Weeters

Stefan Holt did one of those Facebook Live streams that NBC Chicago's Facebook page shared. I just caught glimpses of it and I had no idea how narrow the studio is. There's probably twelve feet from the front of the anchor desk to some small desks on the other side which held the stage managers and prompter operators desks. He then did a quick loop behind the scenes showing some edit booths, the control room and a reporter getting some stuff from a vending machine. Behind the vending machine there was a door that said no smoking because there were nitrogen tanks inside. What would nitrogen tanks be used for in a studio environment be used for or are they likely just used for the building in an unrelated purpose? I've only heard of nitrogen being used on transmitters to pressurize the transmissions lines up to the antenna.

 

I don't know how long these videos last but here's the link:

 

Nitrogen is the gas usually used to provide the pressure needed in camera pedestals. You can use compressed air, but nitrogen works better I guess.

Looks amazing, if WGN goes with this, they will certainly have the best studio in the market.

It's extremely unlikely they would use this design. Again, designers generally don't release stuff like this unless the project is finished or cancelled.

More renders are on the designer's site, where it's listed as "Concept - Unbuilt"

http://www.provost-studio.com/wgn

Notice the date on one of them: March 15, 2015. This was probably part of the pitch for the Chicago Magazine/Red Eye Magazine webcast set the same designer delivered to Tribune a few months later. If you look closely, the giant street map on the WGN renderings appears to be similar to the one on the webcast set.

Y'know... There's probably a greater chance that the current ABC O&O's get sold to Scripps than it is that the Scripps ABC affiliates become O&O's.

Just sayin'.

Is there an actual studio on an upper floor if they were to abandon the street front? I've heard rumors that corporate isn't thrilled witg the pretty penny being spent on their prime real estate, given their ratings and poor product.

There's a room that could be a studio, but last I heard it isn't fully built it out. There was no lighting grid installed and it was mostly used for storage at first before they found out that Tribeca Flashpoint College was willing to rent it out. Here's a music concert being preformed in it in 2011. AFAIK it's the only other television studio space they have, which would mean moving the news set into it would come at the loss of a studio for production/commercial work.

The indoor studio was included in the new facility because they intended on leasing that studio out. In the storage photo above you can see whoever uploaded the picture was told during their tour that Dr. Oz might have started up there before they decided to house that show in New York.

At this point in time I think it's a good idea to dismiss the 2009-era rumors that they were desperately trying to get out of the streetside space. A lot of "cost cutting" ideas were being floated by all the major players in local TV around that time. In most cases you got centralization like graphics and/or master control. I feel like the whole "leasing the streetside studio space" was probably people at WBBM trying to impress corporate with "innovative ideas to cut costs".

At the very least, their agreement with the city to have "entertainment space" or whatever in the streetside space won't expire until 2018 or 2019. They're pretty much stuck there until then no matter how badly they want to get out.

It's unfair to blame WMAQ for a lot of this when they had very little to do with organizing this event other than televising it. It was organized by a company called Arena Partners, LLC and WMAQ simply picked up the broadcast rights to it. The timing issue would have been there regardless of who was broadcasting it, be it WMAQ or WLS or Public Access.

I'm sure next year, the organizers will provide more padding between the musical acts and the star raising thing.

Here's the new Scripps slate with it's sound effect intact:

 

Note that the name is simply Scripps after the year. It was done this way in 2014 and before as well. For 2015 they used "Scripps Media Inc."... It's too bad the bugs are placed in such a way that it slightly covers the lettering. This did debut on New Years Day by the way.

Wonder if the Journal stations got a different version last year then. WTMJ was using "Copyright 2015, Scripps" since April 1st.

So what keeps them from always using the insert studio?

 

Is it a NABET thing?

The Union is liekly why they're in there to begin with. I presume the group of insert studios can be overseen by one or two engineers/techs who would be there whether or not Nightly was using one. Instead of paying a group of camera operators and stagehands and a lighting person to do a show in 3A, they can just use the insert studio techs who would be there anyways.

