{"id":15942,"date":"2025-06-24T10:00:44","date_gmt":"2025-06-24T15:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=15942"},"modified":"2025-06-16T23:23:01","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T04:23:01","slug":"plucked-peacocks-and-other-tv-station-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2025\/06\/plucked-peacocks-and-other-tv-station-notes\/","title":{"rendered":"Plucked Peacocks and other TV station notes"},"content":{"rendered":"

While doing Lincoln Highway research for Nebraska, I discovered that Elm Creek, a town along US 30, replaced its 100-year old school in 2022-23<\/a>…<\/p>\n

…and had an amazingly well-preserved time capsule<\/a>*…<\/p>\n

…and then I looked into what “NTV” was \u2014 it’s the Sinclair-owned ABC station, which is really KHGI, for Kearney-Hastings-Grand Island (note the call letters)…<\/p>\n

…and somehow I bounced to finding out that CBS is switching affiliates in Atlanta<\/a> (to Channel 69<\/em>?!)…<\/p>\n

…leaving Gray Media’s station in Atlanta to become independent<\/a>…<\/p>\n

…and eventually I got to an Iowa angle: How long does KCRG’s current graphics package have to live?<\/p>\n

Gray Television, now Gray Media<\/a>, closed its purchase of KCRG in September 2015<\/a>. Nine and three-quarters years later, Gray has a station in every market touching Iowa except Des Moines. The others \u2014 WOWT, KTIV, KWQC, KTTC, and even WEAU \u2014 are all NBC stations. There are two half-exceptions: a joint operation of KDLT\/KSFY in Sioux Falls, which is ABC\/NBC\/Fox, and KYOU, which started as Fox, added NBC as a subchannel, and has its newscasts done by KCRG on sets without visible ABC branding.<\/p>\n

All of them except KYOU have gone to a graphics package that Gray is implementing across multiple stations \u2014 and all of their logos don’t include network affiliations<\/em><\/a>. It might not be immediately noticeable, but study them for a few seconds, and they look kind of naked, don’t they? Not only that, but according to a “News Music Now” Facebook post from Nov. 1<\/a>, all of Gray’s NBC stations were supposed to eliminate theme music that included the nearly century-old NBC chimes<\/a>. Also, the graphics packages use a font that, to me, looks close enough to Sinclair’s font as to not be immediately distinguishable.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nThis combination image of chyrons from WOWT and KGAN show the typefaces for Gray-owned and Sinclair-owned stations, respectively.<\/em><\/p>\n

KCRG has used a blue-and-yellow color scheme and the beveled “9” with slight tweaks for ages. If and when things change, will it be like KWQC, which has a mild palette, or WOWT, which announced its branding change in November 2024<\/a>\u00a0and switched to a heavy use of red?<\/p>\n

I have no inside information, I’m just someone with a day job in journalism who has spent decades studying coverage maps<\/a>. I also may or may not be a robot based on my use of long dashes<\/a>, but that’s a different story.<\/p>\n

Starting after Memorial Day, KWWL’s weather graphics package changed. It’s better than Allen Media’s plan from earlier this year to eliminate local weather departments.<\/p>\n

Sometime not too long ago, Nexstar stations, including WHO, resumed livestreams of their news\u00a0after discontinuing them in January 2023<\/a>. This means I can watch WHO more easily now, and I hope that misspelling “Massachusetts” in the sports segment Saturday night is not a harbinger of things to come.<\/p>\n

(Seeing typos on KWWL is shooting fish in a barrel just after the barrel got filled at the Manchester Fish Hatchery.)<\/p>\n

* Note to the reporter: “Alumni” is a PLURAL noun. Use “alumnus” for masculine, “alumna” for feminine, or even “alum” for neutral even though that’s an English application to Latin, but one person is not<\/em> an “alumni”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While doing Lincoln Highway research for Nebraska, I discovered that Elm Creek, a town along US 30, replaced its 100-year old school in 2022-23… …and had an amazingly well-preserved time capsule*… …and then I looked into what “NTV” was \u2014 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iowa-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15942"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15946,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15942\/revisions\/15946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}