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It's been a rough road getting here, but we're excited to reveal the new site. Let's get to it! Outside of visual changes, there aren't a whole lot of functional changes. Notable changes include: Mobile support is improved, especially when composing a message. Emoticons are OUT and the full suite of emojis are IN. BBCode has been removed completely in favor of a more robust WYSIWYG editor. The logo has been refreshed. Coming soon: We will be restoring the ability to register and sign in with popular web services like Google, Twitter, and Facebook. And there is much more to come in the days and weeks ahead! Stay tuned for more updates. Regrettably, the old Shoutbox was not able to be carried over to the new site. We are looking into our options when it comes to real-time discussion, including integration with services like Discord, which many of you already use. This will also be addressed within the coming days. Please reach out if you encounter any issues, either by PM or by emailing [email protected].

Someone posted an idea for a "sports classic video" thread on the shoutbox a few days ago. I like the idea, but I wanted to expand it a little bit. The focus of the existing classic video thread is on news and broadcast TV stations. This is, essentially, "everything else". Premium cable promos, MTV "vidchecks", sports promos and graphics, everything within reason. Obviously let's not post full game shows or compilations of production company logos. So! I'll start with three examples of the above. I had, like, five examples of premium cable promos but I ultimately went with this one. Why? I think mid-80s Movie Channel stuff is underrated. The theme music is great and the movie open is fantastic, and it's interesting to see bits of a channel that never quite found a niche. (Even a rebrand effort from the great Fred Seibert and Alan Goodman didn't really quite take off.) Here's a nice and long MTV "vidcheck" from 1982. For those who don't quite get the concept, it's sort of similar to a "scoped aircheck" of a radio station. In other words, the songs are more or less removed (well, most of them - there's enough to let you know what the song is), but everything else isn't. So this is the VJ banter, commercials, and promos from that era. It's interesting to note how tame it is in comparison to how MTV was later in the decade. The formatics are very, very similar to radio. Lots of VJ segments, lots of promos, pretty high on the music content (and before I get the obligatory "well, duh, this is when they actually played music" comments, I want to stress that this is in comparison to how they were much later in the decade, when there were much more commercials, promos, and news breaks.) Ok, so "full sports broadcast" might not exactly be "within reason" but bear with me here. I wanted to spotlight the 1993-95 ABC Sports look, and the best way to do it was with this, a full bowling telecast from 1993. Cheesy Professional Bowlers Tour theme song aside, this look has aged like fine wine. I've mentioned ABC Sports' theme music from this period many, many times... but I'm going to mention it again because it is simply my favorite piece of television production music. Period. But I also wanted to note the graphics, which is why I'm posting this in full. Like I said, it's aged like fine wine. With a few adjustments you could be using these today - and more or less, Fox Sports IS using these graphics today. The resemblance is striking. I'll take crisp and clean graphics like these over overdone gloss and dancing robots any day of the week.

WAVY's 11:00 The Daily News for May 17, 1989:

This is what happens when a company like Sinclair gets too big for its bridges. They can't even roll out a graphics package correctly

KBNT Noticias 17 news open from around late 2004-2006.

A KTUL report from 2005 Btw I plan on doing Wilkes-Barre, PA news opens next, to finish up everything else aside from WNEP (which was done back in February). If anyone can find or know of any WBRE material from the 80s, please let me know.