TV Live Forum

The channel will launch from their new HQ in Atlanta featuring several CNN alumni and also Rob Nelson who fled the scene at the mess that is NewsNation. That was a good decision. That channel turned into a dumpster fire quickly. Newsy has been around for a very long time. Probably among the first news streaming channels. But this relaunch will see it move into the big leagues with live anchored coverage, that they start doing from their Chicago studios a few years ago. Apparently the Chicago studio sets were designed by Jago Design and newsroom wont go completely dark, they will still utlize the space for something, a bureau in the least. They are still hiring people for the Chicago Bureau and they will also make use of the Scripps local tv stations across the country. Also they will be tenants with CourtTV in their Atlanta HQ so it will be interesting to see how they work together. Cant want to see what they do. Interesting choice of anchors. They are no longer young people anchoring the stories in digital jukebox style so this will be interesting how the older anchors/presenter fit with the rest of the network.

Per TVNEWSER - https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/newsy-is...Data=login (so you dont have to create a login....you're welcome) :ugeek:

Quote:The E.W. Scripps Company is relaunching its national news network Newsy as a 24/7 news outlet that will broadcast over-the-air and OTT.

The “fact-based, non-opinionated” news network will be headquartered in Atlanta, which is where the main studio, newsroom, control room and its largest number of employees will be based.

Beginning Oct. 1, anchored live news programming will run from the early morning until 8 p.m. and originate from Atlanta, with another hour of news airing at 11 p.m. to service the West Coast.

The network will have bureaus of various sizes, ranging from Washington D.C. and Chicago, to Missoula, Mt., and Tulsa, Okla. In terms of Newsy’s primetime programs, which currently are five–three during the week and two on the weekends–three of them are based in Washington, one is set in Chicago and other is a documentary show that doesn’t have a host.

TV news executive Kate O’Brian joined Scripps in April, and is leading the charge as the head of news for the company’s national TV networks business. The longtime ABC Newser who served as the network’s svp of news is no stranger to up and coming news networks, also having served as the president of Al Jazeera America last decade.

In terms of the rebrand, “I look at it as both horizontal and vertical,” O’Brian told TVNewser. “The horizontal side is, we’re creating a 24/7 network, which is extremely exciting in any way. But we’re creating this 24/7 news network for an entirely new audience to 24/7 news, and that is the over the air audience.”

At launch, Newsy will be in 92% of TV households. “On the OTA side, these are viewers who have never had the option of looking at news all day long, we see it as a tremendous upside to be able to create news content that we believe it’s going to resonate through the American audience in that over the air marketplace,” said O’Brian.

However, Newsy will still have that strong OTT component. Will there be any differences in content between the over-the-air product and the OTT product? “No, and that’s the beauty of what we’re doing,” said O’Brian. “Because Newsy is no longer subject to any restrictions from MVPDs, all of the content we will have the same stream on OTA and on OTT.”

O’Brian added, however, that Newsy will be looking at unique content for the OTT audience, which is traditionally younger. Newsy was originally a millennial-facing product, but the rebranded Newsy is considering the entire audience. “We will be looking at the OTT space, and having bespoke content there at a certain point,” she said.

Newsy doesn’t yet have launch sponsors, said O’Brian, but “we’ll be looking at sponsorship with an editorial frame of mind as we get going. We do have advertisers, we will continue to have advertisers, but at the moment, we haven’t really opened the door yet for sponsors to come in.”

Viewers will notice some familiar faces on Newsy, like former CNN and Fox News anchor Dave Briggs, former CNN International anchor Natalie Allen (who will helm weekdays, 7-8 p.m.) and former ABC News anchor Rob Nelson.

Briggs will return to his CNN Early Start morning show roots, and will co-host Newsy’s morning show Morning Rush from 7-11 a.m, joined by Alex Livingston, Stephen Gradick and Veronica de La Cruz. “It’s going to be a news show, it’s not going to be a morning chat show, but with good chemistry among the four anchors,” said O’Brian. “Each will present different stories and do interviews both with newsmakers and with our folks in the field. It will really adhere to what we’re looking at as a vision for the entire network, which is, we are determined to create content that the audience will connect to because it’s strong, compelling, engaging visual storytelling. We are not going to be, at any hour, we’re not going to be just a talking head or a couple of talking heads or s talking head with a guest and talking points. We’re in the visual medium, so let’s use the visual medium to be able to connect to an audience.”

O’Brian has a longtime relationship with Rob Nelson, who will solo-anchor the 4-7 p.m. time period on Newsy. “Rob brings a host of experience at network, at local, and at new formats,” said O’Brian.” I’ve known him a long time, and he’s a terrific reporter and a terrific anchor.”

Of Nelson’s program, Newsy Reports, O’Brian remarked, “It’s a news show, not an opinion show, but we’re going to be working with him to shape it in a way that that we collectively see fit for his talents.”

As part of Scripps, Newsy will have access to local station reporters in various markets, in addition to its own Newsy correspondents. The network will also be able to tap Court TV reporters, who share the same office space in Atlanta.

