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Silliest TV Station Slogan

A couple more from Phoenix

The previously mentioned "3TV - The Place With More Stuff" from KTVK. How in the world did I forget that piece of drivel?!?!?

But there's one that's even more idiotic: The current "Cooney & Curtis: Two different people. One great news team." on KPNX Channel Mc12. And to think I was absolutely sure that Lin Sue Cooney and Mark Curtis were really the same person! :-D

I think Gannett needs some new slogan writers.
 
> >
> Seems that back in the 70s and 80s, a lot of stations liked
> to attach adjectives to their channel numbers. There's, of
> course, "11 Alive", which is still used to this day on
> WXIA/Atlanta. I've always thought, "If you're not 11 Alive,
> then are you 11 Dead?" I also remember hearing ones like
> "Solid 6" (WDBO/Orlando, now WKMG), "Active 8" (WQAD/Quad
> Cities), etc.
>
Some friends of mine who were inveterate WXIA haters used to
call it "11 Dead." WTVD/11 Raleigh/Durham used to call itself
"11 Together," which begs the question, "If you're not 11 Together,
then are you 11 Apart?"
 
> What's the silliest slogan/catchphrase you've ever heard for
> a TV station?
>
> My nomination has to be WCIX-6 in Miami, which for a time
> many years ago actually called itself "The Station with Six
> Appeal."
>
> I kid you not.....
>

A toss-up between 2 Pittsburgh stations....

WTAE-TV 4 for a time used "Channel Four Loves You!"
(yeah, right...it wants to hug you, kiss you, go to
bed with you, bear your children, etc. etc.....)

WIIC-TV (now WPXI) used "E11even Alive", and they really did
spell "eleven" with TWO number 1's forming the L's (driving
school teachers in the area absolutely batty!)
 
> > Not too long ago, WDIV/4 in Detroit started using "The
> Power
> > of 4", and they even use that in their news opens. And in
>
> > the same market, WXYZ/7 used "Where 7 Stands for News" for
> a
> > number of years.
> > I can see it now.... "FROM WDIV IN DETROIT.... LOCAL 4
> NEWS WITH MR. FANTASTIC
> THE INVISIBLE GIRL METEOROLOGIST THE THING AND THE HUMAN
> TORCH WITH SPORTS, THE POWER OF 4 STARTS NOW! Now all they
> need is THE FANTASTIC 4's enemy and their all set.>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Someone mentioned WNWO in Toledo - now they're calling
> > themselves "Toledo's Weather Station". That sounds to me
> > like they don't have local news, just weather reports.
> >
> As for Channel 24, yes they do market themselves as TOLEDO'S
> WEATHER STATION because now they have Boner... oops I mean
> Blizzard Bill Spencer as their "chief Moron... oops I mean
> meteorologist. Any station that has a meterologist that
> uses his nickname along with his real name on the air can't
> be taken to seriously. A possible exception to that last
> statement, Channel 9 here in Denver had "Stormy" Rottman and
> "Sunny" Roseman for years. The big difference was they
> didn't present the weather like a circus clown they were no
> nonsense down to business types that knew their stuff. In
> closing, here's something to think about, In the mid 80's I
> believe it was, channel 24 had a meterologist by the name of
> Karl Spring. One night during severe weather his forecast
> was for a 70% chance of showers and t-storms. He then went
> on to say that it's not a 100% chance of rain unless you're
> outside getting rained on. No sh*t sherlock. Pretty hard to
> take a station like that seriously, isn't it.
> >
>

One of the Detroit stations (I think it was WXYZ 7) was using "Stand Up and Tell 'Em You're From Detroit!" as an attempt at civic pride. They would interview Detroiters on the street and ask them "What do you think about when you say Detroit?" (General Motors, Motown, the Red Wings, etc were usual answers)
One lady piped up and said "I always think of Michael Jackson and the Jackson Family!" (which was very nice....except they're from Gary, Indiana....and you were BORN AND RAISED HERE!!!)

Also WTVG 13 in Toledo for a time was using "13 Strong" (or was it Strong 13?)
which is not very "strong" as a piece of marketing. Not many stations out there are plugging the wattage!
 
> > >>
> One of the Detroit stations (I think it was WXYZ 7) was
> using "Stand Up and Tell 'Em You're From Detroit!" as an
> attempt at civic pride. They would interview Detroiters on
> the street and ask them "What do you think about when you
> say Detroit?

