As Bill Lord, WJLA’s general manager and news director, takes control of TBD, the Allbritton-owned web entity will undergo a “mid-course correction.”
Lord plans on scrapping TBD’s umbrella status over WJLA and bringing back the station’s independent website WJLA.com. He plans on also doing the same for Allbritton’s all-news cable channel–reestablishing its internet autonomy while also dumping its new moniker, TBD-TV, in favor of its original name NewsChannel 8.
“Our plan is to have two TV stations, broadcast and cable, and two websites,” Lord told Poynter contributor Scott Libin recently. “All four will have a certain level of commonality of staff. Everybody has to participate in the online effort, or it won’t work.”
Lord plans on maintaining and promoting the standalone TBD.com but will leave less of its business operations under “TBD” status. “I don’t think there were specific goals,” Lord told Libin about TBD’s launch, “but there will be now.”