Thursday, April 13, 2006

The Most Powerful Name in Local News?

OMW has occasionally passed along word that FOX's local stations division, now under the management of FOX News Channel chief Roger Ailes, would mold the O&O's local newscasts in the style of FNC. It looks like it's starting to happen.

The TVNewser blog reports on a major rebranding at FOX's O&O flagship station, WNYW/5 in New York City. Along with a new searchlight-laden logo that apes the style of FNC, the station is using FNC-style graphics for its news shows, and is even using the slogan: "The Most Powerful Name in Local News", a copy of the cable network's long-time slogan.

TVNewser says it's getting word that the new look and branding has spread to FOX O&O's in Tampa, St. Louis and Memphis, among other markets, and could be headed for Boston next, at O&O WFXT/25.

We bring all this up, of course, because the network owns WJW FOX 8 here in the Cleveland market. It appears at some point, FOX 8 will proclaim itself "The Most Powerful Name in Local News" and take on some of the cosmetic changes outlined above. We don't know if the FOX O&Os will go as far as Sinclair did, adding canned conservative commentary to its local newscasts, but...changes are definitely in the cards for the local FOX O&O's...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting you should mention Sinclair. Cox's WPXI-NBC11 in Pittsburgh doesn't get the entire hour from 10-11 p.m. for the newscast it feeds to WPGH-Fox53, because the Sinclair-owned WPGH still runs "The Point," the aforementioned canned commentary from the folks in Baltimore, at 10:55 p.m.. Just a thought. Happy Easter.