“For Hurricane Ida, we were all over the place; Louisiana, Texas, and Florida, and so were the Scripps local stations, and we all work together,” said O’Brian. “The Scripps local stations took Newsy reporters’ news, we took their reporters, and the same thing will happen with Court TV. There will be certainly will be plenty of legal stories. We will have our own in-house experts who share the same space in Atlanta, so it will be pretty easy to bring somebody into the studio to have a conversation on the next big trial.”

It has been a whirlwind time for O’Brian, who joined stepped into this role at Scripps leading the re-imagined Newsy in April. Nearly six months later, she’s launching a 24/7 news network in the middle of the pandemic. So, how did she end up here after decades at ABC News and a stint as president of Al Jazeera America?

“I know some people at the Scripps organization and when this job was posted, I was already very happy consultant and having a wonderful time,” she said. “I consulted for The Washington Post, consulted for Voice of America, and for other smaller startup news organizations. I got a call from someone in the executive team at Scripps, and they said, ‘Hey, look at this job.’ My first answer was, ‘I’m fine, thanks. I’m really enjoying my consultancy.’ And then they said, “well, why don’t you just talk to the person who runs the Scripps Networks just to see what it’s like? And in one conversation with Mr. Newton, who runs the Scripps Networks, I realized that this was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up. The reason I thought is that this was an opportunity to bring high-quality and non-opinionated news to a new audience, and the new audience being the over-the-air audience, which is a potentially massive audience. It was also the opportunity to go back to my roots of what I learned at ABC, which is to have high quality, beautiful visual storytelling, compelling, engaging, content, and be able to build that for this audience. And I thought, wow, I mean, at this point in my career to be able to do that it was kind of a gift. So I couldn’t say no.”

At a time where so many new news organizations are shrinking, and coming back to major bureaus and major cities, Newsy seems to be doing the opposite.

“We believe that in order to cover the news in the United States, you actually have to live in the places that you’re covering, so that you really know those communities,” said O’Brian. “We’ve been incredibly lucky in these bureaus. We’ve chosen places like Missoula, Montana, because we looked at a map, and we looked at where the competition was, and we saw big news deserts. We thought, “it doesn’t mean that there’s not news there,” and we want to make sure we’re reporting those stories from those areas. We chose very specifically where we are going to be, places like Nashville, Phoenix, Denver, Seattle, Missoula, Tulsa.”

O’Brian added, “The other part of that was we’re trying to cover beats that may not be traditionally covered, and so we hired people who were really good at certain things that we don’t see very often and other national media.”

For example, Newsy has hired multiple correspondents who are well-versed in climate issues, and someone well-versed in covering Indigenous America and tribal affairs.

The network will cover things like infrastructure, food, work, and international news, in addition to the White House, Capitol Hill and the economy.

“In certain areas that we thought, ‘Oh, you know, these are, these are places that folks from other news organizations drop into for 48 hours to do the reporting, but we really want to know about them,’ which is why we have a team in the West, which is why we have a couple of teams in the south in Atlanta and in Nashville, to really find the stories from the ground up,” said O’Brian.

Newsy is going to have an uphill battle, to be frank. The shows and networks that have recently launched and touted themselves as “opinion-free, straight news” haven’t rated all that well. Now, granted those are on cable, not over-the-air, but launching a 24/7 news network is ambitious, particularly right now.

“Those [networks and shows] have their own high bars, we have our own internal high bar, because they are on cable, and they are rated by Nielsen. So right off the bat, everybody knows exactly how well they’re doing,” said O’Brian.

She added that Newsy is not going to be rated by Nielsen; at least not out of the gate. “We will be, after however many months we think it’s prudent,” said O’Brian.

So, if Newsy isn’t going to be measured by Nielsen (at least not yet), how will the network guarantee audience deliverable to brands and sponsors? “We have our own research department internally, and we will be paying attention. We’re part of the Scripps networks that work closely with one another; our success and our viewer numbers based on our own research will not be a mystery,” said O’Brian. “But we are defining success in a variety of ways. One is, how many people are tuning in and by the way, on OTT we’ll know exactly how many people are watching us. But also, on impact and on viewers response and word of mouth, and so many of the things that are actually part of a launch or a startup, It’s hard to say Newsy is a startup because it already existed, but it is in many ways it is a startup because we’re exponentially growing the content, the daily content that Newsy is putting out there.”

O’Brian added, “I think audiences are going to be reacting in various ways to the various kinds of content that they’re seeing.”

But if the viewership numbers aren’t there, how will Newsy define success? “In terms of how we present ourselves as opinion-free, that is really and I mean, every editorial person within Newsy understands what that means,” said O’Brian. “And what it means in terms of how we are creating content is we are making sure all the facts are included in all of our packages, in all of our interviews, and in all of our explanations of things, because it is really for the viewer to recognize that we are opinion-free and context-driven and giving our audience facts. It’s not for us to be telling people, it’s for others to be telling us that, ‘Oh wow, you’re not telling me how to think you’re just giving me the facts, so I can figure out how to think about it.’ That’s very much at the heart of our vision of how we want to create the best kind of news content for an audience.”

