twotrey

NEWSnet has received an upgrade of sorts in the L.A. market, moving from KFLA's 8.7 to the main 8.1 feed, and I noticed that KFLA has taken them up on the offer for custom localized inserts, with the main NEWSnet anchor and weather caster doing local Los Angeles cut-ins (during which the network bug on the left side of the screen now reads "NEWSnet Los Angeles," with local headlines on the ticker. Most intriguing of all on the KFLA signal is a new subchannel that shows up on 8.10 : Sports News Highlights, which is from the same folks who brought you NEWSnet, with the same graphics and the studio. When I first discovered the channel this past Monday, it did not have a mention on the NEWSnet website, but now the live feed is there under the "sports" tab, plus it appear they now have dedicated apps available separate from the NEWSnet one. The ticker on the broadcast isn't quite up yet, just showing an "#SNH" hashtag and the repeated text "This is Sports News Highlights | Your new source for Sports Highlights and News, 24/7," and they seem to have have a legit sponsor in 5 Hour Energy, whose logo appears on the left side of the (future?) score ticker.

I tried to turn into NEWSnet as background noise here in the L.A. wee hours, and the network was apparently moved up in the last couple of days to the main .1 feed of the digital channel (previous position was .7). However, on a channel rescan, there's also a new network on .10 : Sports News Highlights, which is from the same folks who brought you NEWSnet, with the same graphics and the studio. This is probably a soft launch of sorts since the ticker doesn't have a website, just an "#SNH" hashtag and the repeated text "This is Sports News Highlights | Your new source for Sports Highlights and News, 24/7." The NEWSnet website and social accounts have no mention of this new channel, and a search for the #SNH hashtag on Twitter and Instagram turned up nothing relating to the network (unsurprisingly). I will say that the anchor at least has a decently polished delivery, with the appropriately excitable inflection during highlights. Some screen pix (gotta love the creative spelling of "Calgary"; NEWSnet's gonna NEWSnet, even on its all-sports sibling). But, hey, they have a legit sponsor in 5 Hour Energy, apparently.

This spot kind of explains why KCAL is now the unified news brand, with Pat Harvey bringing up Jerry Dunphy with two vintage Prime 9 News opening clips (the first with Dunphy and long-forgotten 10pm anchor Kate Sullivan; the second with her successor, Tawny Little). It's telling that they're evoking Dunphy's KCAL history as opposed to KNXT; it goes to show how *long* ago the CBS affiliate's news heyday was, while KCAL has been fairly consistent in reputation/perception over the last 30+ years, even with the ownership changes since then.

It may be its first attempt one of these multi-hour morning shows, but KCAL did have a half-hour 6am weekday morning newscast that ran for about a year or so during the Disney era, whose March 1990 premiere was on the same day as launch of the flagship 8-11pm Prime 9 News block. The morning newscast, anchored by Paula Lopez and Jim Murphy (the latter later replaced when Kerry Kilbride arrived) was titled "First 9 News." If that name sounds familiar, KCAL used it again a couple of years after the 6am show was dropped, but this time for their half-hour 6:30pm local newscast alternative (anchored by the Dunphy + Harvey duo) to the national network shows. It was also short-lived, morphing into an hour-long 7pm show retitled "9 News Live at 7," anchored by Harvey + David Jackson, which also didn't last very long. Re: the intro clip, I noticed beginning on Monday's 8pm show on KCAL, the main anchors have been regularly been throwing it to the assignment editor in the newsroom, which I'm not sure I quite like, but we'll see how this new wrinkle/angle evolves.