Eyewitness News rebrands as CBS News Philadelphia

Say goodbye to Eyewitness News, Philly. You’re officially watching CBS News Philadelphia now.

Or, at least you will be following the station’s noon newscast on Wednesday. After that, the former CBS3 will sunset its current branding, and fully adopt its CBS Philadelphia identity — complete with a new name for its station and newscast, new graphics and colors, a new approach to reporting and storytelling, and a reconfigured newscast structure.

But while changes are afoot, the anchors and reporters will remain the same.

“There are no personnel changes to announce,” said CBS Philadelphia station president and general manager Kelly Frank. “Ukee [Washington] will still be Ukee.”

However, you will likely notice the disappearance of the familiar gold, silver, and blue, replaced with an Eagles green-style palette. And the station’s changes go deeper, summed up in a new tagline: “We uncover the heart behind the headline.”

“For so many decades, local TV news was, ‘go to an event, report on what was happening, and get out,’ ” Frank said. “People want to understand, they want context on what is happening in their community, and we recognize that we need to be better at doing that.”

That conclusion, Frank said, came after about a year of sweeping research that began last summer. Now, CBS News Philadelphia will work to be more proactive than reactive in its news gathering, and highlight stories that make the Philadelphia area “a better place to live.”

For the newscast, that means longer, more in-depth packages than the typical minute-long run time, with some getting into five-minute territory, Frank said. Structurally, the former Eyewitness News also won’t be the typical “news, weather, sports” format that many stations follow.

“Stories are going to dictate the news,” Frank said. “Spaces will be earned with the storytelling that reflects our community.”

Additionally, the newscast will work to have its reporters immerse themselves in communities, and stick with stories to find solutions to problems, Frank said.

“One of the commitments we’re making in this new brand is that we go back,” Frank said.

That’s something of a sweeping change from the old Eyewitness News days. The program launched in 1965, bringing a format to the TV news business that sent reporters to the scenes of events while a “news family” of anchors led the program from a studio. That was radically different from how TV news was handled before then-local news director Al Primo debuted the Eyewitness News format in Philadelphia. Before that, anchors delivered mostly national headlines from behind a desk.

The Eyewitness News format caught on quickly, and inspired similar broadcasts around the country that led with sensational, often crime-focused headlines and emotional human-interest stories. As The Inquirer reported last year, that approach harmed Black communities in Philadelphia and nationwide by focusing on violence and crime in urban communities, and disproportionately representing Black people as perpetrators and victims.

Now, the station’s newscast will move away from the traditional Eyewitness News style with which TV news is often associated.

“That does not serve our communities, the greater good of our communities, the way we want to,” Frank said.

These changes come amid a larger, network-wide rebranding of CBS-owned local stations that has been ongoing since 2020, trade publication NewscastStudio reports. Local CBS stations have been adopting more national branding, often dropping station call signs and channel numbers in favor of network names that tout the area they cover, and their CBS affiliation. Now, CBS Philadelphia joins the cadre.

Many of the changes, CBS east coast regional president Adrienne Roark said, have been centered around graphics and design, so simplifying them has been a “key driver” in network-wide changes.

This, however, is not the first time Eyewitness News has been rebranded. The program first moved away from that name in 1991, when its broadcasts became known as News Day, News Beat, and The News Tonight. Then, in 1994, it changed to KYW News 3. The following year, the station became a CBS affiliate, when owner Westinghouse entered into a joint venture with the network. It later became a CBS owned-and-operated station, and the Eyewitness News branding returned in 1998.

The branding has stuck since then — until Wednesday evening. Given the shifts in how audiences consume news, especially with the advent of smartphones and social media, a change is long overdue, Frank said.

“We are looking to tell stories in the time that they need to be told,” Frank said.