CBS Television Stations

CBS has retained Gray Television’s in-house news research and consulting group, Strategic Insights & Activation Team, to provider it with market research and news consulting services for all 14 CBS owned and operated television stations.

When CBS heard from their stations’ news producers that they weren’t being heard, the network leadership dove in deeper to find out why, and how they could be better.

Julio Marenghi, CBS Television Stations president of sales, will retire as of Oct. 1. He’s been at the CBS group for 14 years, including a run as WBZ Boston general manager.

The CW is about to lose eight important affiliates: the CBS owned and operated stations that are currently affiliated with the Nexstar-owned network will become independent in September. The  stations are WPSG Philadelphia, WUPA Atlanta, KBCW San Francisco, KSTW Seattle, WTOG Tampa-St. Petersburg, WKBD Detroit, KMAX Sacramento and WPCW Pittsburgh. This will give the CBS stations group 14 CBS Television Network stations and 13 independents.

Attendance and exhibitors will still fall well below the pre-pandemic high-water mark, but station groups and vendors plan to hit the Sunday-Wednesday event with packed schedules and shopping lists.

ATSC 3.0 has hit a sludgy stretch of path toward its end goal of broad U.S. adoption and providing new content services. It will take many hands — a potential FCC task force, station group cooperation and an elongated pipeline for receivers included — to get the standard’s implementation flying again.

Solutions journalism, which presents news consumers with constructive responses to problems, has been gaining traction among station groups including Graham, Gray, Nexstar, Hearst, ABC and CBS. Viewers once put off by relentlessly negative reporting are tuning back in for it.

From testing new ways of producing newscasts to branding, CBS has been in a state of transformation across all divisions. The changes, at least on the branding side, began to appear in the fall of 2020 with the launch of the “deconstructed eye” brand strategy developed by agency Gretel. The look has now formally arrived at the local level with the debut on KPIX San Francisco, part of the CBS Television Stations Group, following a rollout on national properties including CBS Mornings, Face the Nation and the CBS Evening News.

Technology executives from Disney, CBS Television Stations, Fox’s WTTG Washington and Amagi said they’re turning to private and public clouds to find new efficiencies in production workflows at TVNewsCheck’s NewsTECHForum on Tuesday, a transition one sees as “scaling” in. Pictured (l-r): CBS Television Stations’ Jeff Birch, WTTG Washington’s Jim Beahn, Disney’s Fabian Westerwelle and Amagi’s Stephen Bach (Alyssa Wesley photo). Read a full report here and/or watch the video above.

Handcuffs in Hallways, which debuts today, spotlights a data-driven collaborative reporting effort between CBS Local News Innovation Lab and the group’s stations across 14 markets. The project investigates a troubling trend of children being arrested at school.

Broadcasters are more receptive than ever to buying their tech on an opex basis, but that doesn’t mean the capex model is anywhere near extinction, nor has a standard definition of software as a service settled in across the industry.

Executives from Fox Corp., CBS Television Stations, Hearst and Vizrt told a TVNewsCheck webinar last week the ongoing transition to IP networking and public cloud technology is driving staffers in both engineering and IT to learn new skills.

Walt DeHaven, VP and general manager of KCNC Denver, marks his last day on the job July 30. He has spent 20 years atop the CBS O&O, and 14 more with other stations in the CBS group, including ones in Chicago and Boston. The longest-serving general manager in the CBS Stations group, DeHaven has spent 34 years with the Viacom and CBS groups. His successor has not yet been named.

CBS Television Stations will serve as the launch group. The recently canceled ABC sitcom has been sold to other station groups for 85% U.S. coverage. It launches in fall 2022.

Neeraj Khemlani, a former journalist who has worked at Hearst Newspapers for 12 years, and Wendy McMahon, who was head of ABC-owned stations, will be co-presidents of CBS News, the network said on Thursday. The move comes a day after CBS News President Susan Zirinsky told staff members that she was stepping down after two years on the job.

CBS TV Stations executives Peter Dunn and David Friend are out at CBS, a few months after both were accused of abusive workplace behavior. CBS said in a statement: “Peter Dunn, president of the CBS Television Stations, and David Friend, SVPof news for the stations group, will not return to their positions and will be leaving the company. On an interim basis, Bryon Rubin will continue to run the stations group while Kim Godwin will continue her oversight of stations’ news operations until new leadership is in place.”

Sales and research executives from CBS Television Stations, Gray Television and BIA said they see a sharp rise in core revenue ahead this year, while UM Worldwide threw some colder water on that prediction in a TVNewsCheck webinar on spot TV last week. The executives also tackled the iffy near-time prospects of fully-functional automated buying and selling and the growing revenue prospects of local streaming. Above, Julio Marenghi, president, advertising sales at CBS Television Stations said that the CBS owned stations are seeing more money from OTT business extensions — “There’s definitely more money than there was a year ago” — but it’s not yet significant.

