Growing up in the New York City area, I figured that “Eyewitness News” was simply the name which WABC chose to give to their TV news show.
Then, in my travels about the country, I became aware that most other cities have an “Eyewitness News” too. But it is not always on the local ABC-TV affiliate, and I’ve never seen one of them refer to another. [Like: “For more, let’s got to John Smith at our Eyewitness News affiliate in Boston.”]
So I’m wondering: Is there any real relationship between them all? Is the name “Eyewitness News” trademarked, so that only organizations who collect the news a certain way are allowed to use it? Or did they all just steal the name from each ofher, spreading from one market to another like wildfire one week a few decades ago?
I doubt seriously that “Eyewitness News” is trademarked. In New Orleans, the CBS affiliate, WWL-TV, uses “Eyewitness News” as an identifier for their newscasts.
There’s also a similarity between the NBC affiliate newscasts in New Orleans and Jackson, MS. It’s basically the same graphics, similar sets, etc., just with different people.
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Lastly, do other cities have ambulance-chaser commercials that use the slogan “One call, that’s all!”? There’s a guy in New Orleans that uses this slogan, and another in Jackson, MS that uses it as well. Their commercials are just about identical – former clients (or actors?) showing off their settlement checks. What’s weird is that the two attorneys could pass for cousins – same cleft chin, same hairstyle – only that the New-Orleans guy is kind of “city-slick” while the Jackson guy is a touch folksy.
According to the trademark database, Eyewitness News is a trademark of Westinghouse Broadcasting. Westinghouse probably has TV stations in multiple markets, and uses the name in all of them. The network affiliation would have nothing to do with the use of the trademark.
Westinghouse may also license the trademark in non-competing markets.
In the 1980s, the trademark was licensed to WDTN-TV in Dayton, Ohio, which was a Hearst station, so, yes, they do (or at least, did) license it to non-Westinghouse stations.
In Wichita KS, the ABC station was “Coverage you count on” then they changed it to “Coverage you CAN count on”. Now they are “On your side” and the local CBS station is “Coverage you can count on.” :rolleyes:
Westinghouse no longer exists as a broadcasting corporation. That trademark is probably 40 years old, when Westinghouse was a company that owned broadcast stations. Today, Westinghouse survives under many mergers and sell-outs, and manufactures electrical products. The trademark is now probably generic. A news program’s name does not necessarily stay consistent with an owner or network. The name Eyewitness News can be used on ABC, NBC, CBS, UPN, FOX, WB, or any other network affiliated station. It can also be used on stations owned by Disney, Infinity, or any other corporation.
Back in 1968, when WABC-TV started calling its news program Eyewitness News, the success of the news program made ABC want to call the rest of their channel 7’s in major markets Eyewitness News: Los Angeles (KABC-TV), San Francisco (KGO-TV, but came much later after Newscene), Chicago (WLS-TV), and Detroit (WXYZ-TV). There was one program naming WXYZ-TV’s program Eyewitness News. In 1969, Detroit already had a station calling their news program Eyewitness News (WJBK-TV 2 CBS, owned by Storer). So they had to go with Action News. Point being, the name of a news program doesn’t give any indication that a station may be owned by one person or affiliated with one network.
We have the “On your side” thing in Jackson, MS … I want to say it’s the NBC affiliate. And IIRC, the New Orleans NBC affiliate does the same thing.
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On the trademark thing, I stand corrected. I figured that if “Eyewitness News” were trademarked, then only one station in the U.S. could use it. The licensing of a TM to many outlets hadn’t occured to me.