Burning down half the city when the Red Wings, Pistons, or Tigers win the world championship
 
> A toss-up between 2 Pittsburgh stations....
>
> WTAE-TV 4 for a time used "Channel Four Loves You!"
> (yeah, right...it wants to hug you, kiss you, go to
> bed with you, bear your children, etc. etc.....)

Many stations that used Frank Gari's "Hello News" package had similar slogans -- I recall Flint's WJRT having a similar slogan in the mid-1980s.

>
> WIIC-TV (now WPXI) used "E11even Alive", and they really did
>
> spell "eleven" with TWO number 1's forming the L's (driving
>
> school teachers in the area absolutely batty!)
>

How long did "e11even" last? Apparently, they wanted to be like the few channel 8s who were "ei8ht".
 
> One of the Detroit stations (I think it was WXYZ 7) was
> using "Stand Up and Tell 'Em You're From Detroit!" as an
> attempt at civic pride. They would interview Detroiters on
> the street and ask them "What do you think about when you
> say Detroit?" (General Motors, Motown, the Red Wings, etc
> were usual answers)
> One lady piped up and said "I always think of Michael
> Jackson and the Jackson Family!" (which was very
> nice....except they're from Gary, Indiana....and you were
> BORN AND RAISED HERE!!!)


That must be a Scripps thing because they ran the same campaign in Kansas City on KSHB-41. It was called Stand UP and Tell 'Em your from KC"
 
> >> >
>
> From Virginia...
>
> > Meanwhile around the same time, maybe a tad earlier WVEC
> channel 13 was using the slogan "take it to the top". The
> slogan itself was not really all THAT bad but after watching
> one their promos using it, well that ws silly. One I
> remember had these people dancing around a supermarket. Even
> the cashier was singing along "take it to the top", and
> there was "13" all over the place. Now this reminds me of
> something. WVEC is owned by Belo. Back in the 80s there
> was a grocery store chain in the Norfolk-Virginia Beach area
> called "Belo". Wonder if there was a connection between the
> two?
>
>No connection. A.H. Belo Corporation is a media conglomerate
based in Dallas; its flagship television station is WFAA/8, the
ABC affiliate there, and it also owns the Dallas Morning News.
I lived in Virginia Beach in the late '60s and remember Belo
grocery stores extending into eastern North Carolina as late
as the mid-'80s, but WVEC wasn't always owned by the Dallas-based
Belo company; it and sister station KHOU/11 Houston were once
owned by now-defunct Corinthian Broadcasting.
>
>
>
 
> > A toss-up between 2 Pittsburgh stations....
> >
> > WTAE-TV 4 for a time used "Channel Four Loves You!"
> > (yeah, right...it wants to hug you, kiss you, go to
> > bed with you, bear your children, etc. etc.....)
>
> Many stations that used Frank Gari's "Hello News" package
> had similar slogans -- I recall Flint's WJRT having a
> similar slogan in the mid-1980s.
>
> >
> > WIIC-TV (now WPXI) used "E11even Alive", and they really
> did
> >
> > spell "eleven" with TWO number 1's forming the L's
> (driving
> >
> > school teachers in the area absolutely batty!)
> >
>

Lasted around 2 yrs. in the late 70's as I recall.
My 8th grade English teacher would go on a daily diatribe about it
as nobody could spell "eleven" properly when this was going on.
> How long did "e11even" last? Apparently, they wanted to be
> like the few channel 8s who were "ei8ht".
>
 
> > A toss-up between 2 Pittsburgh stations....
> >
> > WTAE-TV 4 for a time used "Channel Four Loves You!"
> > (yeah, right...it wants to hug you, kiss you, go to
> > bed with you, bear your children, etc. etc.....)
>
> Many stations that used Frank Gari's "Hello News" package
> had similar slogans -- I recall Flint's WJRT having a
> similar slogan in the mid-1980s.
>
> >
> > WIIC-TV (now WPXI) used "E11even Alive", and they really
> did
> >
> > spell "eleven" with TWO number 1's forming the L's
> (driving
> >
> > school teachers in the area absolutely batty!)
> >
>
> How long did "e11even" last? Apparently, they wanted to be
> like the few channel 8s who were "ei8ht".
>

I lived in the Flint area as well. I believe WJRT was using "Where News Comes First" at the time. Since none of those towns around there is big enough to comprise a decent sized ratings point on it's own, the local stations tried to gather them all together into one great big mythical city of "Baycitysaginawmidlandflint"!

You had to have an awfully nimble tongue if you were working in TV or radio in that market!
 
