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Insiders.. curious whats the future of WGNO in New Orleans under nexstar. Are there plans to rebrand? Invest in a new look? The news with a twist format seems to have been shelved in favor of harder news in light of the pandemic. What have ratings been like for them lately? They also seem to be lacking a full staff of hard news anchors. Plans to change that? 

 

 

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IMO, I hope there is a rebranding. I would love to see WGNO revived generally as ABC 26 New Orleans and more importantly, changed WGNO News to ABC 26 News with a new logo, new set, new graphics, new theme, new anchor team, and new news staff of reporters, anchors, meteorologists, and sports anchors. But keep Susan Rosegen for the (Maybe 4/4:30), 5, 6, (maybe 6:30), and 10pm newscasts.

 

It just my 2 cents.

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I'm sure when all of this is over, Nexstar is going to take a hard look at WGNO and try and make something out of it.  Dumping the "Twist" format was necessitated by the early surge of the Covid crisis, since New Orleans was hit very hard early on, likely due to Mardi Gras and all the revelry surrounding it.   Essentially when New Orleans was shut down, all of the culture took a pause as well, which made absolutely no sense to continue the twist format.

 

It may be a year or two before things even resemble normal, I have a feeling Mardi Gras is not going to happen next year. 

 

With a little TLC from Nexstar, maybe they could get out of the basement and at least attempt to challenge WWL since they've fallen so far under Tegna.

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42 minutes ago, Megatron81 said:

I think WGNO needs some TLC it will take while before they get out of the basement hey if they do Nexstar should thank there pals from TEGNA since they aren't very well run.

 

That still leaves WDSU and WVUE ahead of them though...

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Stations can turn around pretty quickly with the right investment.

 

Nexstar has rebranded a handful of stations, like WNCN in Raleigh, drastically improving them.

 

GNO really needs a strong main anchor team to give it harder edge. 
But is that what management wants?

 

 

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On 8/1/2020 at 4:24 AM, NEOMatrix said:

Just get rid of News with a Twist, or at least do News with a Twist at 11am and 4pm.

They have; the section on the site was kiboshed in March, they stopped using it on-air and seems to only exist at this point to preserve the copyright in case Tegna completely loses their wits and tries to bring their wacky morning news brandings to New Orleans. 🤪

 

But honestly...I think Nexstar is giving the station a one-year probation period, seeing which staff works, how to centralize it with the rest of their TX/LA/MS/AL stations, and give it a better relaunch where it can leave behind its past baggage. It really didn't help that Katrina just gave a runway to the Sam Zell era of Tribune and that management screwed up the station worse than if the hurricane never came, and their transmitter situation until June 2009 didn't help, along with a studio situation which was 'best we could get for the money' after the downtown mall location they planned to go full-throttle from was torn down post-Katrina.  Related to this, Tribune's undermanagement of WNOL can best be described as a miscarriage; they should've had a permanent 9pm newscast from WGNO launched back in the WB days, and kept even with low ratings (another thing that needs to be kiboshed on those stations it was tried is delaying the CW lineup by one hour, which WNOL still does).

 

And if the current management is fine being in fourth place...I'm pretty sure Nexstar has boxes ready to go for them to clean out their offices and will bring in people ready to compete. A one-year pause in Mardi Gras should help them focus on building a strong hard news operation better than most years.

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I wonder what Nexstar might do here, because you basically have to build a news department from scratch, and I wonder how they would want to expense that considering the media landscape as it is in 2020.

 

I could see them doing a "team-up" with the Baton Rouge stations, but they're not exactly bursting with staff AND are also in the same position ratings-wise in the market...

 

No matter what, it's likely to be on the cheap side, which will be tough to compete against WVUE, WDSU and the shell of WWL.

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In their earliest days, WGNO at least had a respectable news operation during the Tribune years:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG9zIXyhZkk

 

I haven't checked up on the NOLA market for a while, but it's incredible how far WWL has fallen because of Tegna's mismanagement. WGNO has never truly been a player, but maybe this shift towards regular newscasts (and not the "News With A Twist" format, which I never liked) could help. Of course, they need to get people who are not only homegrown (a plus in a market like New Orleans) but have experience in the market.

 

Then again, to echo mightynine's point about Nexstar's ownership, the WVLA/WGMB duopoly here in Baton Rouge hasn't set the world on fire, either....

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The real question is: does Nexstar even have the stomach to do another WPTY-to-WATN style makeover, AGAIN?


Last I checked, it didn’t work the last time and WATN/WLMT was cast off to Tegna for keep WREG in the Nexstar fold.

 

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3 hours ago, mightynine said:

I wonder what Nexstar might do here, because you basically have to build a news department from scratch, and I wonder how they would want to expense that considering the media landscape as it is in 2020.

 

I could see them doing a "team-up" with the Baton Rouge stations, but they're not exactly bursting with staff AND are also in the same position ratings-wise in the market...

 

No matter what, it's likely to be on the cheap side, which will be tough to compete against WVUE, WDSU and the shell of WWL.

 

The shell of WWL?  The ratings I found online which are from March 2020, WWL was doing well in the ratings race, they were #1 in the mornings and #1 at Noon.    

 https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/article_d7fe6f1c-d881-52bf-b625-e4968307ed78.html

 

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4 minutes ago, DENDude said:

 

The shell of WWL?  The ratings I found online which are from March 2020, WWL was doing well in the ratings race, they were #1 in the mornings and #1 at Noon.    

 https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/article_d7fe6f1c-d881-52bf-b625-e4968307ed78.html

 

 

The article dates back to March of 2019.

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27 minutes ago, NEOMatrix said:

The real question is: does Nexstar even have the stomach to do another WPTY-to-WATN style makeover, AGAIN?


Last I checked, it didn’t work the last time and WATN/WLMT was cast off to Tegna for keep WREG in the Nexstar fold.

 

 

This.  Nexstar spent millions to update WATN/WLMT and got virtually nothing out of it in return (other than selling it to Tegna).  In terms of TV markets, New Orleans and Memphis are the same size.  The sad fact is that markets like these don't have the revenue to support 4 distinct news departments.  

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Why did TEGNA even want WATN-WLMT? Memphis and New Orleans strike me as having very similar profiles: no growth and depressed economies, although New Orleans seems to have a stronger tourism business than Memphis.

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2 hours ago, effseesee said:

 

This.  Nexstar spent millions to update WATN/WLMT and got virtually nothing out of it in return (other than selling it to Tegna).  In terms of TV markets, New Orleans and Memphis are the same size.  The sad fact is that markets like these don't have the revenue to support 4 distinct news departments.  

Plus in Memphis WMC and WATN are failing by the newscast. Let’s see what happens to WREG

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1 hour ago, channel2 said:

Why did TEGNA even want WATN-WLMT? Memphis and New Orleans strike me as having very similar profiles: no growth and depressed economies, although New Orleans seems to have a stronger tourism business than Memphis.

 

Tegna probably got a group discount, along with WZDX, WPMT, WTCI, and a few others all for the venerable WNEP.

 

The two strikes against WGNO are that it was a latecomer in the market compared to the others (because of the WNOL-WGNO-WVUE switch), and UHF, and has been treated as such with an endless barrage of talent, formats, and branding.

 

Same goes for their duopoly in Baton Rouge, another late-comer in the news game that even dipped out for a few years for out-of-market content with the same issues, and the fact it was a ABC "reject" in the 70s that got stuck with NBC when WBRZ traded up.

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On 8/3/2020 at 12:42 PM, Chris Hadley said:

In their earliest days, WGNO at least had a respectable news operation during the Tribune years:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG9zIXyhZkk

 

I haven't checked up on the NOLA market for a while, but it's incredible how far WWL has fallen because of Tegna's mismanagement. WGNO has never truly been a player, but maybe this shift towards regular newscasts (and not the "News With A Twist" format, which I never liked) could help. Of course, they need to get people who are not only homegrown (a plus in a market like New Orleans) but have experience in the market.

