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New CBS O&O Look Coming Soon?


24994J

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15 minutes ago, qunewsguy said:

The new look's gotta be coming soon. Notice the monitor wall graphic from WCBS this afternoon...

(1) Sources McDonald's worker shot after customer complains about cold fries - YouTube.png

KYW launched those with their new set. Given the projected fall launch and the fact that we’ve just hit August, it makes sense that they’re all starting to transition now.

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Check out KYA's, CBS Philly's,  rotating bug.  This could be what the new look, if and when it ever arrives, is going to do about branding.

 

Bristol-Based Organization Aims To Get Books In Hands Of Young Children – News, Sports, Weather, Traffic and Philly's Top Spots (cbslocal.com)

Edited by Nick
Typos.
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8 minutes ago, Nick said:

Check out KYA's, CBS Philly's,  rotating bug.  This could be what the new look, if and when it ever arrives, is going to do about branding.

 

Bristol-Based Organization Aims To Get Books In Hands Of Young Children – News, Sports, Weather, Traffic and Philly's Top Spots (cbslocal.com)

 

That's been there for awhile now. 

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On 8/2/2022 at 5:58 PM, qunewsguy said:

The new look's gotta be coming soon. Notice the monitor wall graphic from WCBS this afternoon...

(1) Sources McDonald's worker shot after customer complains about cold fries - YouTube.png

 

WCBS has been using this look for "gun violence" for several months, possibly closer to a year. 

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On 8/6/2022 at 4:48 PM, Geoffrey said:

 

WCBS has been using this look for "gun violence" for several months, possibly closer to a year. 

I believe they were refering to the Eye motif, not necessarily the "gun violence" per se

 

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7 minutes ago, NYTV said:

I believe they were refering to the Eye motif, not necessarily the "gun violence" per se

 

 

Yes, this similar graphic has also been used for their current COVID-19 look - which has been used for a few months also. 

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1 hour ago, Georgie56 said:

Keep your eyes on WCCO Sept. 5. (h/t @tw-804)

 

 

Nice catch! It’s difficult to make out the graphic on the lower left, but the title of the show seems to be “WCCO The 4.” The “WCCO” logo they’re using in the top left of that graphic seems to correspond with this one:

EDIT: I also could’ve just read the article first and confirmed the title. I guess that’s what I get for reacting too fast. 😂

B30A3A67-6EAE-41E9-BA36-14CA31C53C53.png

Edited by nycnewsjunkie
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11 minutes ago, 24994J said:

 

I'm not holding my breath about ANY of this being finalized, but let's slow that down, anyway.

 

 

 

They don’t look that far off from the “NOW” and CBS News streaming graphics, and they look to be using the new CBS font, so it seems plausible. They’re only 2ish weeks away from debuting that newscast, though I imagine they’ll be ironing out any kinks over that period

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I'm not in the business, just a viewer,  but I'm beginning to think this is getting to be a kind of "Waiting for Godot"  scene.  The Samuel Beckett play when two poor bums spend days sitting there expecting somebody named Godot any time.   No luck. This guy and that guy pass down the road.  "Was that him?  Maybe that might have been him."  they ask each other. Nope.  Nothing.    But for all this I wouldn't expect anything until either the beginning of the TV season in September, or even in late October when the traditional "sweep" begins, if that is even a thing in major markets now.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Seen at the end of a WCBS promo featuring all of the anchors talking about reporting on the communities they live in. 

 

I keep hoping for more clues that the O&Os are keeping the channel numbers but I have a feeling I'm going to be disappointed.

 

What will stations be branded as outside of news? How will they differentiate between TV and streaming?

 

image.thumb.png.cc66ccd09349f56592f85ad0295c23eb.png

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2 hours ago, Geoffrey said:

Seen at the end of a WCBS promo featuring all of the anchors talking about reporting on the communities they live in. 

 

I keep hoping for more clues that the O&Os are keeping the channel numbers but I have a feeling I'm going to be disappointed.

 

What will stations be branded as outside of news? How will they differentiate between TV and streaming?

 

image.thumb.png.cc66ccd09349f56592f85ad0295c23eb.png

I wish I snapped a picture, but I’m in Philly right now and I saw a KYW talent promo w/ Ukee Washington after tonight’s Evening News. It ends with the “CBS3” and “CBS News Philadelphia” logos, with no mention of Eyewitness News. They’re going full send on brand standardization.

 

I didn’t think they’d actually do this at first either, and I’m very much in favor of local identities being kept. That said, on many levels, this makes sense. As many others here have pointed out better than I ever could, most CBS-owned stations in large markets do not stand out. WCBS and KPIX already look bland, KYW and WBBM have been mismanaged into instability, and KCBS… need I say more? I don’t think a unified branding will make those stations ratings powerhouses or anything, but it would at least tie them to the network’s news division.

 

Also, to answer your question, there is no longer any need to differentiate between the network and streaming. That’s the whole point. If CBS wants to really prioritize streaming, a great way to do that is to unify both linear and streaming brands.

Edited by nycnewsjunkie
Grammar
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33 minutes ago, nycnewsjunkie said:

No need to be snarky, but yes, CBS or CBS New York will suffice.

