CW News at 9 and more
When ABC 32 came on the air with their full 30 minute newscast at 10:00 a few months back, the entire idea was to also bring the CW News at 9 in house also. I was playing around this weekend on the web and noticed on the WBMM(CW) wiki page that the newscast anchors had already been changed to Nathan O’Leary, Cacky Catlett, Pat Walker, Jeremy Moss which is some of the anchors that ABC 32 uses. My first thought was OK, they already made the switch and I totally missed it. Not really surprising to me since I don’t watch the CW News at 9. I flip past it occasionally but I can’t count any time that I have actually watched a full newscast.
My next step was to check the CW website. Not much luck there as the badge advertising their 9pm news still has Chris Bailey on it.
With that in mind, I did what I always do…send out emails to find out what is going on. This is what I learned:
Monday, August 30 is the projected date for WAKA to stop producing the CW News at 9. It will be produced like the ABC 32 news cast is currently but with CW branding.
As a side note, (this actually might have deserved another article, but I am going to add it here), ABC 32 will start airing all local ads in full HD very very soon.
And lastly, the CW is slated to go in HD at the beginning of next year. I believe they are the last channel in town to air their network programs in HD, but in all truth I think the CW was the last network to start sending an HD signal from their bird. It’s quite an investment for Sagamore and definitely more infrastructure has been invested initially into ABC 32. The return on investment is of course higher for ABC, but Sagamore is moving forward to complete CW’s HD transition.
The biggest question this brings to me is what are the repercussions for WAKA as they are losing a stream of income? Maybe they already saw the writing on the wall and had made adjustments. Will be interesting to see.
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Finally! After almost a year and a half since Montgomery locals were turned up on Direct. Picture quality is great. ...
I think once WCOV contract with WSFA ends in December, Its more than likely WAKA Would produce news for WCOV. Even though Drew killed that rumor for now!
The question for me is how will the CW moving to HD affect the picture quality. If both the CW and ABC32 provide HD over the air feeds then picture quality may go down. You would have 22-1 and 22-1 in HD and 32-1 and 32-2 in HD. No other station carries two HD channels on one frequency. This is something to keep an eye on. Maybe ABC32 and CW could increase each frequencies power and drop the subchannels that are just duplicates anyway. What do ya’ll think?
Don’t matter to me. I can’t pick up either one of them.
I thought WNCF had already began to produce the 9pm newscast as well (thanks to wiki), but I watched it last night and saw Stefanie Hicks.
I wish they would increase power
WAKA is the pits. Why would any other station want that place to get their news produced by WAKA? WAKA’s ratings are horrible on their own channel…why would you “outsource” bad news and bring it to your own station??? I’d just re-air some old Andy Griffith and be done with it….and there’d probably be better ratings. The news is just a re-hash of everything WAKA had at 5pm and 6pm, their weather is horrible with less-than-qualified “weather people” and the graphics are hideous.