As of the 4 PM newscast on Wednesday, KCRG has wholly (or 95%?) adopted the graphics package used by all the other Gray Media TV stations.
Two words: CALLED IT.
It’s also dropped having a ticker at the bottom in the “A block” of the newscast (before the first commercial). The theme music is, for lack of a better phrase, more aggressive. The voiceover doesn’t say “TV 9” anymore. Finally, the anchor intros are now videos, and Beth Malicki’s glasses are now canon.
Again, consider me un-thrilled by the move away from anything that might be Helvetica, or at least as easily readable as Helvetica. The Gray font is particularly bad when it comes to the letter Q, which is a bit of an issue when your market includes the fourth-largest city in the United States with a Q in its name.
Actually, when looking at KCRG and WHO simultaneously, it seems entirely possible that the Gray and Nexstar fonts are either identical or so close as to be a distinction without a difference!
So now, to the best of my knowledge, graphics packages used by national affiliate owners are baked into every station in Iowa.
AND ALL OF THEM HAVE MOVING PARTS IN EVERY ELEMENT WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO MOVE.