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WFAA leaving Victory Park studio


MarkBRollins88_v2

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13 minutes ago, Al-SA-TX said:

If I were a betting man, I'd say the first week of February for sweeps.

 

The DFW market should be interesting to watch for next month. WFAA isn't the only station in that market getting a set change.

Who else KTVT, KDFW

It's definitely not 5 

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6 hours ago, TexasTVNews said:

I doubt KTVT will get a new set, but IMO, they need a new anchor desk (BDI CBS O&O Anchor Desk). KDFW needs a new set badly! I can't wait to see the outcome of News 8's new set in time for the February sweeps.

I saw something last year posted by someone who works at KTVT saying they were going to be getting a new set.

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On 1/13/2022 at 12:54 AM, TexasTVNews said:

I doubt KTVT will get a new set, but IMO, they need a new anchor desk (BDI CBS O&O Anchor Desk). KDFW needs a new set badly! I can't wait to see the outcome of News 8's new set in time for the February sweeps.

Don’t you dare call it News 8. TEGNA will have you eliminated if you try to hearken back to the Belo days.

 

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16 minutes ago, MarkBRollins88_v2 said:

TEGNA will have you eliminated if you try to hearken back to the Belo days.

But weren't they #1 back in the Belo days? (break fourth wall, stare through camera)

 

Seriously- correct me if I'm wrong on the #1 claim, but the ratings were probably better regardless...

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On 1/14/2022 at 1:06 PM, GodfreyGR said:

But weren't they #1 back in the Belo days? (break fourth wall, stare through camera)

 

Seriously- correct me if I'm wrong on the #1 claim, but the ratings were probably better regardless...

Yes they were. 
 

But once Gannett (TEGNA) came in… they wanted to put their corporate mark on the place and frowned on people reminiscing of the Belo days. 

 

TEGNA doesn’t want people to remember the days when things were better before they came in.

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On 1/16/2022 at 12:18 PM, MarkBRollins88_v2 said:

Yes they were. 
 

But once Gannett (TEGNA) came in… they wanted to put their corporate mark on the place and frowned on people reminiscing of the Belo days. 

 

TEGNA doesn’t want people to remember the days when things were better before they came in.

This needs to stop. The "TEGNA Suits" did not storm into WFAA and demand everything be changed. All the "Tegna changes" have been driven LOCALLY by PEOPLE AT THE STATION, some of whom were THERE under Belo. Tegna empowered the stations go "outside of the box", something that they did not get under Belo.

 

Lots of stations "used to be #1" back in the day. They had more viewers on their late news than there are viewers TOTAL between ALL the local newscasts today. Total viewers for all newscasts in the top markets these days match total viewers in small markets two decades ago.

 

Tegna is allowing their stations to do what they think they need to do, so they don't get left behind. This industry has changed drastically since Belo exited the picture. @Myron Falwellsummed it up best in the Discord a few weeks back:

Quote

You can hate on Tegna for their cringe-worthy gimmicks and heap praises on Queen City News at literally the same time, but the fact of the matter is both are shot-in-the-dark attempts at trying to make local news relevant by people who largely don’t know if it will work or not. Some of the attempts Tegna has done have failed badly (Reese Waters as a morning anchor at WUSA) while others have worked (Kyle Clark’s newscast, WKYC Studios) but it’s all guesswork. Local television failed to keep up with rapidly changing trends, and all the M&As have completely killed off any creativity because of the resulting oligarchy of penny-pinching operators with no creative bone in their bodies. It ain’t 2010 anymore.

If these attempts fail, corporate will prevent any of their properties from doing anything creative ever again, and just focus on retaining an older and unsalable audience for as long as they possibly can. And it’ll be the slow, painful death of local news.

 

Adapt or die. It's how the world works. Tegna is trying. Others are not.

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15 minutes ago, Weeters said:

This needs to stop. The "TEGNA Suits" did not storm into WFAA and demand everything be changed. All the "Tegna changes" have been driven LOCALLY by PEOPLE AT THE STATION, some of whom were THERE under Belo. Tegna empowered the stations go "outside of the box", something that they did not get under Belo.

 

Lots of stations "used to be #1" back in the day. They had more viewers on their late news than there are viewers TOTAL between ALL the local newscasts today. Total viewers for all newscasts in the top markets these days match total viewers in small markets two decades ago.