Hartford/New Haven

When UPN affiliated WTXX Channel 20 switched from being LMA'd by NBC affiliated WVIT Channel 30 (then Viacom Owned) to being LMA'd by WTIC-TV (Tribune) they changed their name from UPN 20 to CT-20 (Connecticut's 20)

In mid-2000 it was announced that the WB Network would be moved from LIN-TV managed WBNE/59 to Tribune Managed WTXX/20 January 1, 2001. And UPN would move from 20 to 59. Well in mid-December while still running UPN programming WTXX was branding itself as WB-20 instead of CT-20. So there were two stations using "WB" as their branding in the market. UPN affilated WB-20 and WB affiliated WB-59.

WBNE became WCTX on January 1, 2001. It's on-air Moniker was "The X WCTX Connecticut's UPN Station." Then in September 2005 they changed their on-air moniker to "UPN 9" due to the fact that WCTX/59 is on Channel 9 on most cable systems.

No plans have been made for UPN 9 once UPN goes bye-bye this September. WTXX Channel 20 was announced as one of the first affilites of the new CW Network as they are owned by Tribune.
 
> "When you're good, you get watched." Lots of stations in
> the early '70s. The station I saw with that slogan was
> WFRV-TV/5 Green Bay, WI circa 1972. File that under "No
> s#!t."
>
They dropped that slogan - true story - after the weatherman was arrested for exposing himself to young children outside his house.
 
Three (more) from Green Bay

WGBA - its last campaign before being bought by Journal - hired a consultant who had the station change its logo and use the slogan "Going places." I can imagine the newsroom:
"Where you going?"
"Places."

And the 1970s had two minor classics in a row from WBAY: Its "2 POWER" (complete with Fall-Of-Stalingrad music and a Giant Silver 2 POWER logo) actually looked good compared to the predecessor - "TV2 is Yours."

Hey, I wasn't responsible for it!
 
> What's the silliest slogan/catchphrase you've ever heard for
> a TV station?

Several:

WJCL-22/Savannah, Ga. - When I moved here back in 2000, they were using the slogan "Real People. Real news." Meaning people in this town prefer artificial information delivered by artificial anchors, because "ABC-22" lives in third place behind WSAV-3 (NBC) and longtime leader WTOC-11 (CBS).

WHOA-32/Montgomery, Ala. (ABC) - calls used from 1989-1999. It was part of their makeover, calling themselves "The Heart of Alabama" and going so far as to use as its logo a white "32" inside a red heart. It didn't take long for people to begin making jokes about the call letters. Eventually, 32 gave up and for a time ran a clip of Yosemite Sam on the camel - "WHOA, Camel, WHOOOOOA!" - with its ID.

Present calls are WNCF. (W)here (N)ews (C)omes (F)irst. Funny, there hasn't been a news department over there in several years.

KAIT-8/Jonesboro, Ark. (ABC) - For many years, they've used "Good Neighbors You Can Turn To." Silly enough. Plus, in the late '90s they began using the on-air nickname "K-8." Sounds like a dog not playing with a full deck......

KARK-4/Little Rock, Ark. (NBC) - In about 1983, their sports department used a gimmick during U. of Arkansas Razorback games: a camera with a razorback pig's body draped over it, its zoom lens the snout. It was christened "Hog-Eye 4". KARK's longtime sports anchor Dave Woodman would say something like "Let's look at that play again through HOG EYYYYYYYYE FOURRRRR!!!"

Soon archrival KATV-7 (ABC) began openly making fun of Hog-Eye 4 in some of their sports promos, going so far as to mock the way Woodman said it. Hog-Eye 4 quietly disappeared not long thereafter .... but there was also the matter of the ridicule and humiliation endured by the poor videographers who were assigned to the pig-pimped camera: if the snout is the nose, where would the viewfinder be?
 
Re: Three (more) from Green Bay

> And the 1970s had two minor classics in a row from WBAY: Its
> "2 POWER" (complete with Fall-Of-Stalingrad music and a
> Giant Silver 2 POWER logo) actually looked good compared to
> the predecessor - "TV2 is Yours."

...which was also used by Detroit's WJBK in the mid-1970s, who, at the time, also had a logo that looks like a "2" on top of a "6".
 