 

(If you weren’t being snarky, my apologies for interpreting it that way.)

Yeah, I wasn’t being snarky. Apologies if it came off that way. I was trying to prove that things like that need not be overlooked. Why complicate branding outside of a newscast when you can just say “CBS.”

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2 minutes ago, Tyler said:

Yeah, I wasn’t being snarky. Apologies if it came off that way. I was trying to prove that things like that need not be overlooked. Why complicate branding outside of a newscast when you can just say “CBS.”

No need to apologize, that’s my bad.

 

I agree with your point though. Making things less complicated is likely the whole motivation behind why they’re doing all of this in the first place.

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This is a large rearchitecture. The reason it has taken this long is simply because of how comprehensive it is.

 

Of the four O&O chains, CBS has the most problems ailing its. Most of the stations are ratings fixer-uppers and have spent two decades or more in such a condition. There was no news in Detroit. Post-Dunn and Friend, something radical needed to be done. And the investment in News and the fact that there is actual innovation and renewal in News are all to be hailed.

 

If you watched the first night of the new Evening News look, you might have noticed the text elements listing places where CBS News has bureaus. There's London...Rome...Johannesburg...Atlanta...oh yeah, and Sacramento and Baltimore. News and Stations in a nutshell.

 

There is a lot going on. A visual overhaul, the first top-to-bottom one at Stations in nearly a decade; a restructuring internally; the continued effects of the Paramount Global merger, etc.; the launch of news in Detroit; and the shift to a streaming-first or -co-first mentality at every outpost in Stations. This does not happen overnight.

 

Why are we so excited? Because there is a sense of renewal at CBS that is long-deserved and needed. Because they are fixing, finally on a comprehensive level, a historic inequity in Detroit, and they are making the right moves in doing it. Because there is a pathbreaking branding approach.

 

ABC has too many successful news franchises in its markets to do this. NBC has too many, and it also has Telemundo; it's hard to have that sort of fusion of national and local news when there are two separate networks (with separate teams) to feed and all of the NBC newsrooms it runs are bilingual. Fox fundamentally cannot do this without compromising and tainting its local news product to a significant portion of the audience.

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59 minutes ago, Tyler said:

Here me out:

 

”CBS.”

Also what I honestly bet they go with.  “CBS” for every non-news show, network or otherwise.  Maybe the legacy calls for the cities that look like they’re going to keep that branding element, but for most of them, just “CBS”.

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12 hours ago, Tyler said:

Here me out:

 

”CBS.”

Or “CBS (name of city/region)”. The way CBS is pushing this across the chain, I expect them to push the non-owned affiliates to go in the same direction, either as “CBS” or “CBS (city/region)”.

 

It’s something that I’ve debated @channel2 on in the discord as she values the brand integrity of the affiliates and the legacy brands of the O&Os, which I totally get. At the same time, harmonization is not new, from the time ABC had their O&Os all adopt the same Circle 7 in 1962, to when NBC pushed the same news sets throughout their chain in the 1970s to when CBS had their affiliates use Rockwell as their CG typeface in the 1980s.

 

The only difference here is the presumed excising of the channel number and retiring of call letters as brands in favor of a unified approach. It’s revolutionary in US broadcasting but is so commonplace elsewhere. Moreover, CBS has a clear and obvious brand issue with KDKA, WBZ, KPIX, WCCO and to a lesser extent KYW as stations that have to share a branding with their onetime radio sisters. It’s in theory not bad unless the radio station gets bad publicity a la Wendy Bell flaming out at KDKA 1020 and KDKA-TV has to issue statements that they had nothing to do with Wendy’s employment. It’s an awkward licensing agreement between Audacy, iHeart and Beasley Les Moonves made that never should have happened (but at the same time everyone would be grousing at KDKA 1020, the fabled “first radio station”, being forced to change their call sign. Look at the awkwardness of KOMO 1000 being forced to rename itself KNWN).

 

Moreover, CBS going with a unified “CBS” branding solves issues with brand awareness that have dogged the network since 1994, especially in Detroit. It’s also why I see them pushing the renaming before “CBS News Detroit” launches, to help get the marketing campaign underway and help to better promote the news service. It also helps the O&O chain’s laggards—WFOR, KTVT, WBBM and WCBS—a chance to start anew, they literally have nothing to lose. The chain’s successful stations—WCCO, KCNC, WJZ, KDKA and to an extent WBZ—will handle it in a transitional way, but the viewers will adapt. I highly doubt anyone in Pittsburgh proper is going to be no longer watching KDKA simply because they no longer call themselves “KDKA-TV 2”.

 

Thus, I expect the network to pressure the major chains—Gray, Nexstar, Cox, Sinclair, Tegna** and Scripps—to adopt these branding conventions on their CBS affiliates wholesale, which will set up an interesting confrontation between the groups and the network that @Weetershas been predicting on the discord for awhile. (“Why should we have to brand our stations as ‘CBS’ and act like the network owns us when we can fall back on NewsNation, the CW and Antenna?”)

 

** Fate of said company still TBD.

Edited by Myron Falwell
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