Versant

MS Now logo

 Versant are the new group that have MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), USA Network, CNBC (which will stay the same), E!, Rotten Tomatoes (although a film review site, not a network), Bravo, Syfy, and the Golf Channel. Comcast are spinning off NBCUniversals cable group into a separate company with their own NASDAQ ticker to boot. Resident morning power couple Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski even said on air that they had to move to a new studio. USA Network may still have the Law & Order franchise since Scripps's ION and Fox's MyNetworkTV do as well. Not sure if it'd go back to how it was in the old days before sister company Studios USA briefly absorbed Universal Television. The channels with scripted and reality shows should start to come up with new, original programming instead of resting on their laurels and relying on reruns of old guard classics in order to compete with streaming.

CBS 5 WKOF

Logo for the now-WKOF

 On their 77th anniversary, and for the first time in nearly five decades, CBS 5 WTVH at CNYcentral will change their call sign again, this time to WKOF. It is unknown why, yet periodically, stations just register new letters with the FCC. The station was originally WHEN and on channel 8 until the letters were just for the radio station on AM 620 and the Rochester affiliate WROC moved to that position, putting then-WHEN on channel 5. To boot, the tier will move to 15.1-15.3, stemming from WKOFs low-power signal on analogue, even though nobody uses that anymore, and TBD have rebranded as ROAR, switching to comedy as extreme sports, viral videos, and documentaries just moved elsewhere. Charge! is on 15.2. Just the few who still use terrestrial have to rescan on December 1. It's automatic for everyone else. It's the lone station owned by Granite in an LSA with Sinclair. Maybe Granite could buy overlapping Tegna stations that Nexstar can't get, but that's for another day. As for the new call sign, no one knows what they stand for, since not all of them really have to mean anything. They just can't be offensive. The 5.1-3 signal and longtime callsign are being retired and streamlined into this new one. It's still channel 5 on cable, satellite and streaming, just like sister station CW 6 one channel up. The over-60s in CNY may have known just 3, 5 and 9 since 1962 when the latter started, yet the local landscape for TV has to adapt to emerging technologies. Any change in life or on the air will take getting used to.