional ad $$…

Hidden shout out to a sister NBC station?

So many? Going through the Gray list, I can only find 3 stations where CBS is on a .2 only: - Duluth (done by Quincy/Sagamore Hill) - Alexandria, LA (CBS added by Media General in 2007) - Biloxi, MS (CBS added by Raycom) And only the Duluth one was a swap of programming; the others were adding CBS over the air into the market where there wasn’t CBS previously. The remaining stations with CBS on a “not .1” are simulcasts of other stations in market (albeit often LDs/CDs)