In place of the local weather forecasters will be a national “hub” based in Atlanta led by Carl Parker, a veteran storm and climate specialist at The Weather Channel — which the Byron Allen-owned media group acquired for $300 million in March 2018. The plan will see the locally produced segments replaced by a feed beamed to individual stations from The Weather Channel, which could include some of the stations’ former meteorologists.
The layoffs at roughly two dozen local television stations stretching from Massachusetts to Hawaii will impact at least 50 meteorologists, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person said some of the meteorologists will be offered new positions at The Weather Channel in Atlanta while others will be allowed to remain in their respective markets as part of the initiative.
First major disaster to hit those markets, they’ll be fucked,
First Bally Sports, now this. Byron Allen should’ve stuck with producing crappy shows.
Manzano had been covering the Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, where the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles will play against each other at the Caesars Superdome on Sunday, February 9. The sports journalist had been sharing content from his trip to Louisiana on his social media accounts, posting his reports from the scene.
Legendary Bay Area news anchor Dennis Richmond, one of the nation’s first Black anchors of a major market TV newscast who spent 40 years with Oakland’s KTVU, died Wednesday (February 5) at 81.
https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/bay-area-tv-news-anchor-dies-81-20149233.php
Nearly 2 years after the acquisition, Hearst debuted a common ‘Gulf Coast’ brand for both WBBH and WZVN (of which they provide LMA to).
While both channels use the station group’s ‘Diagrid’ graphics package (which has been used by WBBH since last year), the bulletins are still presented separately.
Also introducing a common brand is Nexstar’s St. Louis stations, as KPLR’s newscasts are now Fox 2 News (previously STL 11 News at 4/7pm). The 11am bulletin, billed as “Power of Two” with both names present, is also following suit on the schedules.
Onto Fox-adjacent land…
KCOP Los Angeles debuted LA Live News Tonight a few days ago. Under this mouthful name (really, either LA Live or LA Tonight would’ve been better!) is the return of news to the station, the regular output of which ended in 2013. It’s also a live primetime bulletin - a direct competitor to KCAL’s famous timeslot.
Its New York sibling, WWOR, launched their own offering last year… kind of. The MyTV station added The News on My9 at 8pm, the same timeslot as WLNY airs theirs from WCBS, but it was a replay of WNYW’s 6pm news. Like KCOP, their newsroom was wound down in 2013 to become talk/news-based programme, Chasing New Jersey.
C-SPAN updated its graphics across its three channels last week. Honestly feels more like NewsNation for some reason, and the programme name makes the bug much more cramped.
More than a year after the return of Hello News, KWQC commissioned Warner Chappell to create a more modern remix of their classic theme.
This coincides with the launch of their new control room, plus a little update on the supers (the station bug now doubles as a billboard for their slogan and weather branding - honestly preferred the original).
The new closing music in full, courtesy of the mastermind behind it:
The 20 mentions of the callsign and sudden silence of the music is awful.
In the US, they are legally required to mention the call-sign. Wish they’d make them do it here. 
I sau bring Hello News v2 here!
WPLG has laid out their plans after leaving ABC:
- Live with Kelly and Mark is moved from 10 to 11am to cover the hole left by The View, creating a daytime news block including the former GMA spot from 4.30 to 11;
- A new global news bulletin, Local10 World News, launches nightly at 6.30pm, with quite an on-the-nose wordmark to WNT (according to this Tweet);
- The 8-10pm hour, currently with Bachelor, is split at 9 to make way for another nighttime news block from 9 to 11, thereby replacing Family Feud at 10;
- In addition to the expanded news slots, weekends will also see live sports updates at 9.30 and 11.30pm, supplementing in between and after the news
Meanwhile, WSVN’s news will be simulcast on the new ABC Miami, which is also on the low-power channel 18 (WDFL, previously affiliated with NewsNet) as another outlet.
Update 26/7 WSVN’s full plan is out - the 6pm simulcast billed as ‘power hour of news’ with WNT at 6.30:
Meanwhile, Scripps has rolled out a new local news graphics package in May. It’s first used in WFTS Tampa, then WEWS Cleveland last Thursday.
Designed by California-based Defiant, the design claimed to be based on the group’s lighthouse logo, though the curved trail reminds me of the weather open in the ABC O&O package:
The ending logo at the title sequence might be a bit small though.
The supers is fine - suits the ABC stations well, and would’ve matched the old 10 News look too…
Hearst, at WCVB Boston, have launched another update to their ‘Diagrid’ package, not even a year after they launched the last one, which is being used, and will apparently only be used, at their Fort Myers duopoly (WBBH/WZVN).
This is interesting WPLG in Miami, Florida haven’t renewed their ABC affiliate contract and have gone independent.
They’ve launched their own ‘World News’ program to compete with the National Network’s evening bulletins.
The US and Canada have dozens and dozens of local TV news channels offering around 12-15 hours a day of live local news - both on FTA and streaming.
That is local news departments spinning their content off and expanding on it to fill out a 24/7 local news channel. It’s local city based newsroom that do this.
Right down to cities the size of Adelaide with 1.5 million people or so.
It’s a shame Nine and Seven are not in this space, at least nationally.
If cities the size of Adelaide can manage a local 24 hour news channel is hard to understand our networks serving 27 million can’t make the economics work.
France too has around five local 24 hour news channels in cities like Lyon too
Would be much beeter than watching the infomercials at 2am.
Hey other networks… There’s an uptapped market here for news. Just sayin’.
Where would my 2am custard eating commercials go then 
For completeness, they’ve also expanded their breakfast and nighttime news to be hours-long blocks, now without the network shows.
This is the 7-10am openers in between the 4.30-11 news:
And the opener to the 9pm newscast - earliest in the area versus the others’ 10/11pm late news. Prefer this opener to the daytime one TBH:
I’ll one up your custard eating commercial with the “new and improved” ab-exerciser all-in-one step ladder with free set of steak knives. Only for the first 37 viewers.