WROC News 8 Opens, 1/2021

Complete complement of opens from WROC, Nexstar's CBS affiliate in Rochester, New York. This was requested by Sammy/Tracy Maggio.

WROC had a voiceover changeout in late November from Mark Peeples to Jim Cutler. They made the change first in promos then re-recorded the opens shortly thereafter. Peeples had replaced Chris Corley in early 2019 after Corley passed away from pancreatic cancer. Corley had been the station voice at WROC for over ten years. Honestly, Cutler is a far more suitable replacement for Corley than Peeples was. I think JIm Cutler fits this station very well.

WROC historically was the third ranked station in Rochester (they had cheap owners through most of their history - their 1980s era stuff is painful to watch; also a lot of turnover compared to the veterans at WHEC and WOKR/WHAM). I wouldn't be surprised if their ratings have gone up recently though. Nexstar finally seems to be making a lot of investments into this station and their news product is mostly good (wish they'd ditch Forecast First, it's a waste of time). They have a great news team now and have poached a lot of talent from competing stations. Adam Chodak used to work at WHAM while ironically all three morning anchors (Mark Gruba, Lia Lando, and meteorologist Josh Nichols) all used to work at WHEC. I believe all three left due to not having their contracts renewed. They've also kept Maureen McGuire and John Kucko around for a long time now and have been able to build up stability. WHAM is also very stable but WHEC has had a lot of turnover recently.

In 2017, WROC debuted the current music and graphics. Graphics are nothing special, the standard Nexstar CBS look from Rey Rodriguez and Linear Drift. However, the music is something else. It's a custom composition from Rochester's own Ferdinand Jay Smith, a famed composer who has done work for HBO (including the music for the famous 1983 Feature Presentation bumper), Wegman's Super Markets (also based in Rochester), and others. The work was commissioned through his company, Jay Advertising. It took a while for this music to grow on me but now that I've heard it all I love it. I especially LOVE the noon theme and the breaking news music. It's elegant, authoritative and modern without getting in your face. I also respect that Smith has been able to evolve his style over the years so none of his music sounds out of date at the time it debuted. I'll give WROC credit for staying local with their music especially over yet another Stephen Arnold package (not to say Arnold's work is bad - it's just overused).

I don't know if it's just me, but the bumper during the noon and 4pm Forecast Firsts sounds A LOT like Edd Kalehoff's "Dayna", which was used by WHEC from 1993-2002 for their morning newscasts. Makes me wonder is Smith took inspiration from that in composing this.

Record dates:
Sunrise - January 21
Noon - January 29
4pm, 5pm, 5.30pm, 6pm, breaking news - January 20
11pm - January 27

Also as an added bonus I left in their return to regular programming bump. So, I recorded the 4pm show on Inauguration Day, and while they were scheduled for a full half hour 4pm newscast, it ended up running late. For whatever reason, the newscast started and ran for about 30 minutes then they went to Inside Edition at 4.56pm with less than a minute left (why bother? seriously). So since you rarely get to see it figured I'd just throw it in (and then it gets more views too than if I were to upload it by itself lmao).

Anchors include Mark Gruba, meteorologist Josh Nichols, John Kucko, Maureen McGuire, Adam Chodak, and chief meteorologist Eric Snitil.

Forecast First left in in all opens because I didn't want to mangle them, although it makes the video longer than it would be if I clipped them out.

0:00 - News 8 Sunrise tease/open
1:12 - News 8 Sunrise bumpout to break/talent outro
2:15 - News 8 rejoin
2:30 - News 8 at Noon tease/open
3:37 - News 8 at Noon bumpout to break/talent outro
3:56 - News 8 on WROC rejoin
4:16 - News 8 First at 4pm tease/open
5:44 - News 8 First at 4pm bumpout to break/talent outro
6:16 - "Now we join our regularly scheduled program already in progress"
6:24 - News 8 at 5 open
7:29 - News 8 at 5 bumpout to break/talent outro
8:09 - News 8 at 5.30 open
9:05 - News 8 at 5.30 bumpout to break/talent outro
9:52 - News 8 at 6 tease/open
11:30 - News 8 at 6 bumpout to break/talent outro
12:10 - News 8 at 11 tease/open
13:33 - News 8 at 11 bumpout to break/talent outro
14:01 - Breaking News from News 8

©2021 Nexstar Inc. and WROC-TV, no copyright infringement intended. For educational and historical purposes only. We do not profit off of this video.

[mrceleb]

WROC-TV News 8...the team you can trust!

[RochesterTVArchive]

I'm fairly certain that Ferde also did the WROC 1981 Theme, which was also used on American Movie Classics. Go ahead and give it a listen and compare the music signatures. Also, thanks for putting this together! It makes less work for me. lol

[ChannelTV]

That custom music package is one of my favorites—modern and authoritative with a great signature!

[SammyMaggio]

Thank you! My hometown CBS station! #NexstarNation

[TheTotalMusicLover]

WROC is decent, prefer the others, I really like the graphics and music. Sadly they still have a lot of turnover but I find all their old newscasts I've seen to be quite good. Jim is much better than Mark in this case.

[TheRobSka]

Do you think WHEC's "First Alert Weather NOW" is a waste of time, too? (That and Forecast First both air at the beginning of the News Broadcast)