KCBS/KCAL Plans More Local TV, and How It Will Use a New AR/VR Studio

Nine months after he took the reins at CBS’ KCBS/KCAL duopoly in Los Angeles, Tim Wieland is eager to double down on local. Meeting with reporters on Monday, Wieland said he’s pondering more kinds of in-house local productions beyond news (which already takes up nearly 100 hours of weekly programming between the two stations).

“I am obviously very bullish on local, in the future of local, even amid all of the doom and gloom stories that are out there,” Wieland told reporters during a press event at KCBS/KCAL’s studios on the Radford Studio Center lot. “We will start doing more local programming, not less. So that means the traditional newscast that you see, but also we may in the future be doing more community oriented talk shows, other sort of quasi entertainment-type programming, commercial programming. I think we’ll be doing a greater diversity of programming to serve the community.”

Wieland now serves as regional president and general manager for both CBS Los Angeles and CBS Colorado (KCNC), but relocated from Denver (where he had been with the station since 2001) to Southern California as part of his new, expanded domain.

That means he was a relatively new transplant when the fires that destroyed much of Pacific Palisades and Altadena became one of the biggest local stories in recent memory. “In my career, I have never seen viewership like that on a story, not just in linear TV, but on every platform we have,” he said.

And that has continued with the ongoing immigration raids in Southern California, he added: “Viewership overall for our news is higher than normal viewership, and for readership on our website, higher than normal,” he said. “Social, streaming, it’s up because there’s something happening in our community right now that people want information about.”

Coming out of the L.A. fires, Wieland touted KCBS/KCAL’s “Rebuilding SoCal” initiative: “We went on air and boldly said that we’re going to have a team of reporters dedicated to this topic for the next year and beyond,” he said. “And we put different beats together under ‘Rebuilding SoCal,’ and you see it in our newscast, and we’re not letting up. Let’s face it, local news hasn’t always been great at that. We have a reputation that is well earned of covering a breaking news story or big story in the moment and then moving on… We’re not going to do that. ‘Rebuilding SoCal’ was an initiative driven by the journalists in our newsroom to make sure that we didn’t turn our backs on the community.”

At the event, KCBS/KCAL also spotlighted assignment desk producers Mike Rogers and Mark Liu, who regularly appear on newscasts (via “The Desk”) to give context on breaking news stories. And the duopoly unveiled its new AR/VR technology-driven studio, where it has started showcasing weather forecasts. (Wieland also revealed that KCBS/KCAL’s sports reports will also soon move to the new space.)

KCBS/KCAL launched the AR/VR studio on June 11, and notes that it’s the only one of its kind in Southern California. CBS Stations have been rolling the technology out across all of its owned stations, starting with KPIX San Francisco — where that station’s entire news cast now originates from the green screen.

“Let’s face it, local news has a track record of over the decades, of unveiling some pool of technology that doesn’t necessarily have tremendous value to the audience,” Wieland said. “And I think what it reminds me is that as we think about technology and how it can advance our work, we’ve got to always keep the audience in mind. And one of the things that I personally love about the AR/VR studio is that every time I watch a forecast from inside the AR/VR studio, I learn something. I learn something about how unique topography here influences the weather, I learned you know a little bit more about the marine layer and why it forms and how it burns off. And our meteorologists really work hard to explain all that.”

Meanwhile, CBS Stations president Jennifer Mitchell (who was promoted to the position in August) also discussed the AR/VR initiative (which will eventually hit all 15 CBS stations — including its newly announced Atlanta outlet) and focus on 24/7 news streaming channels.

“It’s not just for the sake of being virtual,” she said. “It’s not just also about weather, although weather storytelling can dramatically shift and change just via the presentation and how we tell those stories. But then, when you think about immersive storytelling, how can you enhance a story in virtual environments? There’s a lot of sports applications. There’s traffic applications we can do… We’re just getting started here.”

Mitchell also discussed the “CBS News California Investigates” initiative, which works with the network’s stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento. And in discussing KCBS/KCAL’s local community involvement, she shared that it was personal — having lost her own home in the Palisades fire.

“I think this group and this station, we do a particularly good job of not just parachuting in to cover a story because it’s breaking or because it’s a crime story that might be salacious,” she said. “We keep going back to communities, and in some of our markets, even we embed journalists in very specific areas and cities where we know we can’t just parachute it out… This has been a really, really challenging year. A lot happening in this state specifically, but I think the importance of it became even more clear to me at the beginning of this year, when the wildfire started…

“The hours and hours of continuous coverage, the tireless work of our reporters out in the field so close to the fires that were burning in both the Palisades and Altadena, I’m so proud of the work that they did, but it also really shined a light on why we do what we do,” she added.

Here’s a look at KCBS/KCAL’s new AR/VR studio: