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Just for fun, I scanned as many CBS affiliate websites in Ohio and surrounding areas I could think of. Everybody's website featured the CBS logo in some form except for WKRC and WHIO. Even Gray stations in Ohio and WV use the CBS logo on their website. WIYE-LD in Parkersburg doesn't appear to have a website, but they include the CBS Eye in their logo.

 

Weird.

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After some consistent watching, the CBS 46 format was better IMO. It felt like a struggling station had finally found a format that flowed well with some decent talent like Shon Gables, Rick Folbaum and Thomas Roberts when he was there.

 

If the ANF branding was in preparation for a supposed affiliation drop, then the name change was understandable. If not, the modern CBS 46 format and brand was fine.

 

Aesthetically, the graphics and studio aren't than great in comparison to WSB and WXIA.

 

Maybe its me, but ANF anchors really appear to use hand gestures alot when speaking. Perhaps its a technique that came with the rebrand. 

Edited by iron_lion
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There's a lot being made about the CBS logo being absent from Channel 46's.  Channel 2 does not incorporate the ABC logo into its own, yet ABC is not about to part ways with WSB.  (LIkewise, my NBC affiliate, WRAL, does not have a peacock in its logo; this is a station which is as dominant as WSB.) While it is not out of the question that CBS might move its programming to WUPA  and move the CW somewhere else (69.2, maybe?), I don't see why it matters whether the network logo is there or not.

Edited by bpatrick
WUPA is a CBS o&o, not an affiliate.
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1 minute ago, TVLurker said:

that or have a warning post pinned, punish those who are speculating and push the thread on topic. which is about WANF, not WUPA 

I mean I get people here are upset and are looking for some kind of justification to Gray ditching the CBS46 brand, even down to speculating a possible disaffiliation with CBS but we’ve known since Gray purchased the Meredith stations that they planned to blow up WGCL. We’ve known this entire time they had plans to make it a more serious news-centric operation with its own brand and less influence on the network it was affiliated with, they’ve made zero secret about that.

 

What I don’t understand is why everyone is so upset with WANF and the Atlanta News First brand, sure, it’s unconventional but it does exactly what Gray said they were going to do. We knew going in that CBS46 was going to be tossed out, we knew going in that Gray intended to expand newscasts and beef up the news department. Now, WANF is trying to make headway in unseating the top stations in town for news and make a name for itself, and everyone wants to crap all over the effort. I say, good for Gray and good for WANF for wanting to try to do it right this time. I’m sure, as I’ve mentioned before with the whole KCBS/KCAL thing, that this was tested and tested and tested before it hit the air and it worked.

 

So to come on here and have a meltdown over a brand and say that Gray is destroying the station when we’ve known all along this was their plan is kind of ludicrous. To also speculate that CBS is unhappy with Gray and WANF and plans to yank the affiliation for their own station in Atlanta is also ludicrous. If CBS really wanted WUPA to be a CBS affiliate, they would have done so decades ago.

 

Why does CBS still own WUPA? That’s a question for the theologians. But the same question can be asked of KSTW, WTOG, and others as well. And if CBS pulls their CW affiliations from said stations, it’s not an automatic that they’re going to be actively seeking CBS affiliations for those. Heck, they could run them as 24/7 linear CBS News stations. They could do a number of things, but I think we can’t speculate about what hasn’t happened yet.

 

I think we need to focus on the fact that WANF is finally trying to make a name for themselves in the field of news, and Gray is pouring money and resources and time in that Meredith didn’t in order to make it work. And that should be applauded, not lambasted.

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Every CBS Gray website in Ohio and West Virginia shows the CBS logo. Fox's successful formula is to own stations in NFL cities. That way they get to double dip on both the local and national advertising sides. It's not far fetched in a world where NBC dumped KRON and WHDH that CBS could see an opportunity to add another top 10 Market to their stable.

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52 minutes ago, BluesNews said:

I mean I get people here are upset and are looking for some kind of justification to Gray ditching the CBS46 brand, even down to speculating a possible disaffiliation with CBS but we’ve known since Gray purchased the Meredith stations that they planned to blow up WGCL. We’ve known this entire time they had plans to make it a more serious news-centric operation with its own brand and less influence on the network it was affiliated with, they’ve made zero secret about that.