Good job by Scripps for snapping Rob Nelson and Natalie Allen to be the main anchors of their new network. For what is seen, they’re not only sharing a HQ with Court TV at Katz Broadcasting, they’re sharing some resources, particularly in regards with legal news. We’ll see if Scripps can live up to the promises of the new Newsy and if it can compete with the big leagues, and carb a niche for people who want real news, not opinions, something that NewsNation has failed to deliver. However, it is really a disappointment that Scripps is not including some hours of Newsy to give some variety to the Ion Television lineup, which is stale and depending with its off-network repeats.

Will be interesting to see how this Newsy works, I do like the current format , just because you can dip into then go away.. but as long as the new Newsy does the news.. and doesn't get hampered with politics and etc.. it hopefully will work. Going over the air is a good idea and focusing on digital, much more accessible than cable where ratings are dependent and people having to find the channel.

Can Newsy be accessed outside of North America?

It's certainly available today in a few places here in the UK. Just looking at the live channels standard on a Plex server, on the news front, they currently include:

Newsy
USA Today
Reuters
Yahoo Finance
Euronews (*2 - English and Spanish)
NewsmaxTV
Law & Crime Trial Network
revrynews

This is exciting news. Newsy currently feels very bare-bones and jukeboxy, although I like the set.

I currently watch via Plex or the Newsy website. Not sure if it's available on any other platforms in the UK at the moment.

America's only free to air 24hr has launched as of today. Of course the channel is built off the existing News Streaming channel. Which continues to stream on its own tv app and on Plutotv and other connected tvs. It seems like a very strong effort. Initial graphics quicktake. Lots of purple and arrows. But its not too flashy. Videowall graphics a bit distracting as the arrows are moving a bit too fast. Where NewsNation failed it seems that Newsy is poised to pick up the slack and take the place of the big news channels that fail to do headline news. What makes this effort unique is that its over-the-air on regular tv. So you dont need any kind of pay tv pack or even internet. So its available to alot of US.

There are some teething issues. But nothing like that disaster the GBNews was. What was a complete mess that was.

Here's some of Newsy's new look, the graphics remind me of Tegna's lower 3rds. I do like purple, in general, the background kind of bugs me , because it's constantly moving. I like that there's no ticker... and the screen doesn't feel cluttered up with graphics, the old Newsy had a rundown side bar and would squeeze things on the side.




There was an error here, but I give that to first day teething








Closed Captioning symbol


Anchor switch from Rob Nelson to Natalie Allen

Newsy has it's own app on Fire TV which works in the UK.

It's a definite improvement. Is the purple space below the logo for local stations broadcasting it over the air to add a clock - or just a random gap?

it definitely seems like a space for a time and temperature to be inserted locally by digital substations nationally that carry the station.

I quite like the new 3-presenter format for Morning Rush. Some nice interaction between the presenters but they still get through the news quickly.

They could give the set a bit more of a morning feel - perhaps with just a few yellow or orange accents on the purple - but overall I'm impressed.

Newsy seems such a naff name to me. Is it maybe the case that in the US adding a Y to the end of a word isn't as informal as it is in the UK?

Well the channel has been around since 2008. The name was an out growth of appealing to younger GenX/etc market that are tech savy (not neccesarily YOOF). Look at the the name of the long time streaming business channel called CHEDDAR. At one point you had Cheddar Business and Cheddar News, it has since combined back into one channel. But as far as NEWSY goes, in the streaming world that a "legacy" service alongside CBSN.

But after watching the channel for a few days, its a good basic service. Its key factor in its potential success is the fact that the channel is over the air available to 90% of the country via regular tv. NexStar could have done that with NEWSNATION and added a NEWSNATION digital subchannel on its hundreds of NexStar local stations. instead of clearing space and effectively turning the existing WGN AMERICA cable network into NEWSNATION. Its been a clunky transitiion to say the least.

The NEWSY channel is headquartered in Atlanta (alongside the other Scripps streaming/OTT channel CourtTV which was formerly owned by CNN parent company Time Warner, before they shut it down) and for a good basic service, that should be going head to head with CNN HLN its cross-town rival, there is no comparison. CNN really droppped the ball and they have so far failed to reposition HLN to compete with the rolling news rivals that have chipped away at their heels and news share. It will be interesting to see what CNN+ offers. WIll there be a 24 streaming headline component? Who knows, but they have really really messed up. Even if they closed HLN on cable or re-positioned the channel into the something else, they could have easy created a DTL in the newsrooom with a basic LIVE globally streaming headline service that Headline News used to be.

For now, it was interesting and bittersweet to hear former CNN International alum proudly declare: "From Newsy Headquarters in Atlanta, I'm Natalie Allen"

Noticed the Newsy app whilst browsing the Fire TV app store and decided to give it a try.

I can see myself becoming a regular viewer. Mixed feelings about the graphics, but the content is pretty solid.