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.

The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and flow. Sign up for the ITVT / TV of Tomorrow newsletter by clicking or tapping here.

Matthew Keys, The Desk: CBS is doing some really interesting things with augmented reality and virtual reality, and it started at your station. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Scott Warren, KPIX / CBS News San Francisco: We started about a year and a half ago — we decided that we wanted to tell a different kind of story. We wanted to bring the audience into the experience, make it more of an immersive experience.

The most important thing is to provide more context and perspective to stories. The best place to do that was weather. So we started with weather, and we built an environment where our meteorologists can walk across a map through mountains, we have fog and clouds coming across those maps in real-time, so that the clouds were projecting on the map are the exact same clouds you’re seeing at the sky in the sky at that moment.

Matthew Keys, The Desk: Let’s take a step back. CBS actually took one of its studios and the equivalent of a green screen, which we have seen in weather for decades. You turned the whole room into a green screen, right?

Scott Warren, KPIX: Yeah. We started with one. We went in. We had a big warehouse kind of room. We tore everything out of it and put up a giant green bathtub, and started weather in there.

We learned really quickly — it was very successful and very easy to do, and gave us so many options that we blew out our other hard set as well and turned it into a giant green bathtub. So we have no hard sets. We’re all 100 percent AR/VR.

Matthew Keys, The Desk: How has the response been from viewers in a market like this, which is so competitive for local news?

Scott Warren, KPIX: Most of it has been excellent — especially the younger the audience, the better.

Some of the older audience took some time to get used to. I used to get emails — What are you doing? What does this look like? I don’t get it. I would write back, just stick with us, hang with us. And they would literally write back three, five, six months later — I get it. I love it. I can’t watch anything else.

Matthew Keys, The Desk: We’re taping in late June. Just this week, CBS launched its eighth AR/VR studio in Dallas — most of the markets now have AR/VR sets. How are the other CBS O&Os using them? Are they using them for sports? Are they using them to help supplement their news programming? What does that look like?

Scott Warren, KPIX: I think they’re all following our path — they all started with weather because it’s the most-dynamic, and it gives the most context and perspective.

Then, soon, you see how great the system is, and sports gets into play, and we start using it for sports. Immediately after that, you’re like, let’s go all in. Let’s do news.

Philadelphia has gone all-in, 100 percent. Denver is very close. Now we have L.A., Dallas, New York, Miami — Miami is going all-in as well. It’s just so compelling and so much fun to use.

Matthew Keys, The Desk: Let’s talk about local news for a moment. Local news is one of those things that really sets local broadcasters apart from the cable networks, from the streaming platforms, from everyone else. Talk about your commitment to local news programming and how streaming might help you expand where the broadcast signal might be a national programming — are you guys doing any kind of streaming focused programs?

Scott Warren, KPIX: Absolutely. Our mission, first and foremost, is to serve the local community and to be hyperlocal — to be able to bring people information from their communities. We do that, starting with our storytelling and how we do that.

Then it’s, how do we distribute this? We are, by definition, broadcasters, so we’re doing it over-the-air, broadly — but, we can get more narrow as we go to each of the different platforms.

So we have our own local and national streaming channels that we do right out of KPIX. We do six hours of national news for CBS News 24/7, our national newscast streaming. And we do local news, both re-broadcasting our over the air newscast, but adding other shows in the mix as well.

Matthew Keys, The Desk: Let’s talk about sports — because sports is a big thing that’s still driving people to linear. We know about all the major national deals — CBS has great deals with NFL and with PGA and a bunch of other franchises. But at a local level, you guys are doing some really interesting things with the local sports franchises. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Scott Warren, KPIX: We have two broadcast stations — we have KPIX and KPIX Plus (KPIX+), so we have a lot of airtime to be able to play with sports. If you’re talking about baseball or basketball, there’s a lot of games — so, you have to put them someplace. We have this place to do that.

We have a deal with the 49ers that we’ve had for a long time — we’re their pre-season partners. We just became the broadcast partners for the [Golden State] Valkyries — it’s now the most-valuable WNBA franchise in the country, and it just started, and we get to be their partners. We’re broadcasting 36 of their games.

And we’re talking with others. Right now, there’s a great opportunity to be hyper-local with sports.

Matthew Keys, The Desk: I feel like I could talk with you all day about what your station, what Paramount is doing, in local news and sports. But, we’re out of time, so I appreciate the conversation today. Thank you for coming to TVOT. It was great meeting you.

Scott Warren, KPIX: You too, thank you.

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