KMOV switches to ‘First Alert 4’ branding for entire news operation

KMOV, Gray Television’s CBS affiliate in St. Louis, Missouri, has rebranded using a familiar news name in an unfamiliar way. 

The station, which was known as simply “News 4” for decades, now brands its newscasts as “First Alert 4.”

It’s important to note that, in this case, the “First Alert 4” branding is for the entire news operation. For some time now, “First Alert” has been a popular weather brand used at stations across the country, and typically was meant to conjure the image of the station’s ability to provide early warnings of severe weather.

With this new name KMOV is applying its ability to “alert” its viewers of all types of important information, including weather and traffic, two franchises that have been traditionally more linked to the phrase “First Alert.”

Along with the rebranding, KMOV also moved to a new building and unveiled a new set, which NewscastStudio will have more coverage of later.

Gray Television brings visual cohesion to stations with GrayONE graphics

The station also made the transition to the GrayONE shared graphics package and migrated its website to firstalert4.com, but did not update its social media handles (on X, formerly known as Twitter, the handle @firstalert4 appears to be taken by a third party).

Along with the new name comes a new logo. 

Advertisement

The design includes a color shift to red and black, along with a new “4” icon. It also drops the CBS eye.

WANF’s ‘Atlanta News First’ logo that debuted in September 2022. WANF and KMOV are both owned by Gray Television. WANF was previously known as WGCL after a long-abandoned ‘George Clear News’ branding strategy. 

The updated logo’s font appears to match that used at Gray’s Atlanta station, WANF, which rebranded as “Atlanta News First” in September 2022. The two stations also obviously share the theme of “First.”

KMOV does not, however, replace the “I” in “First” with a glyph stylized more as the numeral “1,” likely to avoid confusion with the “4.”

It does, however, retain the stylized “F” in that word and also leverages a similar color scheme. 

The new KMOV logo eliminates any places where a letter slices off part of another one, like the “K” did to the “M” in the station’s 2019 logo, shown above.

In fact, the station call letters no longer appear prominently in many lockups of the logo seen so far.

The new KMOV logo features a “4” that shares many characteristics used in both the 2019 version and pre-2019 blue boxed version, though with a notable difference — the vertical stroke of the “4” is now interrupted by a slighty horizontal gap just above the crossbar.

This change gives the logo not only a new, unique look but also sense of forward motion and urgency, which is in line with the “First Alert” moniker. 

In September 2023, Gray’s WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina, also updated its logo to feature more diagonal elements and a wider sans serif typeface like the one used at WANF and now KMOV.

WBTV had been used the “First Alert Weather” branding prior to the 2023 changes, which also included switching over to GrayONE. 

Advertisement