KBJR/KBJR-DT2 Northern News Now Opens, January/February 2023

JOIN BROADCAST PLAZA TODAY, DISCORD'S MEDIA DISCUSSION COMMUNITY — http://bit.ly/S31MA Montage of opens and talent rejoins from Gray's dual-NBC/CBS affiliates in the Duluth, Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin market recorded mostly in January 2023 with a small portion coming from last week. As I noted before, at the end of last year, the station switched their music out, going from 615 Music's The Tower, which had been used on KBJR's NBC channel and began to be used on the CBS side as well when Gray consolidated the two channel's distinct newscasts under one brand back in August, over to Stephen Arnold's new "Ascend" package. This package began to be used at WJZY early last year as they were the original client for it, but they originally commissioned (and still use) only one theme, the main evening one that Northern News Now uses for their 10pm show. Not long after it debuted on WJZY, Arnold began to build a full package around it and KBJR was the first station to pick up the full, completed package back in December. Their use of it is starting to grow on me as I've heard more of it recently. As I had never heard these cuts before, I can say it was a pleasant surprise hearing all of them. Ascend is clearly my new favorite Arnold package, as it has a different sound to it, definitely a more traditional, orchestral sound as opposed to the pop sound most of their other stuff is going for. And unlike Arnold's other new package, Unite, Ascend is entirely new without themes recycled from a 15-year old package. Although, some of the themes do share similarities to other Arnold works (the 6pm theme sounds similar to, but is not exactly, Nexstar's election package, and the morning theme sounds a little similar to, but is not exactly, a custom image campaign SAM did for NewsNation a while back). It's also odd another Nexstar station hasn't jumped on this package but they should. As mentioned before, the graphics are a heavily modified version of the former Quincy group package that came from their former owners. Gray is no longer implementing the old hub's look to any station that doesn't have VizRT already, and Gray is looking to move away from that entirely to a new graphics platform, which has caused a delay in new packages debuting but that is expected to change in the coming months and years as Meredith's former graphics team is now leading those efforts within Gray. So at some point, they should be making a change but it's not known when at this time. Roberta Solomon remains in place as the voiceover artist. As for why it took so long to get these up: I tried, and tried, and tried to get all of the opens across one day but it was impossible, as more often than not, they would just lead the shows with a "First Alert Weather" open on "First Alert Weather Days" which seem to be issued more often than not by this station, so it was difficult to predict when I could get all of the "normal" opens, but I finally reached that mark last week! Record dates: Northern News Now Today, 5pm, 6pm, 10pm: January 16 4pm: February 7 6.30pm: January 24 First Alert Weather open: January 17 Anchors include Paul Brown, Natalie Grant, meteorologist Peter Kvietkauskas, Kendall Jarboe, Briggs LeSavage, Dan Wolfe, and meteorologist Hunter McCullough. 0:00 - Northern News Now Today tease/open (both stations) 2:14 - Northern News Now News at 4 tease/open (KBJR-DT2 only) 3:14 - Northern News Now News at 4 talent rejoin 3:50 - Northern News Now News at 5 tease/open (KBJR-DT1 only) 5:59 - Northern News Now News at 5 talent rejoin 6:37 - Northern News Now News at 6 tease/open (KBJR-DT1 only) 8:30 - Northern News Now News at 6 talent rejoin 9:02 - Northern News Now News at 6.30 tease/open (KBJR-DT2 only) 9:57 - Northern News Now News at 6.30 talent rejoin 10:34 - Northern News Now News at 10 tease/open (both stations) 11:54 - Northern News Now News at 10 talent rejoin 12:31 - "First Alert Weather" cold open (includes 4pm tease) I already uploaded the KBJR-DT1-exclusive noon show here:    • Video   ©2023 Gray Media Group and KBJR-TV, no copyright infringement intended. For educational and historical purposes only. We do not profit off of this video.