 

What I don’t understand is why everyone is so upset with WANF and the Atlanta News First brand, sure, it’s unconventional but it does exactly what Gray said they were going to do. We knew going in that CBS46 was going to be tossed out, we knew going in that Gray intended to expand newscasts and beef up the news department. Now, WANF is trying to make headway in unseating the top stations in town for news and make a name for itself, and everyone wants to crap all over the effort. I say, good for Gray and good for WANF for wanting to try to do it right this time. I’m sure, as I’ve mentioned before with the whole KCBS/KCAL thing, that this was tested and tested and tested before it hit the air and it worked.

 

So to come on here and have a meltdown over a brand and say that Gray is destroying the station when we’ve known all along this was their plan is kind of ludicrous. To also speculate that CBS is unhappy with Gray and WANF and plans to yank the affiliation for their own station in Atlanta is also ludicrous. If CBS really wanted WUPA to be a CBS affiliate, they would have done so decades ago.

 

Why does CBS still own WUPA? That’s a question for the theologians. But the same question can be asked of KSTW, WTOG, and others as well. And if CBS pulls their CW affiliations from said stations, it’s not an automatic that they’re going to be actively seeking CBS affiliations for those. Heck, they could run them as 24/7 linear CBS News stations. They could do a number of things, but I think we can’t speculate about what hasn’t happened yet.

 

I think we need to focus on the fact that WANF is finally trying to make a name for themselves in the field of news, and Gray is pouring money and resources and time in that Meredith didn’t in order to make it work. And that should be applauded, not lambasted.

We can see that Gray is putting forth the effort to make WANF a competitive local station.  We didn't see Tribune (during the WGNX era) and Meredith (during the WGCL era) doing much investing in the station.

Tribune had originally wanted the station to be an affiliate of the now defunct WB network, but settled with CBS in an 11th hour deal as CBS wanted a station viewers were more familiar with and had a functioning news operation.  They weren't very motivated in adding additional newscasts outside of Noon, 6PM, & 11PM.

Meredith, while they may have added morning, 5PM, & 4PM newscasts on main station, and prime-time newscast on WPCH (Peachtree TV), they're remembered for the failed Clear News experiment, to the the back-and-forth between CBS Atlanta and CBS 46 brandings, and being a revolving door station when it came to retaining on-air talents.

Gray, which is Atlanta-based, sees potential with adding 9AM, 3PM, and 7PM newscasts to the main station, and adding 7-9AM newscast and expanding prime-time news on WPCH, and not relying too heavily on CBS.  WANF has potential to beat WXIA (known as 11Alive), which has seen better days, and some may even jokingly refer to as "11Dead".  WAGA (Fox 5) and WSB (Channel 2 Action News) are the top 2 stations.

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14 hours ago, Adam MadMan said:

It was mentioned in another thread about Nexstar buying The CW, through a report by Scott Jones of FTVLive. While Scott spins it as being a protest against the LIV Golf deal (long story), @Myron Falwell said it was more likely that it was just CBS washing its hands of the struggling network.

 

Said report is paywalled...and I have no interest in becoming a FTVLive patron.

 

1 hour ago, BluesNews said:

I mean I get people here are upset and are looking for some kind of justification to Gray ditching the CBS46 brand, even down to speculating a possible disaffiliation with CBS but we’ve known since Gray purchased the Meredith stations that they planned to blow up WGCL. We’ve known this entire time they had plans to make it a more serious news-centric operation with its own brand and less influence on the network it was affiliated with, they’ve made zero secret about that.

 

What I don’t understand is why everyone is so upset with WANF and the Atlanta News First brand, sure, it’s unconventional but it does exactly what Gray said they were going to do.  [...]

 

So to come on here and have a meltdown over a brand and say that Gray is destroying the station when we’ve known all along this was their plan is kind of ludicrous. To also speculate that CBS is unhappy with Gray and WANF and plans to yank the affiliation for their own station in Atlanta is also ludicrous. If CBS really wanted WUPA to be a CBS affiliate, they would have done so decades ago.

 

[...]

 

I think we need to focus on the fact that WANF is finally trying to make a name for themselves in the field of news, and Gray is pouring money and resources and time in that Meredith didn’t in order to make it work. And that should be applauded, not lambasted.

 

THANK YOU. It's a relief to see I'm not the only one confused here.

 

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2 hours ago, BluesNews said:

I mean I get people here are upset and are looking for some kind of justification to Gray ditching the CBS46 brand, even down to speculating a possible disaffiliation with CBS but we’ve known since Gray purchased the Meredith stations that they planned to blow up WGCL. We’ve known this entire time they had plans to make it a more serious news-centric operation with its own brand and less influence on the network it was affiliated with, they’ve made zero secret about that.

