KTLA Adds Evening Newscast

In one of its first moves since Don Corsini took over as KTLA’s general manager, the Tribune-owned station is adding a 6:30 p.m. newscast starting this Monday.

The new half-hour broadcast will be anchored by Emmett Miller and Leila Feinstein, who also anchor the station’s 10 p.m. “Prime News” telecast.

Hopefully this is a good sign that KTLA is once again starting to invest in its news product. The station has cut back dramatically on its news team in recent years — even before Tribune’s current woes — and suffered two major blows when Hal Fishman passed away and Carlos Amezcua jumped to rival KTTV.

The new KTLA broadcast represents the first 6:30 p.m. local newscast in more than a decade.

ALSO: Elsewhere in the local TV news scene, LA Observed reports that KNBC’s Laurel Erickson has announced her retirement, and has the back story on why the station isn’t exactly giving her the same lavish send-off that it gave to fellow retiree Furnell Chatman.

KNBC Celebrates Its 60th

Regular Franklin Avenue readers know I’m a sucker for old local TV clips — which is why I’m kinda excited to see “NBC4′s 60th Anniversary,” an upcoming special devoted to the history of our local NBC-owned station, KNBC.

The special is set to air this Friday, Jan. 16, at 7 p.m. It will also air on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 1, at 9 p.m.

Paul Moyer and Colleen Williams are hosting; past KNBC personalities, including Tom Brokaw, Pat Sajak, Bryant Gumbel, Nick Clooney, Furnell Chatman, Kelly Lange, Linda Alverez and Jess Marlow are interviewed. The late John Shubeck and Tom Snyder are also remembered… and a segment will look at the incident when a gun-wielding man took David Horowitz hostage live on the air in 1987.

A little bit of history:

NBC4 began broadcasting as KNBH on January 16, 1948. It was the last of five original stations built from the ground up by the National Broadcasting Company. The station debuted with three hours and forty minutes of programming, which followed a fifteen-minute test pattern-and-music session. Inauguration night launched with an eighteen-minute newsreel, “Review of 1948,” the market’s first variety program “On the Show,” and station’s first live program “The Pickard Family,” featuring Dad and Mom Pickard and their four children singing familiar American songs. By October 1949, KNBH had extended its operating schedule from five to seven days a week, with approximately twenty-six hours of television programming each week. When the station began broadcasting, there were approximately 80,000 television sets in the Los Angeles Designated Television Market Area (DMA) and Los Angeles was the fourth largest city in the country.

KNBH was later renamed KRCA, and then KNBC in 1962. That’s the year KNBC moved from its Sunset and Vine location (above) — NBC’s old “Radio City” — to its current Burbank home. Sadly, “Radio City” was torn down soon after, in 1964; a Washington Mutual bank now sits there.

Quote of the Day: Police Chief Bratton Outs Lindsay Lohan

KNBC caught up with LAPD Chief Bill Bratton, who explained why he thinks a city ordinance controlling the movement of paparazzi is unnecessary:

“If you notice, since Britney started wearing clothes and behaving; Paris is out of town not bothering anybody, thank god; and, evidently, Lindsay Lohan has gone gay, we don’t seem to have much of an issue.”

Bratton interrupted his workout — he was still sweaty on camera — because, he told the station, an earlier KNBC report with Councilman Dennis Zine (who’s pushing the new rules) pissed him off.

Quote of the Day: Police Chief Bratton Outs Lindsay Lohan

KNBC caught up with LAPD Chief Bill Bratton, who explained why he thinks a city ordinance controlling the movement of paparazzi is unnecessary:

“If you notice, since Britney started wearing clothes and behaving; Paris is out of town not bothering anybody, thank god; and, evidently, Lindsay Lohan has gone gay, we don’t seem to have much of an issue.”

Bratton interrupted his workout — he was still sweaty on camera — because, he told the station, an earlier KNBC report with Councilman Dennis Zine (who’s pushing the new rules) pissed him off.

LX.TV Adds Los Angeles

KNBC launches two new L.A.-centric shows this weekend, both produced by LX.TV — the online site that NBC’s Owned Stations acquired earlier this year.

LX.TV already provides L.A. segments on its website; now, much like in New York, those vignettes are now migrating on air. “LX.TV’s OpenHouseLA” debuts on Saturday, April 5, at 7 p.m., followed by “LX.TV 1st Look L.A.” at 7:30 p.m.

