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ABC World News Tonight with David Muir and the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley doe the same.
CBS dropped this when Anthony Mason took the helm, same with the titles - they just have a world map motif on the box used for the name
Chances are though that they will add the anchor's name back to the program title once (or if!) they choose a successor.
What's interesting about CBS's case is that when Scott Pelley initially took over, he petitioned to not have his name added so that the newscast would fully be all about the news and not so much about him, much like the European broadcasters. Network executives didn't like his idea, citing that every anchor going back to Walter Cronkie has had his or her name as part of the show title.
But the network evening news is the most conservative venue in US TV news as far as presentation is concerned, so perhaps that's not a good barometer of how talent names factor into branding. Two of the three network morning shows do not list their anchors in the voiceover open, and on a local level, most local stations have phased out the (in my opinion) very ostentatious talent open in the last decade. News directors and other executives have started to realize that talent isn't everything. They don't bring in ratings just because of who they are, and it's not really worth it to pay anchors top dollar salaries, which was a typical practice in the past. So why tie a program's brand to the talent if talent are expendable and won't be there forever anyway?
ABC World News Tonight with David Muir and the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley doe the same.
CBS dropped this when Anthony Mason took the helm, same with the titles - they just have a world map motif on the box used for the name
Chances are though that they will add the anchor's name back to the program title once (or if!) they choose a successor.
What's interesting about CBS's case is that when Scott Pelley initially took over, he petitioned to not have his name added so that the newscast would fully be all about the news and not so much about him, much like the European broadcasters. Network executives didn't like his idea, citing that every anchor going back to Walter Cronkie has had his or her name as part of the show title.
But the network evening news is the most conservative venue in US TV news as far as presentation is concerned, so perhaps that's not a good barometer of how talent names factor into branding. Two of the three network morning shows do not list their anchors in the voiceover open, and on a local level, most local stations have phased out the (in my opinion) very ostentatious talent open in the last decade. News directors and other executives have started to realize that talent isn't everything. They don't bring in ratings just because of who they are, and it's not really worth it to pay anchors top dollar salaries, which was a typical practice in the past. So why tie a program's brand to the talent if talent are expendable and won't be there forever anyway?