Four days after CBS put two of its local television executives on administrative leave for alleged racist and sexist conduct, the ViacomCBS-owned company has instigated an external investigation into the potentially damning matter. “We are committed to creating a company culture that is diverse, equitable and inclusive for all of members of our CBS and ViacomCBS community,” said Entertainment Group boss George Cheeks in an email to CBS Stations staff on Friday.

Leaders of the local TV advertising buying, selling and research community will offer their outlook on the developing 2021 spot TV market during a TVNewsCheck Working Lunch Webinar. Set for Wednesday, Jan. 27, at 1 p.m. ET, the event will feature (clockwise from upper left): Becky Meyer, SVP national sales, Gray Television; Julio Marenghi, president of sales, CBS Television Stations; Brad Thompson, SVP and partner, integrated investment, UM Worldwide; moderator Janet Stilson, contributing editor, TVNewsCheck; Bruce Roberts, president, WideOrbit and Rick Ducey, managing director, BIA Advisory Services. Register here. 

CBS Local Digital has continued to spin up new OTT channels despite the coronavirus-prompted remote working shift. Executives say months of close collaboration between CBSN, the network’s streaming arm, and CBS Television Stations’ digital team allowed the group to stay on its charted course.

Yesterday’s latest round of layoffs at ViacomCBS’s CBS Entertainment Group include the network’s owned stations. Among them: KCBS Los Angeles | WBBM Chicago | KDKA Pittsburgh | WJZ Baltimore. In a letter to staff, CBS News President Susan Zirinsky said: “There isn’t a single person leaving who did a bad job. It’s economics. It is absolutely the financials that has forced us to make these decisions.… I’m really sorry. There is not a person who won’t be missed.”

Local broadcasters are making headway getting advertisers on board with their nascent OTT platforms, drawn by OTT’s targetability and sponsored content opportunities. However, obstacles still abound from finding a common sales language for the platform to a lack of overall standards and major issues with the ad stack. Above: KSL Salt Lake City put together a six-part series called Ski Lessons with Andy Phillips, who is a local Olympian skier. The series was sponsored by car dealers along with a ski resort and Ski Utah. (Source: KSL)

CBS Television Stations is introducing nightly 10 p.m. news at owned CW affiliates in Detroit, Atlanta and Tampa. None of the stations currently feature newscasts. Each of the three stations is hiring multimedia journalists to create news content. The newscasts will be produced at another CBS-owned station, which will add national news, sports and weather, then sent back to the station where it will air.

Moving to smaller physical footprints — or moving hardware completely from expensive urban environments to less expensive real estate — is a big driver in the transition to IP networking. But at the same time, some of the country’s biggest news operations still want to keep high-value content close by to ensure quick access for breaking news coverage — and that can mean sticking with on-premise storage. L-r: ABC’s Marcy Lefkovitz, Meredith’s Tom Casey, CBS’s Jeff Birch and Masstech’s Mike Palmer. (Photo: Wendy Moger-Bross)

A Los Angeles Times investigation uncovers claims of discrimination, retaliation and other forms of mistreatment at the CBS-owned television stations. Above, sports reporter Jill Arrington has struggled to find work since being dismissed by KCBS Los Angeles. In December 2019, She publicly accused the company of paying her significantly less than her male counterparts. (Credit: Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Michelle Calachino was tapped to replace Stan Gill at the CBS Television Stations’ Tampa station on Friday. She has been with WTOG since 2014 and worked as its financial controller.

It marks the newest expansion of major market local news streaming services from CBS and features local news content produced by WBZ-TV.

Lauren Crane joins the station group from Mirriad, a video ad insertion company, where she led the U.S. sales team across broadcasters, agencies and brands.

The television executive with a 40-plus year career has served as president and general manager of CBS Television Stations’ properties in Los Angeles since 2009.

KCBS will be CBS Television Stations’ second station to launch an OTT stream, signaling the company’s confidence in the platform as both an essential conduit to new viewers and a potent future revenue stream.

He will oversee ad sales for the group’s 27 stations, as well as the division’s digital properties,  including the new CBSN Local.

The Dallas NBC O&O promotes him from interim ND. He’s been with the station since 2017 and has worked in news for over 20 years, including stints at WABC, WBZ and WHDH.

The station group promotes him from financial controller at KCBS-KCAL Los Angeles to lead its CBS-CW duopoly in the state capital.

CBSN Local services will feature local news content produced by CBS Owned Stations. CBSN New York will be first, launching during the fourth quarter of 2018.

The new multicast network will debut on Sept. 3 featuring  procedural dramas focusing on strong women. At launch, it will reach 42% of U.S. TV households anchored by the CBS Television Stations.