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CBS relaunching news operation at WWJ with streaming-first focus


Glimmer

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CBS is investing tens of MILLIONS in this news op launch. This isnt going to be one of those fake CW things. This is a legit news operation. Big anchors will be hired, a full staff of reporters etc. Its going to be digital first, and a news op of the future, with a focus on streaming. But they are making a big play.

Edited by 24994J
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  • 1 month later...
On 12/27/2021 at 10:47 AM, newsman123 said:

CBS is investing tens of MILLIONS in this news op launch. This isnt going to be one of those fake CW things. This is a legit news operation. Big anchors will be hired, a full staff of reporters etc. Its going to be digital first, and a news op of the future, with a focus on streaming. But they are making a big play.

They definitely have a building. It just needs new equipment. Especially ditching all those old CRTs.

 

I told @Samanthalast night that I wish I could see the purchase orders on this project.

Edited by Myron Falwell
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I do think they should take the opportunity to take their current physical channel number and brand WWJ by that. "CBS 21" would be a much better branding and outside a very few in the Toledo Strip who might get confused by WPTA, there wouldn't be any other objections.

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They could self identify as anything they wanted not in use in Detroit…

 

Look at NBC10 Boston - a stones throw from longtime legacy NBC station (and one time O&O) WJAR…

 

Looking at adjacent markets, 3 & 8 are “available” (i.e., not in use) for full power stations, though there is an LD on 3 in the Detroit market. (CBS could make an offer on that LD station to get the Channel 3 PSIP… (and position themselves nicely between Fox and NBC on the Dial…)

 

I’ll stop here so that I’m not getting into Speculatron territory…

 

J

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On 12/14/2021 at 4:59 PM, mrschimpf said:

It's so odd that WDJT in Milwaukee has a good news operation and just leaned in full into their "CBS 58" branding and never changed it, while in Detroit, WWJ's basically been treated as a second CW station with no news; I had expected this a lot sooner than after the Entercom merger, where they couldn't fill their website with WWJ Radio content any longer. Hopefully there will be good effort put into this; Detroit's long needed a fourth voice between the other three news orgs (though WDIV has really calmed from their 2000s worst).

Channel 62 not only was a hastily purchased station while the network was under extreme duress (the infamy of purchasing the first Black-owned television station in the mainland notwithstanding), CBS, Inc. ceased to exist two years later as Westinghouse became CBS Corp. And then the original Viacom, Les Moonves and Dunn—Friend simply didn’t give a damn.

 

WDJT has been nurtured and supported by Weigel since day one. Something channel 62 didn’t have… until now.

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On 2/1/2022 at 2:00 AM, Route66Fan said:

Interesting how WKBD kept a couple of signs from their UPN & Fox days.

2144482.jpg

 

WOW surprised that WKBD still has signs when they were Fox & UPN I do like Fox 50 logo with the gold. WKBD was Michigan local Super Station I think was in 90% of Michigan homes that had cable in the 80s & 90s, it was on Cablevision channel 10 WKBD was taken off in 93 or 94 not sure thou as I didn't have Cablevision at the time I had Adlelphia Comm that never did have WKBD I did get WNDU NBC, WBST CBS both South Bend, WSYM Fox47 Lansing, WWOR when it was an Indy TV station out in NYC/NJ before they became UPN it was dropped on New Years Eve 94.

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  • 5 months later...

To parapharse Bo Schembechler: "A Michigan [person] is going to anchor a Michigan station.," as WKBD/WWJ hires its new 3 Michigan natives for the newscast. The hires are Shaina Humphries (news; Chicago native), Rachelle Graham (news),  Ahmad Bajjey (weather), and Amyre Makupson [the junior] (Executive Producer of Community Impact).

 

https://www.paramountpressexpress.com/cbs-news-and-stations/releases/?view=100529-cbs-news-detroit-announces-its-first-anchor-hirings-and-executive-producer-of-community-impact-in-advance-of-hyper-local-streaming-and-broadcast-news

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1 hour ago, RGSJenkins said:

To parapharse Bo Schembechler: "A Michigan [person] is going to anchor a Michigan station.," as WKBD/WWJ hires its new 3 Michigan natives for the newscast. The hires are Shaina Humphries (news; Chicago native), Rachelle Graham (news),  Ahmad Bajjey (weather), and Amyre Makupson [the junior] (Executive Producer of Community Impact).

 

https://www.paramountpressexpress.com/cbs-news-and-stations/releases/?view=100529-cbs-news-detroit-announces-its-first-anchor-hirings-and-executive-producer-of-community-impact-in-advance-of-hyper-local-streaming-and-broadcast-news

Gotta love the completely wrong CBS News Detroit logo in the press release:

CBSNewsDetroitTalentHires7_11_22_html_70

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On 12/14/2021 at 1:06 PM, Samantha said:

Calling it CBS News Detroit is a very elegant way to de-emphasize that big old 62 and matches the other ex-CBSNs. Good time to have a newsroom up and running, too—they'll unlock some more of that sweet political ad money.

 

Maybe I'm just old, but the crappy stations you couldn't see during the analog era always had high channel numbers. CBS 62 sounds cheap to me for that reason and that reason alone.

 

Do what NBC did and buy an LPTV. You can probably have WHNE-LD since it's on Channel 3. Consider it a marketing expenditure. It's worth every penny to be right between Channels 2 and 4. (62 can also use Virtual 3 since they would have the same ownership.)

On 2/1/2022 at 8:23 PM, Myron Falwell said:

WDJT has been nurtured and supported by Weigel since day one. Something channel 62 didn’t have… until now.

 

ABC 57 in South Bend also seems like a pretty good operation. Impressive for an LPTV.

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  • 1 month later...

I came across this interesting story that mentions the upcoming launch of the new CBS News Detroit local newscast on WWJ & WKBD.  The new newscast is expected to debut in or around November.  Unless CBS decides to do soft launch at the tail end of October in the days before Election Day.  This should be interesting.

https://digiday.com/future-of-tv/how-cbs-news-co-presidents-neeraj-khemlani-and-wendy-mcmahon-are-stepping-up-their-streaming-news-outlet/amp/

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12 hours ago, atlnewsfan03 said:

I came across this interesting story that mentions the upcoming launch of the new CBS News Detroit local newscast on WWJ & WKBD.  The new newscast is expected to debut in or around November.  Unless CBS decides to do soft launch at the tail end of October in the days before Election Day.  This should be interesting.

https://digiday.com/future-of-tv/how-cbs-news-co-presidents-neeraj-khemlani-and-wendy-mcmahon-are-stepping-up-their-streaming-news-outlet/amp/

They’d be dumb not to launch before Election Day. Frankly, if they were smarter, they’d launch in early October at the latest. They’ll be less relevant to the viewing audience if they launch their operation *after* one of the biggest news events of the year passes.

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29 minutes ago, nycnewsjunkie said:

They’d be dumb not to launch before Election Day. Frankly, if they were smarter, they’d launch in early October at the latest. They’ll be less relevant to the viewing audience if they launch their operation *after* one of the biggest news events of the year passes.

CBS would be smart to move up the launch date of WWJ & WKBD's CBS News Detroit local newscast instead of holding off till November.

1 hour ago, Megatron81 said:

I thought that WWJ would have the news up and running in mid to late Sep?

I was thinking CBS would be smart to move up the launch to around mid to late September or early October.  Unless CBS may be lacking confidence in their Detroit news being successful.  Only time will tell.

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