In September 2023, KPIX-TV (Channel 5) in San Francisco became the first CBS-owned television station to develop and deploy a new augmented-virtual reality (AR/VR) studio for its news broadcasts.
The concept of using AR/VR technology as a supplement to news reporting was not particularly new at the time — CNN had utilized augmented reality for its election reporting about a decade earlier, and The Weather Channel (which was a CBS News editorial partner) launched an AR/VR set of its own about three years before KPIX did.
Still, what KPIX did was groundbreaking. AR/VR technology was long considered to be out of reach for local TV broadcasters — too expensive, too complicated to implement — and there was no guarantee that viewers would respond positively to it. The station proved not only that there is a place for AR/VR technology in local news, but that the technology was part of the future of storytelling across all elements of a newscast — news, weather, traffic, sports.
KPIX became the model for other CBS-owned stations, with seven other AR/VR studios rolling out in markets like New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, Denver, Philadelphia, Dallas-Fort Worth and Chicago. Similar studios are in the design or development phase in three other CBS markets — Atlanta, Detroit and Sacramento — and are expected to debut within the next year.
At the TV of Tomorrow Show in June, KPIX President and General Manager Scott Warren spoke with The Desk publisher Matthew Keys about how CBS-owned stations are using AR/VR studios to enhance their local news, weather and sports reporting and how viewers are responding to the technology. Plus, Warren offers perspective on how local TV broadcasters are building out their local news and sports programming to differentiate themselves from other TV competitors.
