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WFXT Looks to Rebrand Amid Continued Struggles Under Cox Ownership


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The affiliation contract runs for at least another five years, no?

 

To be fair, KTVU during Cox ownership did quite a bit to distinguish themselves from the Fox News Channel, so this kinda continues that past practice.

 

I mean, I'd be shocked if Cox wanted to terminate WFXT's Fox affiliation.

 

Exactly, I don't think it's a matter of Cox wanting to terminate the affiliation moreso than Ansin possibly outbidding Cox for the affiliation rights. Even though Fox has made it clear in the past that they "tolerated" the lack of Fox branding on KTVU during it's Cox days, I doubt Fox would terminate their affiliation with WFXT over something like that, especially since Ansin would just continue his 7 News branding just like he does with WSVN down in Miami.

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have any Fox affiliates in conservative markets tried to ride on the coattails of FNC?

 

FOX has never really offered affiliates any kind of cross promotion or synergy campaigns with FNC.

Maybe I missed something?

 

You can get your local anchors to dance around with Bart Simpson or the cast from Alien Nation...but good luck getting Shep, Bill and the rest of the bunch out to Duluth to run and jump in your newsroom, with your anchors.

 

(im sure someone will post a clip of some frolicking FNC anchors)

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have any Fox affiliates in conservative markets tried to ride on the coattails of FNC?

 

In many of those markets, the Fox affiliate doesn't have its own independent news operation, running it out of another shop.

 

I think it is a decent strategy for more conservative markets, but it needs to be done through local desires. Forcing a corporate agenda against them is always bound to fail. Make clear that what they want is what they get, and don't let ownership take control.

 

It goes both ways too. Trying to shove a left-wing agenda onto, say, Dothan or Amarillo viewers is as bad as Sinclair shoving a right-wing agenda onto Seattle or Washington DC viewers.

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KTVU's Cox-era slogan was "Complete Bay Area News Coverage" so all signs point to yes.

 

But New England spans 6 states. So the slogan "Complete New England News Coverage" makes no sense (although I'm sure it will still be used).

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But New England spans 6 states. So the slogan "Complete New England News Coverage" makes no sense (although I'm sure it will still be used).

There is a long history of Boston stations claiming all of NE despite their signals and cable coverage are limited to Eastern Mass. If my memory is right, when RKO General finally sold Channel 7, it became New England News. When Ansin later bought it, I believe they used the tag line the New England News Station (or was it one of the other Boston stations). It is marketing puffery, nothing to get upset or excited about. Clearly, the Boston stations are Boston area focused with the news. Providence stations are RI and SE Mass focused. Hartford/NH Central and Eastern CT focused (SW Ct is in the NYC DMA). Does anyone really believe dumb marketing slogans are what will turn around a stations' ratings? If the product and its presentation are bad, the answer is no.

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But New England spans 6 states. So the slogan "Complete New England News Coverage" makes no sense (although I'm sure it will still be used).

Cleveland, Akron and Youngstown are all in the northeastern part of Ohio, but if you refer to "northeast Ohio," I'll think of Cleveland.

 

That being said, "northeast Ohio" is more of a colloquial thing that arose in the early 1980s.

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It's not really unusual, even for the most absurd examples, like "Alaska's Superstation" for that state's ABC affiliates ('in other news, Barrow and Nome still exist!'), for stations to brand by a large region they never can hope to cover with physical transmitters. Prime example is CBC, which has reduced their over-the-air presence considerably but easily can claim to cover large provinces through cable/sat.

 

At least the stations in Western Massachusetts don't make the 'New England' claim; they pretty much cover the Pioneer Valley and not much more thanks to the hills to the west and stick to that definition.

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Cleveland, Akron and Youngstown are all in the northeastern part of Ohio, but if you refer to "northeast Ohio," I'll think of Cleveland.

 

That being said, "northeast Ohio" is more of a colloquial thing that arose in the early 1980s.

As of late, some things concerning NE Ohio have shifted to calling it "Northern Ohio" (ie. Northern Ohio Honda Dealers), even though Toledo is always excluded.

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Hey guys, it's been a while since I've been on TVNT. What seems weird about the rebranding is that WFXT chose to change its branding based on the opinions of 41% of viewers in a station survey. Why dictate branding changes based on how a minority of people associate WFXT's newscasts, when it would be easier to create a mini-campaign to inform viewers on the separation of the Fox station from FNC? You don't watch Empire on FNC, nor do you watch Hannity on the Fox broadcast network; not to mention that they aren't the only 21CF-owned television outlets that bear the Fox name.