 

Tegna is allowing their stations to do what they think they need to do, so they don't get left behind. This industry has changed drastically since Belo exited the picture. @Myron Falwellsummed it up best in the Discord a few weeks back:

 

Adapt or die. It's how the world works. Tegna is trying. Others are not.

Do you know people who worked there during the takeover? Because I do.

 

and let me tell you…

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1 hour ago, MarkBRollins88_v2 said:

Do you know people who worked there during the takeover? Because I do.

 

and let me tell you…

Yup, sure do, and not one of them has said corporate "made them" do any of this. In fact, some of the more, uh, "creative" ideas were attributed to station management trying to "one up" other stations in "outside the box" thinking, possibly under the belief that if they weren't outside the box enough they'd be penalized. That's about the closest I've heard to "corporate made them" do it.

 

Regarding the graphics and music, yeah, sure, I'm sure not every station was thrilled about it, but plenty of others were. That's just how these things work in the industry now. The stations resisting change are usually the ones that need it most anyways.

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42 minutes ago, Weeters said:

Yup, sure do, and not one of them has said corporate "made them" do any of this. In fact, some of the more, uh, "creative" ideas were attributed to station management trying to "one up" other stations in "outside the box" thinking, possibly under the belief that if they weren't outside the box enough they'd be penalized. That's about the closest I've heard to "corporate made them" do it.

And for all the harping we do on a number of their stations...there are also others like WFMY, WMAZ, WBIR, KENS, WGRZ, KARE and WNEP where they have taken some of the creative changes, but also blended them in with their traditions and are still a good #1 or competitive #2. Yes, there are disasters among the chain, but every chain has those stations that either just don't work, or still think it's 1996 and the Internet is a fad. The days of 75 shares are over, and you just can't stand pat and stick with that aging audience rather than trying to get new viewers in.

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13 hours ago, Weeters said:

This needs to stop. The "TEGNA Suits" did not storm into WFAA and demand everything be changed. All the "Tegna changes" have been driven LOCALLY by PEOPLE AT THE STATION, some of whom were THERE under Belo. Tegna empowered the stations go "outside of the box", something that they did not get under Belo.

 

Lots of stations "used to be #1" back in the day. They had more viewers on their late news than there are viewers TOTAL between ALL the local newscasts today. Total viewers for all newscasts in the top markets these days match total viewers in small markets two decades ago.

 

Tegna is allowing their stations to do what they think they need to do, so they don't get left behind. This industry has changed drastically since Belo exited the picture. @Myron Falwellsummed it up best in the Discord a few weeks back:

 

Adapt or die. It's how the world works. Tegna is trying. Others are not.

Like it or not, local news stagnated badly from 2000 onwards after every station became a Xerox of WSVN while at the same time forgetting the circumstances that WSVN was in when they went tabloid. There wasn’t any substantial innovation in the industry at the same time the Internet took hold as a content delivery platform.

 

Even the once-mighty WSVN has started to become considerably less of an innovator. The flashy graphics, the MacDaddy opens (with an aging Scott Chapin showing his age), the theatrically atonal Chris Crane music, the Newsplex… they haven’t been updated or substantially changed in close to seven years. That’s a freaking eternity in the industry.

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5 hours ago, Myron Falwell said:

Like it or not, local news stagnated badly from 2000 onwards after every station became a Xerox of WSVN while at the same time forgetting the circumstances that WSVN was in when they went tabloid. There wasn’t any substantial innovation in the industry at the same time the Internet took hold as a content delivery platform.

 

Even the once-mighty WSVN has started to become considerably less of an innovator. The flashy graphics, the MacDaddy opens (with an aging Scott Chapin showing his age), the theatrically atonal Chris Crane music, the Newsplex… they haven’t been updated or substantially changed in close to seven years. That’s a freaking eternity in the industry.

My question would then be this how does the industry evolve and move away from the stagnation they've been in?

 

It just seams like that once streaming became mainstream, nobody on the linear side wanted to try to actually innovate anything anymore.

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19 minutes ago, dman748 said:

My question would then be this how does the industry evolve and move away from the stagnation they've been in?

 

It just seams like that once streaming became mainstream, nobody on the linear side wanted to try to actually innovate anything anymore.

I think there is still innovation- It's just slow and unproven as of yet.