 

What I don’t understand is why everyone is so upset with WANF and the Atlanta News First brand, sure, it’s unconventional but it does exactly what Gray said they were going to do. We knew going in that CBS46 was going to be tossed out, we knew going in that Gray intended to expand newscasts and beef up the news department. Now, WANF is trying to make headway in unseating the top stations in town for news and make a name for itself, and everyone wants to crap all over the effort. I say, good for Gray and good for WANF for wanting to try to do it right this time. I’m sure, as I’ve mentioned before with the whole KCBS/KCAL thing, that this was tested and tested and tested before it hit the air and it worked.

 

So to come on here and have a meltdown over a brand and say that Gray is destroying the station when we’ve known all along this was their plan is kind of ludicrous. To also speculate that CBS is unhappy with Gray and WANF and plans to yank the affiliation for their own station in Atlanta is also ludicrous. If CBS really wanted WUPA to be a CBS affiliate, they would have done so decades ago.

 

Why does CBS still own WUPA? That’s a question for the theologians. But the same question can be asked of KSTW, WTOG, and others as well. And if CBS pulls their CW affiliations from said stations, it’s not an automatic that they’re going to be actively seeking CBS affiliations for those. Heck, they could run them as 24/7 linear CBS News stations. They could do a number of things, but I think we can’t speculate about what hasn’t happened yet.

 

I think we need to focus on the fact that WANF is finally trying to make a name for themselves in the field of news, and Gray is pouring money and resources and time in that Meredith didn’t in order to make it work. And that should be applauded, not lambasted.

AMEN!!! 🙏🙏🙏🙏

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Honestly, I think it's totally reasonable to think that CBS might take affiliations in-house, if/when they dump the CW from any or all of the stations in this discussion. However, some here are relying way too much on certain factors to support or reject the idea, to the point where the same points just keep circling around.

 

So, until we know for sure what CBS plans to do with their CW stations (beyond the initial FTVLive posting that I first brought to everyone's attention), how about we put this topic on the back burner?

 

Agreed? Good.

 

(Besides, there's a speculation thread already dedicated to this, so THIS thread wouldn't be clogged up with hypotheticals.)

Edited by 24994J
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2 hours ago, DirtyHarry said:

It's not far fetched in a world where NBC dumped KRON and WHDH that CBS could see an opportunity to add another top 10 Market to their stable.

The issue with this logic is that CBS could have and would have done these affiliation switches eons ago if that were the case. KSTW would still be with CBS and still have its own news department if this was the case.

 

NBC dumped KRON for KNTV, a station that had a news department. NBC dumped WHDH for startup WBTS, but already had a news department in place thanks to New England Cable News.

 

WWJ is an interesting situation where CBS built an entire news operation from the ground up. It can be done, but other than WWJ it hasn't, and it takes millions and millions and millions of dollars to do.

 

The CWs are still doing outsourced newscasts. There hasn't been the same type of investment made in Atlanta, Tampa, Seattle, and others to justify switches.

Edited by BluesNews
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Atlanta News First is taking, note-for-note, what Gray did with WOIO-WUAB and fusing a bit of the CBS News playbook to it. WOIO was one of the first stations to embrace over-the-top streaming and rolling coverage online prior to 2020, championed by the same Eric Schrader heading up WANF. Schrader not only wowed Gray brass in demonstrating the simplicity of WOIO's OTT setup--it really doesn't use much resources--it played a role in their embrace of digital streaming and likely got him the Atlanta gig.

 

Conventional ratings at this point don't matter for WOIO. What matters is targeting an audience that will easily access their newscasts, and by and large, they've been very successful. That's exactly what they've implemented at WANF and is exactly what CBS is doing with WWJ (you could argue that CBS News Detroit is more a Xerox of WOIO's digital strategy than WANF is). But it also underscores the democratization of television journalism. You don't have to be beholden to Neilsen's television ratings--a rather ancient and increasingly inaccurate method for audience membership--if you can make money and find viewers with a product that can be done with both efficiency and care.

 

To that point, I think a market like Atlanta can support more than one digitally-based news services. If CBS wanted to make use of WUPA for an in-house news operation, it can 100% co-exist with Atlanta News First and both can thrive.

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5 hours ago, Myron Falwell said:

If CBS wanted to make use of WUPA for an in-house news operation, it can 100% co-exist with Atlanta News First and both can thrive.


No question there, I just question if they will. Also, WUPA doesn’t have the same studio infrastructure in place WWJ did. WUPA’s existing space is VERY small if I understand correctly. Sure the WWJ/WKBD facilities needed renovation before the current product was formed, but they had the space and had done newscasts before. It would require a build-out or move for WUPA to launch a full-scale news department.

