For Its New Look, KTLA Goes Back to the Future

(Twitpic by Micah Ohlman.)

KTLA -- which recently made over its lead anchor team, with Micah Ohlman and Victoria Recaño taking over the 10 p.m. and newly expanded 6 p.m. newscasts -- unveils its set makeover tomorrow.

The station is touting the new set as very modern and "state of the art," but one element is actually a throwback to the 1980s and early 1990s -- KTLA's new news logo.

Check out the new logo on the set above -- KTLA has brought back the old arty "5" that identified the station for many years. As a matter of fact, that "5" can still be seen on the old tower in front of KTLA's Hollywood studios; it was never taken down, even after the logo changed. Now it's suddenly relevant again!

Here's the KTLA logo from the 1980s and early 1990s:



And this was the KTLA logo in the late 1990s. You might have noticed that the new, 2009 logo utilizes this one's practice of bolding the "LA" portion of "KTLA," presumably to emphasize the station's Los Angeles home:



In the early part of the 2000s, KTLA decided to stop referencing its channel position -- something that bothered me to no end. KTLA is found on channel 5 both over-the-air and on most cable systems -- and that's a huge marketing benefit that cable networks, which appear on a jumble of channel positions depending on the provider, can't match.

This was also the moment that KTLA first introduced the station "whoosh" -- which looked suspiciously like the Nike logo.



KTLA finally realized the error of its channel position-dropping ways by 2007, particularly after someone likely realized that the new CW logo looked bad parked right next to the KTLA logo. The reintroduction of the "5" helped separate the two:



And now, a nod to the past as KTLA unveils its new look on Wednesday. "A little nostalgia to go with our re-launching," KTLA Prime News exec producer Elizabeth Applegate tweeted on Tuesday. "A little old and little new, debuting Wednesday night!"