Monday Mix

A few things to kick off your final week of October...

WLWT Moves Met to Mornings: A move that we had been looking for confirmation on, appears to be true as of this morning.

A source familiar with WLWT-TV 5/Cincinnati's continuing search for a new chief meteorologist (they did not wish to be named) told us yesterday that Valerie Abati would be moved to mornings at least for the short term.

We took time to watch News 5 this morning, and we can confirm this is TRUE. Abati is doing this morning's News 5 Today as we type this (5:00 AM).

That source also told us that the station is still trying to find its new chief, but has at least two candidates for the job. They had to start looking after Derek Beasley bolted from WLWT in August to take the chief position at WPMI-TV 15/Mobile, AL.

WCPO Using New Graphics: Yes, we noticed some significant changes to WCPO-TV 9/Cincinnati's news presentation over the weekend. We hadn't seen them before, so no, we don't know when they debuted.

Their opening graphic, along with in-newscast bugs, the scroll, and the Chyron graphics used during stories have all been changed.

The newer graphics appear to use more brown/earth tones, and they come with new music.

From our guess, these are still produced in-house, but not at WCPO.

Recall a few months back, we reported that WCPO had to drop 5 staffers, when parent Scripps Howard Broadcasting centralized graphic and ad traffic operations in Tampa (at station WFTS/8) and Phoenix (KNXV-TV 15 there).

Our thinking is that the graphics look like those used at the aforementioned Phoenix station... but we're not totally sure. Comparison sure doesn't look much different between KNXV and WCPO...

World Series to Wreak Havoc With WXIX: We've been looking for news from other corners of our domain...honest! But WXIX-TV 19/Newport seems to be making most of the news, lately...so, here we go again.

The AL Championship Series ended last night, after 6 games, the last of which had to be pushed back 1 day.

However...WXIX isn't done with baseball yet.

Enter, the World Series.

Because most of, if not every one of, the games will be played at night, that forces a move we already figured would happen...and one that actually took place last night for that aforementioned Game 6.

WXIX-DT2 19.2, aka THIS TV Cincy, will continue doing FOX 19 10:00 News broadcasts on nights when the station has baseball.

WXIX, however, will not have games on either Friday of this week, or Tuesday of next week (if a Game 5 is needed, it will happen on Monday, November 2, with Game 6 [again, if needed] scheduled for Wednesday, November 4th).

So, a few more nights of confusion for WXIX viewers...and then baseball is over.

Bengals Goofups: By the way, we didn't see any hints that WXIX is considering another "Bengals Sunday"...but if they do decide to do the same thing for the December 7th game between Detroit and Cincinnati, they might want to work on a problem with superimposition of their text Station ID - because it bothered a few fans of the team last night.

We were watching the Bengals game against the NFC North's Chicago Bears Sunday, and several times, whenever the station decided to drop in a Station ID bug on the bottom of the screen, the audio would cut out for a second, but then it would rewind - and you'd hear that second that you missed! The video was also goofed up at those times.

We weren't alone - reports from the AVS Science Forum confirm this, also.

It sounded to one forum poster like they'd sent the FOX HD feed through the encoder, not a splicer, when they went to insert the station ID.

If that's the case, that explains the momentary audio/video issue.

Seriously, WXIX...that was annoying. It needs fixed...fast. And preferably, before the World Series begins on Wednesday, and you tick off a LOT more people...