Studio 31 Media Archive's video: WVUE Fox 8 News at Noon Full 4 18 2022 New Graphics

Complete 12pm newscast from the Gray-owned Fox affiliate serving New Orleans. Recorded on Monday, April 18, 2022, the first day with their new look. It's one of the Gray looks, unsurprisingly, and it's the same one that WMC uses. It's not a very good package but WVUE has not really had a good package since they dropped that awesome RenderOn package they got when Tom Benson bought the station (the EQ Vance package that came afterwards was a major downgrade — his stuff looked great in the 90s and early 2000s but he failed to evolve his design style to keep up with the times and that's probably why he's no longer designing anymore; the Limerick package was a minor upgrade, and of course this is a big downgrade from that). That said, for what WVUE lacks in presentation, they at least make up for with content and their strong talent bench. WVUE was once the laughingstock of New Orleans television during the ABC-era before they picked up Fox. The combination of the station picking up Fox (which airs all of the Saints games during NFL season) and hiring WWL-TV's news director in 2007 after Saints owner Tom Benson bought the station, really helped to catapult the station to number one, eclipsing WWL-TV, the historic market leader. That station has dropped to third with a resurgent WDSU coming in to play (historically second then dropped to third when WVUE started to come into play). WWL-TV has had a lot of changes since Tegna took over so I am not surprised. Something that Benson began to do after taking over WVUE was to immediately poach anchors and reporters from all of the other New Orleans stations, which has brought familiarity and stability to the station and was a big part of making them the market leader starting in the 2010s. In fact, in this newscast, former WGNO weeknight anchor Liz Reyes and former WGNO chief meteorologist Bruce Katz are reunited as their weekday noon team. Kelsey Davis used to work at WDSU before leaving for WVUE's sister station, WBRC, and then coming back to her hometown a couple of years ago at WVUE. Their content and story selection is good and I find them to be most watchable product in the market. I can see why they are number one, and they are one of the few Gray stations I can tolerate. To Raycom (who bought the station from 2013) and subsequently Gray's credit, they have made few management changes and have kind of let WVUE continue to do their own thing. They also haven't pushed out the veterans the Benson team brought in in favor of cheaper hires like many other Gray stations. Like I said, the stability has really been in their favor. I will complain about the file video at 19:28: they really could not find newer video to use to illustrate Lucky Charms cereal? There should be zero excuse to use 4:3 video in 2022, especially when the box has been redesigned a few times since the 90s (when this video was clearly shot).That kid picking up a box of Lucky Charms off of the shelf in a nondescript supermarket at 19:56 is probably an adult now and has children, if you think about it (do those kids eat Lucky Charms though? the world will probably never know that). Music continues to be U-Phonix from Stephen Arnold Music, and voiceover artist is still Charlie Van Dyke, both in use since around 2007 or so. Anchored by Liz Reyes with weather from meteorologist Bruce Katz. Includes reports from Josh Roberson, Kelsey Davis, Garrett Tenney (Fox News), Rob Krieger, Casey Stegall (Fox News), Matt Finn (Fox News), Madeleine Rivera (Fox News), and David Daniel (CNN Newsource). Includes interviews with Dr. Frank Smart of LSU Health Cardiology and Leigh Hallas, Operations Manager for BuildStrong Academy (both via Zoom or other videoconferencing tool). Also includes the National Anthem immediately following the noon news. They also air the National Anthem at 4am before their rebroadcast of the 10pm news. Unlike most other Gray stations, WVUE does not air the Reina Ozbay-sung version with their generic stock footage, opting for versions with footage shot in-house. The version of the Star Spangled Banner heard here is performed by Jim Brickman and was taken from the Universal Production Music library. The version they use at 4am is from a local marching band. Yes, they managed to find a sponsor for the National Anthem, which is probably why it's nice to air twice (the 4am one is also sponsored if I recall correctly). Commercials are edited out, station promos are retained. Sports highlights in a look-live were blacked out due to copyright restrictions, as was movie trailer clips during David Daniel's package (audio also muted in spots where he wasn't talking). ©2022 Gray Media Group and WVUE-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, station ID, ident, logo, sting, tease, promo, promotion, bump, bumper, sponsor bump, SSB, national anthem, Star Spangled Banner