Boston’s CBS affil gets its call letter identity back

Posted by Steve Safran on November 20, 2006

Boston’s CBS affiliate, WBZ-TV, has announced it will once again call itself WBZ. The station has been forced to go by the utterly identity-free CBS4 in recent years, but is absolutely best known in Boston as “‘BZ”. You know that cliched line about how a station’s name “means news”? WBZ actually does “mean news” here because its radio station, WBZ-AM is all-news and goes back to 1921. The TV channel went by “WBZ” for about 50 years. People know it. With channel numbers becoming meaningless and networks increasingly going around the affiliates, it’s especially important to stick with a unique, memorable brand. What’s especially surprising about this shift is that WBZ is a CBS O/O – so you’d have to think it was that much harder to get the change made. Next up: the station will mercifully get to rebrand its website’s mouthful of a url: cbs4boston.com.

PRESS RELEASE AS RECEIVED BY LOST REMOTE:

â€œWBZ-TVâ€ IS COMING BACK

CBS4 RETURNS TO LEGACY CALL LETTERS WBZ-TV

Boston – November 20, 2006 – The historic and acclaimed name of Bostonâ€™s WBZ-TV (Ch. 4) is coming back. The return to WBZ-TV, from the current brand of CBS4, was announced tonight during a staff meeting by Ed Piette, President and General Manager of CBS4 (WBZ-TV) and TV38 (WSBK-TV) in Boston and CW28 (WLWC-TV) in Providence. Piette said the rebranding would rollout in early 2007.

â€œEmployee feedback and comprehensive market research made it clearâ€¦combining the well respected, local identity of WBZ-TV with the strength of CBS, the #1 television network, is an important step in the stationâ€™s growth,â€ said Piette.

Changing the station brand back to WBZ-TV will involve a complete redesign of the stationâ€™s logo and look as well as comprehensive marketing strategies.

â€œThe return to â€˜BZ will be an evolution not a revolution, and it will take a lot of hard work by the staff who, along with our viewers, overwhelmingly supports the change.â€ added Piette. â€œThis is a very exciting time for everyone at the station, and a defining moment in WBZ-TVâ€™s rich history.â€

CBS4 (WBZ-TV) Boston is part of CBS Television Stations, a division of CBS Corporation consisting of 39 stations, including 21 CBS, 11 The CW, three MyNetworkTV and four independent stations not affiliated with major networks.

-CBS4-

thewbzchannel

It’s hopelessly naive to suggest that reverting the station’s branding to WBZ will have a transformative effect on Channel 4′s ratings. WBZ’s fate was sealed when Westinghouse bought CBS and Channel 4 dropped its decades-long NBC affilation. Sunbeam’s WHDH picked up NBC and brought in the legendary Joel Cheatwood to transform the station’s news operation. WBZ was like a deer in the headlights, and it’s been that way ever since. Even the Fox O&O clobbers WBZ these days. No doubt Ed Piette had some success in Minneapolis, but Channel 4 is broken beyond repair.
Dave

Yes and no. It IS naive if that’s the only effort a station makes: rebranding back to a heritage station identity. However, I would imagine the management is planning more than just an image change.

It IS also naive to think reverting back to heritage branding won’t impact the station at all. There are many examples in radio, television, as well as non-media industries where reverting back to a heritage brand has made a product much more competitive.
Don

Haha. I knew reading this that the__channel would chime in with something. He wants to pimp his silly little website URLs that he foolishly bought up and is now stuck with. Make sure you have your grain of salt handy when reading his comments.
PM

You can call it a fish but that doesn’t mean it will swim.
“WBZ-TV” is Jack and Liz; Barry and Sarah; Cosby and Cheers; Seinfeld and that show with Paul Reiser and the woman who was in that movie that Greg Kinnear won an Oscar for. “WBZ-TV” represents an era of classy NBC network programming built around classy local programming.

“WBZ-TV” is not totally generic local news (Jack or no Jack); and CBS’s identity-free suite of CSIx3 and Survivor.

In some ways CBS4′s returning to “WBZ-TV,” is like the Houston Texans suddenly deciding to change their name “back” to the Houston Oilers. The Texans never were the Oilers. They replaced the Oilers when the Oilers moved up the dial to Tennessee and became the Titans. CBS4 never REALLY was WBZ-TV. It replaced it. Yeah, it’s a stretch, but you get the general point.

There’s not going back to Jack, Liz, Sam and Diane so why try?

Here’s hoping there’s something FAR more profound in the works than a nod to a past. Maybe a look to the future?
thelosangeleschannel

don, i can assure you…that first comment was not from me!

just check the punctuation and spelling for proof.

thanks for your kind words-btw.
Safran

PM: Now that’s a relevant point. People do associate WBZ with some bygone glory days. But they do know the name, and the radio station repeats the name every couple of minutes.

Bringing back the call letters is – by no means – a silver bullet. And I didn’t like that the press release referred to the call letters as the “legacy” brand as though it were some sort of leftover. Still, it’s a known commodity and people here never called it CBS4. You may as well go with the name people know as you try to rebuild.
thelosangeleschannel

trouble with that thinking, safran, is that what was popular in “some bygone glory days” is buried with them as they die off.

do you happen to drive a buick?
thebaghdadchannel

BREAKING NEWS from our baghdad bureau!

the us military is going to re-brand what has been known as the IRAQ WAR as “They’ll Greet Us as Liberators”.

that’ll work.
thomas

Call your station whatever you want, xyz.com or the xyzchannel.com but are there not bigger issues to fry? Personally I have seen a continued deterioration of television news and I really don’t think changing a web address or going retro is going to bring viewership back to what it was 20 years ago. DISCLAIMER: I have no hard evidence that tv news was doing great 20 years ago, but I hope you get my point. Just my2cents.
http://discreet_chaos.livejournal.com discreet_chaos

Hey PM; Don’t forget Tom Bergeron! It was largely his contributions to BZ’s noon report which would keep me around for their 2nd half hour, back in the good old days.
http://wcco.com/jasonblog Jason

Good for Ed in getting this done! Don’t underestimate the importance of the move for internal morale. The people in Boston have a boss who’s fighting for them and their local identity. That’s a big deal.
http://cbs4boston.com cbs4

Wouldnt it be nice to have Liz back from her *host* job.

Wouldnt it be nice to see the WBZ TEAM as it was.

Although Paula and Scott make a good fit for the am and mid day, Liz and Jack were a fit of the times for the pm newscast.

Then again, times change-lives change- and wishes do too. Whether CBS 4 or WBZ, Soldiers Field Rd will always be a home to reporters and anchors with stories and laughter to remember.

Heres to success for what is to come, and for no lingering of the past.

Cheers.
Des

I think it’s great that the “WBZ TV-4″ identity is returning. Of course, for this to be most meaningful, they have to complement this action with a restoration of what made Channel 4 great in the first place — it’s local programming. Still, I take the return of WBZ as a positive sign that Channel 4 no longer wants to separate itself from its wonderful history.

Please, WBZ, get back into local (non-news) programming. That is what made you special to Boston during your first 43 years.
D. E.

You say WBZ is getting its name back. No harm to the station or this article’s writer, but I must respectfully disagree. When BZ started out, they were an NBC station. That changed once and for all the day Westinghouse inked the fateful deal between CBS and them.

I know they’ll never carry NBC again, but WBZ lost everything other than some of the personalities that made the station powerful during the ’70s and ’80s. Other than that, they lost 1st place and prestige in news, ratings and programming.

They may be saying WBZ-TV 4 again, but they’re far and away from fully getting its name back. Oh well, it’s been nice.
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