> WJCL-22/Savannah, Ga. - When I moved here back in 2000, they
> were using the slogan "Real People. Real news." Meaning
> people in this town prefer artificial information delivered
> by artificial anchors, because "ABC-22" lives in third place
> behind WSAV-3 (NBC) and longtime leader WTOC-11 (CBS).
>
Tampa Bay's WFTS also used this slogan as well in the late-1990s -- also ABC, also a low-placed station (in this case, fourth).
 
A few more from Green Bay

> WGBA - its last campaign before being bought by Journal - hired a consultant
> who had the station change its logo and use the slogan "Going places." I can
> imagine the newsroom:
> "Where you going?"
> "Places."

I remember about 9 years ago when WGBA and its LMA partner, WACY/32, both used the same slogan for sweeps month: "NBC 26 [or UPN 32]... Write It Down!" Keep in mind, it was during a sweeps month, and it was likely meant to manipulate the Nielsen diary keepers. Mercifully, that was the only time they used it (I wonder if AC Nielsen admonished them for that move).

> And the 1970s had two minor classics in a row from WBAY: Its
> "2 POWER" (complete with Fall-Of-Stalingrad music and a
> Giant Silver 2 POWER logo) actually looked good compared to
> the predecessor - "TV2 is Yours."

Unfortunately, I remember both of them. "Take TV2... TV2 is Yours." Hmmmm... first thing I would have done if TV2 was mine would have been to get rid of that slogan. "2 POWER" seemed to have been a consultant-suggested appeal towards a younger demographic; one of its promos featured highlights from a disco (which, come to think of it, may have been inspired by "Dance Fever;" I believe TV2 briefly aired that show at the time.) During that same campaign, a promo for "2 POWER Action News" featured a fake family watching the news as a stern-voiced man suddenly walks into their living room to talk up the virtues of WBAY's newscast to the viewer. The man and the family seemed oblivious to each other's presence, but Channel 2 put that promo on their 50th anniversary webpage 3 years ago with the caption, "Daddy, what is that strange man doing in our living room?"

In the early 90s, WLUK/11 (then-NBC) called themselves "The Source". The slogan was used in a kind of all-purpose way (e.g., "The Golden Girls, weekdays at 4 on The Source, WLUK-TV11."). The cheesy part was that reporters had to use the slogan when closing out their taped reports. "In Appleton, Jane Doe for The Source, WLUK-TV11 News." Local morning team Nelson and MacNeal on WAPL radio, being the funny joksters that they are, knocked TV11 and that slogan down a few pegs ("So I suppose the indegestion I had from that beefy burrito last night actually came from... The Source.").
 
> Not too long ago, WDIV/4 in Detroit started using "The Power
> of 4", and they even use that in their news opens. And in
> the same market, WXYZ/7 used "Where 7 Stands for News" for a
> number of years.

A little bit in the same vein of "Where 7 Stands for News..." About a year or two after NewsCorp bought WITI-TV6 in Milwaukee and flipped it from CBS to FOX, TV6 dropped its long-time "Dot-6" logo for a big jarring block of... "FOX is SIX." They also had an accompanying moniker, "SIX is NEWS." Mercifully, WITI dropped all that sometime afterward for the standard FOX/CHANNEL# logo, and although it wasn't "Dot-6," the "6" used in the original "FOX6" was patterned after the old golden "6" insignia from the 1960s that still adorns their transmitter.
 
How about one station using another station's call letters in their news branding?

For most of the 1970s, WITN-TV 7 in Washington NC (not DC) called their news broadcasts "EyeWITNess News". Reasonably clever and easily remembered. The CBS
station in the same market, WNCT-TV 9, called their news broadcasts "Newscenter 9". Not quite as creative, but serviceable.

Fast forward to the late 90's. Both stations went through ownership changes. When Media General bought WNCT-TV after Roy H. Park's passing, one of the first things they did was change the news title to "Eyewitness News". It's a good thing call letters aren't prominently used for branding these days, otherwise everyone watching WNCT's news would recognize the WITN call letters right there in the middle of Channel 9's news title.

You gotta love out-of-town consultants...

KL <P ID="signature">______________
<a href="http://home.nc.rr.com/gttyson/lastradio.html">The Last Radio Station<a></P>
 
> but there was also the matter of
> the ridicule and humiliation endured by the poor
> videographers who were assigned to the pig-pimped camera: if
> the snout is the nose, where would the viewfinder be?
>
Since broadcast ENG cameras are designed to be carried on the shouldr, I would guess the viewfinder would stick out the left ear!<P ID="signature">______________
"Radio is like musical chairs. When the music stops, I sit down and say something."</P>
 
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