If we're talking the Big 4, there's also KSWB 69 in San Diego, which Fox has no problem being with.
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CBS getting an O&O in Atlanta as WUPA replaces WANF
- Thread starter NYAZSporty
- Start date
Speaking of WUPA CH. 69. Do they have enough space in their studio to have a newsroom? I know KSTW Seattle doesn't have a big studio, they sold it long time ago to KBTC PBS 28 and their office is currently located in the engineering room at their transmitter site on Madison Ave in Capitol Hill Seattle
Yes back when KSTW Seattle was a CW affiliate they had their offices registered to 855 Battery Street San Francisco. Yes CBS registered the address of the KSTW offices and main controls to the KPIX/KPYX/CBS News Bay Area offices in San Francisco when they were CW affiliate.
There is a lot of shows that are on 69 that are not first tier and will 46 pick up those or will tegna and 36 pick shows 69 won’t have room for. With cbs investment in streaming news now across most markets I see starting an Atlanta version now is more viable than it was in 94. Then some will simlucast over the air plus streaming did not exist much back then. I’m curious on where 46 will expand news and how cbs Atlanta will fill the schedule and give up the shows they don’t have room for. I believe 52 of 53 gray cbs stations renewed and wanf was the only one not renewed
When WAGA went from CBS to FOX they expanded their news by more than 20 hours a week (also the amount quoted to be added to 46). WAGA became the biggest news operation in Georgia... well, at least that is what all of their ads said at the time. Adding 20 hours to the schedule is a no brainer. The real question is how creative are they going to be. Here places 46 can add news:
- +12 hours - Replacing the CBS Mornings.
- +7 hours - Add a 10 PM or 9 PM newscast. Maybe a primetime newscast at 8PM??
- +3.5 hours - Replacing CBS Evening News will local.
- +3 hours - Replacing CBS News Mornings with local 4:00 AM - 4:30 AM.
- +3 hours - Take the noon news from 30 mins to one hour
- +3 hours - Increase the 3 PM newscast from 30 mins to one hour.
Here is an interesting tidbit about daily M-F local origin newscast produced by Gray:
- WANF 46 - 7.5 hours per day
- PeachtreeTV - 6 hours per day
It's looking as though WANF/Peachtree TV may morph into another KCAL or KRON. Atlanta's probably large enough to sustain that.
True and Miami’s WPLG is supposed to go the same route at the same time WANF is going once their affiliations end in August.
46 can add all the news it wants; their newscast ratings will remain terrible.
69 won't do any better with local news. CBS O&O stations are predominantly (but not entirely) weak performers in the local news battle.
The last time a CBS O&O launched news from scratch was WWJ-TV in Detroit, and as one who lives in that market, I'm here to say that news operation is vastly inferior to each of the three local news incumbents. No health reporter, no business reporter, no State Capitol reporter (that position was eliminated), no education reporter, zero consumer advocacy or investigative reporting, zero weekend morning newscasts, a truly crappy news set with horrible aesthetics, and only one sports reporter / anchor in a sports obsessed city. The station is also often late at reporting big, breaking stories or covers them only superficially. It is a barely better than garbage product overall. Their streaming channel is an absolute joke, too.
69 won't do any better with local news. CBS O&O stations are predominantly (but not entirely) weak performers in the local news battle.
The last time a CBS O&O launched news from scratch was WWJ-TV in Detroit, and as one who lives in that market, I'm here to say that news operation is vastly inferior to each of the three local news incumbents. No health reporter, no business reporter, no State Capitol reporter (that position was eliminated), no education reporter, zero consumer advocacy or investigative reporting, zero weekend morning newscasts, a truly crappy news set with horrible aesthetics, and only one sports reporter / anchor in a sports obsessed city. The station is also often late at reporting big, breaking stories or covers them only superficially. It is a barely better than garbage product overall. Their streaming channel is an absolute joke, too.
CBS is stuck owning an indie in Atlanta they really can't get rid of in WUPA. Might as well make it an owned-station even in spite of low ratings. It's not like the network is that long for the world...
Surprised you didn't mention the part where WWJ's general manager is also the GM at WBBM, a historic laggard.
Yes, owning a second-tier independent in a market that already has all the TV stations it needs (and then some), kind of a white elephant.
Broadcast television isn't exactly a growth industry these days. Everybody's streaming.