 

Sure, ratings don’t matter, and it could be done. But, it would require A LOT more money than it did to launch newscasts on WWJ. And back to what I said before, why now if they didn’t try before and are barely doing it now outsourced from KTVT?

 

This could be Speculatron fodder, but yes WANF’s existing facility will be up for sale once they officially move to Gray’s new development eventually. I’m leaving this point there because there is no indication that CBS is in the market for a larger facility for WUPA or plans to do anymore than what they’re doing now.

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Regardless of whether or not CBS goes somewhere else, I plan to drop dead if WANF passes WXIA for third place in Atlanta news.  I haven't seen WANF's new look, but my gut tells me to keep an eye on the battle for third between the two.  For me the last good newscast on 11 Alive was "Pro News" in the mid-'70s; Virgil Dominic lived up to the newscast's name.

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1 hour ago, bpatrick said:

Regardless of whether or not CBS goes somewhere else, I plan to drop dead if WANF passes WXIA for third place in Atlanta news.  I haven't seen WANF's new look, but my gut tells me to keep an eye on the battle for third between the two.  For me the last good newscast on 11 Alive was "Pro News" in the mid-'70s; Virgil Dominic lived up to the newscast's name.

Reference my earlier post. WANF isn’t doing this for conventional ratings because they’re targeting people whom Nielsen left behind. It’s no secret that Nielsen is a broken system and some broadcast chains have already moved on from them.

 

So even if WANF’s ratings “don’t improve”, it doesn’t matter. Same with WWJ. They’ve already found a good target audience and will make money on their new ventures.

 

Local ratings? It just doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter! I’m telling you, it just doesn’t matter!!

 

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22 hours ago, DirtyHarry said:

Every CBS Gray website in Ohio and West Virginia shows the CBS logo. Fox's successful formula is to own stations in NFL cities. That way they get to double dip on both the local and national advertising sides. It's not far fetched in a world where NBC dumped KRON and WHDH that CBS could see an opportunity to add another top 10 Market to their stable.

WKBN in Youngstown OH, which is owned by Nextar, just reincorporated the CBS logo next to the 27, after briefly taking it away.

 

Here in Detroit, WDIV (NBC) is the only network affiliated station that does not show the network logo, and WDIV’s relationship with NBC appears to be shaky at best.

 

WXYZ has the ABC logo incorporated with the circle 7, and the station’s relationship with the network is great.

 

WJBK (Fox), WWJ (CBS), and WKBD (CW) are all network owned and operated stations.  All of the have to be network logo incorporated with the station logo as expected.  

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35 minutes ago, CircleWXYZ said:

WKBN in Youngstown OH, which is owned by Nextar, just reincorporated the CBS logo next to the 27, after briefly taking it away.

 

Here in Detroit, WDIV (NBC) is the only network affiliated station that does not show the network logo, and WDIV’s relationship with NBC appears to be shaky at best.

 

WXYZ has the ABC logo incorporated with the circle 7, and the station’s relationship with the network is great.

 

WJBK (Fox), WWJ (CBS), and WKBD (CW) are all network owned and operated stations.  All of the have to be network logo incorporated with the station logo as expected.  

 

Screenshot_20230208-020136_YouTube.jpg.736a51214fc7c1fce4bfb3a0f90d2f64.jpg ?

Edited by 24994J
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My point is, AFN not showing the network logo may or may not reflect the station’s relationship with CBS.  In WDIV’s case, it does.  With a station like KTLA or WPIX, it doesn’t.  It depends on the actual station.

Edited by CircleWXYZ
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1 hour ago, CircleWXYZ said:

My point is, AFN not showing the network logo may or may not reflect the station’s relationship with CBS.  In WDIV’s case, it does.  With a station like KTLA or WPIX, it doesn’t.  It depends on the actual station.

 

KTLA/WPIX? CW? That's a bit of a stretch isn't it? 

 

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1 minute ago, CircleWXYZ said:

I don’t think either station has a bad relationship with the CW but who knows.

 

My point is that calling CW a network, is like calling some minor league ball player a pro. Technically, I guess they are, but you know what I mean.

 

I don't know why you wouldn't advertise it though. If you have CW shows on, you should display the logo so that people know what your product is. That's even more true with CBS, given the heritage of CBS News and all and given that these guys are trying to be a news-oriented channel.

The website is your storefront. It seems like this is the kind of information you would want to have instantly visible rather than just having a generic page like that.

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