 

Then again, to echo mightynine's point about Nexstar's ownership, the WVLA/WGMB duopoly here in Baton Rouge hasn't set the world on fire, either....

The good thing is at least they have still have people, like Susan Roesgen, Curt Sprang, and Ed Daniels (latter two both day 1 ers), so that's a good foundation to build on.

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1 hour ago, mposeymil said:

The good thing is at least they have still have people, like Susan Roesgen, Curt Sprang, and Ed Daniels (latter two both day 1 ers), so that's a good foundation to build on.

 

Yes, and that definitely helps. That's the foundation of a solid prime-time weeknight news team, w/Hank Allen as chief meteorologist.

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On 8/3/2020 at 4:17 PM, tyrannical bastard said:

 

Tegna probably got a group discount, along with WZDX, WPMT, WTCI, and a few others all for the venerable WNEP.

 

The two strikes against WGNO are that it was a latecomer in the market compared to the others (because of the WNOL-WGNO-WVUE switch), and UHF, and has been treated as such with an endless barrage of talent, formats, and branding.

 

Same goes for their duopoly in Baton Rouge, another late-comer in the news game that even dipped out for a few years for out-of-market content with the same issues, and the fact it was a ABC "reject" in the 70s that got stuck with NBC when WBRZ traded up.

 

It truly is a market that you'd think WDSU would be the strongest station, since they have the benefit of stability (they're the only station in the market that hasn't changed owners recently). However, that really hasn't been the case in a long time.

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On 8/8/2020 at 11:41 PM, GoldenShine9 said:

 

It truly is a market that you'd think WDSU would be the strongest station, since they have the benefit of stability (they're the only station in the market that hasn't changed owners recently). However, that really hasn't been the case in a long time.

They seemed to lose that edge when their local owners sold out in the 70s, WWL was locally owned for another 25 years by Loyola and the Rampart group before cashing out to Belo.

 

Flash forward to when Emmis finally unloaded WVUE to Tom Benson, their rise began about that time, plus, they were an early adopter of HD news.

 

And today, WDSU AND WGNO ARE STILL NOT IN HD!!!

 

WDSU could get some traction at the market if they have the ability to compete like WVUE, time-wise.   Tegna and CBS did that damage by moving the news to WUPL and giving in to finally airing  CBS This Morning in pattern.

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2 hours ago, tyrannical bastard said:

They seemed to lose that edge when their local owners sold out in the 70s, WWL was locally owned for another 25 years by Loyola and the Rampart group before cashing out to Belo.

 

Flash forward to when Emmis finally unloaded WVUE to Tom Benson, their rise began about that time, plus, they were an early adopter of HD news.

 

And today, WDSU AND WGNO ARE STILL NOT IN HD!!!

 

WDSU could get some traction at the market if they have the ability to compete like WVUE, time-wise.   Tegna and CBS did that damage by moving the news to WUPL and giving in to finally airing  CBS This Morning in pattern.

 

WDSU was never the same after the sale to Cosmos (the South Carolina company that owned WAVE and other stations) in 1972.

 

They got rid of a majority of the popular local personalities that were there from the station's first sign-on, they never had a clue as to how to connect with viewers, and they made one mistake after the other in the '80s despite NBC's strong primetime performance (anchor changes, bizarre programming decisions such as pre-empting "Late Night w/David Letterman" entirely for "Thicke of The Night" in 1983, then bringing back Dave but airing him an hour after - of all things - "Love Boat" reruns when "Thicke" was cancelled).

 

WWL, with its local ownership and strong news department, took the lead and never looked back. Of course, it helped that they had only one GM during that time in J. Michael Early, while all the other stations changed GM's faster than a revolving door.

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