That's interesting to see this is the second example of a GM having to manage two separate O&O's as in this case the GM of WBBM is also the GM of WWJ/WKBD in different parts of the country. This is like the General Manager of KPIX/KPYX is also the manager of KSTW.
CBS Names Leader of Seattle CW Station
Joe Freni has been the vice president and director of sales and marketing for The CW Seattle since 2017.
www.adweek.com
That's interesting to see this is the second example of a GM having to manage two separate O&O's as in this case the GM of WBBM is also the GM of WWJ/WKBD in different parts of the country. This is like the General Manager of KPIX/KPYX is also the manager of KSTW.
CBS Names Leader of Seattle CW Station
Joe Freni has been the vice president and director of sales and marketing for The CW Seattle since 2017.
CBS has done this for a while. WBZ-WSBK/Boston and WCBS-WLNY/New York share. KCNC/Denver and KCBS-KCAL/Los Angeles, too.
IIRC that "white elephant" carried the CW at one time which Paramount was pushing at one time, and was insurance for what happened*. There is no way CBS "pulled" it programing volunteerly from Gray in Atlanta.
Now they are tasked with starting a local news department. If they didn't have 69 they would be on 2.2 or 11.2 most likely without any local news department for Atlanta's occasional breaking national news stories.
Remember CBS was on channel 5 until a series of ownerships changes.
It is much bigger than Jacksonville where WJXT has been independent for more than 20 years since CBS moved its affiliation to WTEV. Likewise, Atlanta is much bigger than Indianapolis where WISH-TV lost its CBS affiliation a decade ago; it is now a CW affiliate, but programs more than 80 hours of news a week.
The factor, it seems, is less about market size and more about how well the station was performing before losing its affiliation. WJXT and WISH were strongly competitive news operations when they lost their CBS affiliations; WANF isn't, so building it out in a model like KCAL-TV, KRON, WJXT, WISH running lots of news all day is going to be more challenging.
Just casually glancing at WJXT's schedule, the only way I could tell you that it's not a network affiliate, is the 8-10 pm block, and the absence of network morning shows and evening news. In the year 2025, I really don't think a long-established station in a fairly good-sized city is going to suffer any major stigma over not being a network affiliate. (They also had that low-VHF channel number back when that would have allowed their signal to get out perhaps as far as 100 miles depending on location and terrain, and viewing habits got established over the years.) People watch shows, not networks, and network TV is in pretty bad shape compared to how it was 10-20 years ago and before. Also, the other Jacksonville stations have been all over the place as regards network affiliation, shared news operations, and so on. WJXT doesn't have the strongest competition in the world.
Bottom line, if a station is strong to begin with, and if it has a long history of being the "go-to" station in town for news, a network affiliation isn't the be-all and end-all of everything. But neither of those things describe WANF.
I just have to say, this really sucks for CBS as a network. Ch. 46 has always been one of CBS's weakest affiliates since the first switch. Around the nearby region, CBS affiliates like WRDW/Augusta, WSPA/Spartanburg (Greenville), WTVY/Dothan, WBTV/Charlotte have long been some of the highest rated CBS affiliates in the nation.
And then we have CBS, in a market as big as Atlanta, flipping AGAIN... I wouldn't be surprised if in 5 years they end up like Ch. 62 in Detroit. For years, even as an O&O, they gave up on local news altogether. I think they finally got local news back on 62.... and still, the overall ratings are nowhere near the ratings of the other stations there... never will be. Of course times, they are changing. So I get it.
And then we have CBS, in a market as big as Atlanta, flipping AGAIN... I wouldn't be surprised if in 5 years they end up like Ch. 62 in Detroit. For years, even as an O&O, they gave up on local news altogether. I think they finally got local news back on 62.... and still, the overall ratings are nowhere near the ratings of the other stations there... never will be. Of course times, they are changing. So I get it.
Yes, I discussed CBS News Detroit, found on channel 62 WWJ-TV, earlier in this thread. They launched local news in January 2023, several months behind schedule. On Wikipedia, a lot of info about the news operation is incorrect. It never became the "streaming first" operation that was the initial vision, and it produces fewer hours of live news programming weekly than each of its three competitors. It is a relatively low budget operation compared to the other three TV news operations in Detroit.
I looked at it just last night. It's pretty bare-bones.