Shira Lazar hosts both series. From the press release:

“LX.TV OpenHouseLA” presents an intimate view of Southern Californians as they search for, purchase, and improve their dream homes. The show will also provide hands-on advice from leading experts on home ownership and home improvement, including décor, maintenance, renovation, and financing…

“LX.TV 1stLookLA” highlights the area’s hottest destinations, the best in local nightlife, restaurants, shopping, kids activities, fitness and wellness.

Comedian Mo Rocca will contribute segments to “1st Look L.A.” Also, Zagat Survey has signed on to provide restaurant ratings and reviews.

The two shows will repeat on Sundays in the 4 p.m. hour. Already, one of the first segments on the show has to do with New York implant restaurants in L.A. — which makes me kind of nervous. Will this really be a show about L.A. through Angeleno eyes? Or the transplant/New York perspective? We’ll find out this weekend.

KNBC Brings Back a Local TV Staple: The Cheesy Promo

http://www.yourlatv.com/evideo/642

I admit it: I’m a geek for this kind of stuff. Local TV promos, complete with cheesy song, video of anchors mugging in front of the camera, and feel-good shots of home. Ahh, the hallmarks of the perfect local station campaign. We haven’t seen much of it lately — well, other than KTLA’s recent hip-hop entry. So kudos to KNBC for bringing the form back, with its recent “We’re 4 L.A.” spot (above).

Now, as a bonus, here’s some classic cheese: A KCBS promo from the early 1990s. It’s cringetastic!

KNBC Brings Back a Local TV Staple: The Cheesy Promo

I admit it: I’m a geek for this kind of stuff. Local TV promos, complete with cheesy song, video of anchors mugging in front of the camera, and feel-good shots of home. Ahh, the hallmarks of the perfect local station campaign. We haven’t seen much of it lately — well, other than KTLA’s recent hip-hop entry. So kudos to KNBC for bringing the form back, with its recent “We’re 4 L.A.” spot (above).

Now, as a bonus, here’s some classic cheese: A KCBS promo from the early 1990s. It’s cringetastic!

Farewell to Beautiful Downtown Burbank

Johnny Carson famously made fun of “Beautiful Downtown Burbank.” So did “Laugh-In.” Jay Leno still teases his show’s home base. But that’s all about to change.

Well, in four years. NBC is officially announcing today that its west coast news operations, as well as KNBC and sister Telemundo outlet KVEA, will move into a new building to be erected above the MTA Red Line subway stop on Lankershim in North Hollywood (across the street from Universal City). NBC Entertainment will also likely be making the move, but perhaps on to the Universal lot.

NBC is touting the new site as “green” friendly, pointing particularly to its location above a subway as one way to encourage public transit use. New building will also be equipped for high definition broadcast.

Curbed LA first leaked word of the announcement yesterday; by late in the day, the LA Business Journal and LA Times had stories as well. Now, a little history lesson, as I wrote last night for Variety:

Before moving to Burbank in the early 1960s, NBC’s West Coast headquarters were on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. That building, dubbed NBC Radio City, was demolished in 1964. A Washington Mutual bank now sits on the site.

After the NBC move, Burbank will still be home to two broadcast networks, ABC and the CW. Not far away, CBS is readying a move from the Fairfax district to Studio City, on its Radford lot.

NBC isn’t completely abandoning Burbank. The company plans to sell its 34-acre Burbank lot, but lease back some of the space for various uses.

Before "Which Way L.A.?’

Long before hosting his KCRW interview programs “To The Point” and “Which Way L.A.?,” Warren Olney was a local anchorman. Here’s a clip of Olney anchoring KNBC’s 11 p.m. Sunday newscast in 1979.

Fascinating report on the era’s gas rationing as well, and other interesting little tidbits — check it out. Funny enough, Olney references a Robert Scheer column in the Los Angeles Times… Scheer, of course, is now a panelist on KCRW’s “Left, Right or Center,” which is rebroadcast Friday evenings in “Which Way L.A.’s” normal 7 p.m. time slot.

As the Fall Season Approaches, It’s Not Hard to Download a Pilot Online

Of course, some fans have uploaded many of the shows themselves — pilots aren’t hard to come by these days, afterall. But others still wonder whether the networks have anything to do with it.

There’s no proof they are — and even though I seem pretty convinced they are in this video (I kinda get a little flip here), I think the bigger issue is they seem to be casting a blind eye for now to the existence of pilots readily available online. The nets are also making many pilots (such as Fox’s “K-Ville” available for streaming online, blurring the line. Anything in order to help spread word and buzz, afterall.

Here I am, discussing it with KNBC — which reps the first time Franklin Avenue has ever been mentioned in one of my TV appearances. (I discussed the same topic on G4 earlier — see here — which is what inspired KNBC to do their own piece.)