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.
This is the last STL 11-branded bulletin, with graphics introduced to both stations in 2020; the set a year later; and the name itself last year:
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.
