Studio 31 Media Archive's video: KITV4 Island News Midday Full 1 14 2022

Complete 12pm noon newscast on the ABC affiliate covering the state of Hawaii and based in Honolulu, that's owned by Byron Allen's Allen Media Broadcasting group. Recorded Friday, January 14, 2022. KITV used to be a very solid and respectable station under the previous Hearst ownership, but Hearst pulled out of Hawaii and sold the station to Lilly Broadcasting in 2015, who pretty much went on to run the station into the ground. That's not to say Lilly is exactly a bad company per se, because they do a decent job running their Erie and Elmira operations. But they seem to treat anything outside of their main market area as an afterthought, and that's what KITV became. Hearst likely sold the station due to the economics of operating in Hawaii, and likely why the megachains stayed away until the consolidation wave of the early 2010s began to take shape. Under Lilly and subsequently Allen, the station branding is now all over the place with random production tracks being used for music as well as blue and red version of a graphics package that was previously used by Erie News Now out of Erie, Pennsylvania. That's still being used here except in the opens, which are various drone shots with their logo slapped on it. That's kind of low effort if you ask me. Lilly was in over their heads with KITV and I think they realized that, so they sold it. Allen purchased the station from Lilly for $30 million bucks in 2020 and has done nothing with the station as of yet, but that MAY be changing. First, they purchased a local independent station, KIKU, last year and plan on relaunching it to complement KITV. KITV itself has been using a "circle 4" logo on its website and in promos since last year, along with picking up CBS Enforcer for PROMOS AND BUMPS ONLY but keeping the production music in the opens and closes for now. If KITV does end up relaunching its product, then Enforcer may very well end up becoming their music. But since nothing has changed, I can only speculate at this point. KITV has also begun working in the slogan "What You Need To Know", which they utter literally every chance they get. The product is OK for what it is. It's not exactly the worst I've ever seen but it just feels cheap and underresourced compared to KHON and Hawaii News Now, both of whom destroy KITV in the ratings. They definitely need a new set (I think dates from the mid-2000s), new graphics, NEW WEATHER GRAPHICS (because the 1st gen Hearst diagrid look still lives on for those for whatever reason), new everything really. Will Allen make those changes? I hope, but don't have high hopes, because they're a company that literally buys stations and does nothing with them. Then again, they did significantly expand the staff at WREX in Rockford recently after Quincy ran them lean for years, so maybe don't count them out entirely? It's hard to tell with Allen. Maybe instead of trying to spend $8 billion buying the Broncos or more TV stations, he can use that money to improve and unify his existing ones. Graphics are a mix of in-house and the old Erie News Now graphics, music in the open is a production track from Universal Production Music called "Transfer Zone", and I have no idea who the voiceover artist is currently (it's changed three times since Lilly took over from Hearst). In the tease, the UPM production track Vigilant is being used. Anchored by Lia Kamana with weather from weather anchor Davey D. Includes reports from Jeremy Lee, Chris Nguyen (CNN Newsource), and Rachel Knapp (Lilly DC Correspondent — I guess they still have some type of arrangement in place to keep using her reports). Commercials are edited out, station promos have been retained. ©2022 Allen Media Broadcasting and KITV-TV, no copyright infringement intended. For educational and historical purposes only. We do not profit off of this video. open, news open, news close, close, tease, stinger, promo, promotion, bump, rejoin, sponsor bump