 

It's a mystery to me why people cannot discern the difference between the Fox Broadcasting Company and Fox News Channel, and mistake a local newscast on a Fox broadcast affiliate from a cable news network. If any of you know someone who doesn't know the difference, forward them the link to the broadcast network's Wikipedia article, specifically the "news" subsection under "Programming".

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It's a mystery to me why people cannot discern the difference between the Fox Broadcasting Company and Fox News Channel, and mistake a local newscast on a Fox broadcast affiliate from a cable news network. If any of you know someone who doesn't know the difference, forward them the link to the broadcast network's Wikipedia article, specifically the "news" subsection under "Programming".

 

It's not just Fox. It happens for all the networks. It's just most notable for Fox affiliates because of how controversial the news channel can be.

 

It basically comes down to the fact that most Americans outside of this forum have little to no grasp of the concept of things like "network affiliations" and "O&O's". They just see their Fox programing on that channel and think it's owned by Fox when in reality it's owned by Tribune, Cox, or whatever.

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Roger Ailes and Jack Abernathy made it a point to make Fox O&Os look graphically similar to FNC back in 2006-2007, which no doubt exacerbated the confusion.

 

Some former Fox O&Os have done a good job visually distancing themselves from that crap look -- KDVR and WBRC especially. WFXT isn't one of them.

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It's not just Fox. It happens for all the networks. It's just most notable for Fox affiliates because of how controversial the news channel can be.

 

It basically comes down to the fact that most Americans outside of this forum have little to no grasp of the concept of things like "network affiliations" and "O&O's". They just see their Fox programing on that channel and think it's owned by Fox when in reality it's owned by Tribune, Cox, or whatever.

 

One of the big inside legal questions this week has been...

Can a FOX affil sue for breach of contract on a morals clause against FOX for the actions of those at FNC? Does the network affiliation agreement cover actions from FNC?

Can FOX affiliates sue over ratings drops based on the O'Rielly stuff?

 

This is why FNC has always had arms length with the FOX affils.

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Roger Ailes and Jack Abernathy made it a point to make Fox O&Os look graphically similar to FNC back in 2006-2007, which no doubt exacerbated the confusion.

 

Some former Fox O&Os have done a good job visually distancing themselves from that crap look -- KDVR and WBRC especially. WFXT isn't one of them.

 

Funny how the rise of KDVR is tied to them ditching the Fox look.

 

I know it's not as simple as that but Fox put as little effort into that station as they could which resulted in a half-assed product. Local TV and Tribune have actually put a lot of effort into making that station competitive and comparable to KCNC, KMGH and even KUSA. Not to mention that combining resources with KWGN seemed to helped them out a whole lot.

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Funny how the rise of KDVR is tied to them ditching the Fox look.

 

I know it's not as simple as that but Fox put as little effort into that station as they could which resulted in a half-assed product. Local TV and Tribune have actually put a lot of effort into making that station competitive and comparable to KCNC, KMGH and even KUSA. Not to mention that combining resources with KWGN seemed to helped them out a whole lot.

 

I don't remember it that way. Fox put a *lot* of effort into KDVR. The built a gigantic new building, started a local news operation from scratch in a top 20 market, attracted high profile talent for it, and promoted it well enough to the point that KDVR's 9pm's ratings eventually overtook the incumbent KWGN 9pm in about three years.

from 2002, and it's amazing not only how well KDVR's product looks, but it's also a full hour of pretty hard news. To get a sense of how much has changed with Fox TV Stations, compare KDVR's upstart launch to WJZY's. There actually was a time when Fox TV was a quality owner.

 

KDVR only went downward when the sale to Local TV happened. Maybe it was inevitable that Denver would consolidate into a four newsroom town, but the KDVR and KWGN merger was handled very poorly. KWGN didn't bring any resources to the table— Local TV cut most of KWGN's staff and rushed to move what little was left into KDVR's building. The HD transition was laughably botched, the brand strategy for both stations was all wrong, and the newscasts paled in comparison to what they replaced.

 

Only a few years later did they do away with the full-on Fox look for KDVR, but they still brand the station as "Fox 31." That was probably the right strategy, and that probably would have been the right way to go for WFXT too. But branding isn't everything. KDVR has stabilized under full Tribune ownership, but the newscasts still aren't great. If you want to see what's been on the newswires all day word for word, KDVR is your newscast. Talent is still a revolving door of people making their way up to bigger markets, and KDVR's ratings increases in my opinion are related more to the freefall of KMGH than anything KDVR is doing.

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