 

For example, I respect @Weetersperspective yesterday about Tegna making efforts to go "outside the box" for successful and unsuccessful reasons already mentioned. In Minneapolis, KSTP has tried revamping their 10:00 show by doing far fewer stories but going more in-depth with their reporting- They have the largest I-Team of anyone in Market 15 and have dedicated certain reporters to JUST doing stories for the "Nightcast". Also putting weather right at the start of each newscast- It's probably a work in progress to see how far the needle moves, but it's an effort to try something slower and more in-depth in an era when brighter and more faced-paced has become the trend.

 

On the flip side you have groups like ViacomCBS who have their traditional formula that in some markets works (WCCO), and in some markets could be fair game for experimentation (WBBM).

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10 minutes ago, GodfreyGR said:

I think there is still innovation- It's just slow and unproven as of yet.

That right there is a huge issue within the industry right now. The fact that even WSVN (as Myron already mentioned) is this slow about innovation says a lot right there in itself.

 

I think the industry will be fine as long as revenues from sporting events as well as from political ads but it doesn't change the fact that the industry still has a lot of issues.

 

While I'm hoping that CBS actually does something revolutionary for television, however, I am holding my breath on that.

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19 hours ago, Weeters said:

Yup, sure do, and not one of them has said corporate "made them" do any of this. In fact, some of the more, uh, "creative" ideas were attributed to station management trying to "one up" other stations in "outside the box" thinking, possibly under the belief that if they weren't outside the box enough they'd be penalized. That's about the closest I've heard to "corporate made them" do it.

 

Regarding the graphics and music, yeah, sure, I'm sure not every station was thrilled about it, but plenty of others were. That's just how these things work in the industry now. The stations resisting change are usually the ones that need it most anyways.

Well I have heard otherwise from people directly involved. 


Looks like it’s going to follow the same styles of the refresh victory hot in 2018.

 

not a huge fan of that look and color scheme.

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Yes, there is a cost involved with building a new set (what appears to be a stairwell in the provided tease makes it look like a dated WSVN … FYI) on Young, but it’s far less than paying Victory Park rent over the long term. I suspect KHOU will do the same with its tiny downtown Houston studio when it contractually can dump out, as well. The WFAA decision to dig in at the current location is actually kind of mind-blowing considering the adjacent DMN and TXCN sites are about to be redeveloped. Why does WFAA need to be downtown? KXAS is doing just fine where it is. And if folks here are to be believed, KDFW will move from its luxurious spot near the Greyhound station soon. 
 

Watching them snicker during the weeknight 10 over inside jokes (this past week) would make the WFAA trailblazers cringe. This is all about money, even if possibly shortsighted. 

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image.png.1710ba92886c37eb6694f7769e0cf883.png

Well seems like Cynthia Izaguirre posted the full image to her Facebook. Second floor seems like wasted space. Like others have said, they kept a lot of the Victory Park studio and just expanded on it here.

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Looks like it's going to have a lot of dynamics that WFAA had at Victory- Walk and talks, movement for Delkus given the distance from the WX center and the set (I'm assuming Wx is to the left?) As for the color scheme and lights, really hard to talk about that until we see it lit up.

 

Is it as "State of the art" as they are hyping it up to be? probably not (unless they have an interactive Hansen hologram upstairs?). Is it functional, and fits the station's image? Yes.

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Looks like there's a door behind that upstairs set. Probably led to some compromises if it had to remain available. I'll bet that it follows the pattern of most areas like that and it either slowly disappears from use in a few months because using it presents logistical issues or it ends up only being seen in shots that give no sense of its location within the studio.

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22 minutes ago, djlynch said:

Looks like there's a door behind that upstairs set. Probably led to some compromises if it had to remain available. I'll bet that it follows the pattern of most areas like that and it either slowly disappears from use in a few months because using it presents logistical issues or it ends up only being seen in shots that give no sense of its location within the studio.

I mean, Fox makes somewhat regular use of the balcony in Studio M (Where The Five tapes). Usually during things like election coverage. WFAA could very well do the same- put Jason Wheeler up there on election night for any anchor/reporter for a special event.

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3 hours ago, Que said:

image.png.1710ba92886c37eb6694f7769e0cf883.png

Well seems like Cynthia Izaguirre posted the full image to her Facebook. Second floor seems like wasted space. Like others have said, they kept a lot of the Victory Park studio and just expanded on it here.

Again, it's basically just a Newsplex from WHDH, but compressed into a normal set space and no newsroom.

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