Brian Williams fought to keep robotic cameras out of the Nightly News studio, so this was probably the outcome of that fight: they'll keep humans behind the cameras but they won't pay for people to come in on the weekends.

I imagine there's no way to do cross-talk, when a reporter joins the anchor, from an insert studio like that.

That has more to do with the control room than the studio. As far as I know, they use the same control room on the weekends as they do during the week.

Shut the shades would be my guess... The protests don't sound out of control... Just distracting.

The shades have been down all day, I saw they were closed yesterday too. The problem I could see is that any chanting that may start up may make it's way on-air. I know the studio is fairly soundproofed, but it's not 100%...

There are a large number of protesters outside of the studio right now. Was this the case in the earlier shows? I wonder if they may relocate to the auxiliary studio tonight if they're still there at 10.

The only people who know Nightly is done from the insert studio on the weekends are some of NBC's NY employees and users of this website. 99.99% of viewer's don't, so why not? It saves a bunch of money.

I saw this week's issue of "Entertainment Weekly", there's an ad for "New York Live". Does WNBC themselves putting the ad for the local show in a national magazine?

Lots of magazines are printed regionally (It's cheaper to distribute them that way). So it is possible to buy an ad in a "national" magazine that runs only in one part of the country.

Maybe it's just me but this seems like an advertisement for BGE on WMAR's Instagram account:

 

[MEDIA=instagram]9zuCjcpy4x[/MEDIA]

 

You may not see the caption in the embed but here it is:

 

• abc2news
  Saving energy is saving money! Homeowners everywhere are becoming more knowledgeable of their energy consumption habits. Here in the Baltimore area, Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE) makes it easy to follow with the My Account feature. Visit BGE.com
  
  

Wonder if that has something to do with http://www.ftvlive.com/todays-news/2015/11/9/scripps-sells-ads-to-look-like-news

I've noticed KGTV posting quite of bit of stories from simplemost.com on its Facebook page. Is this site owned by Scripps?

Domain Name: simplemost.com

Registry Domain ID: 1941906339_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN

Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.markmonitor.com

Registrar URL: http://www.markmonitor.com

Updated Date: 2015-06-25T10:03:00-0700

Creation Date: 2015-06-25T10:03:00-0700

Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2016-06-25T10:03:00-0700

Registrar: MarkMonitor, Inc.

Registrar IANA ID: 292

Registrar Abuse Contact Email: [email protected]

Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1.2083895740

Domain Status: clientUpdateProhibited (https://www.icann.org/epp#clientUpdateProhibited)

Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited (https://www.icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited)

Domain Status: clientDeleteProhibited (https://www.icann.org/epp#clientDeleteProhibited)

Registry Registrant ID:

Registrant Name: Host Master

Registrant Organization: The E. W. Scripps Company

Registrant Street: 312 Walnut Street,

Registrant City: Cincinnati

Registrant State/Province: OH

Registrant Postal Code: 45202

Yes it is, but they're not very transparent about that for some reason. And conveniently the infinite scrolling prevents you from clicking the footer links to the terms of service that state it's operated by Scripps.

I guess at the very least this site separates the utter garbage that is the click-bait social media drivel-passed-off-as-journalism this site is chock full of from the actual news sites.

I have reason to believe WFTS has switched over to VizRT based on a tip I received and some video evidence I posted below. It looks like this happened a couple weeks ago.

Look closely at the lower thirds in this video:

And the "before":

Nothing too exciting. It helps to see the videos on YouTube so they're bigger and you can make out more detail.

Does Scripps have any plans for Journal's NowTrending initiative? The site is still active but it hasn't been updated to the Scripps web platform

 

http://www.scrippsmedia.com/now-trending/

All the (dumb) Journal web initiatives (Now Trending, Nashville Edge, and WISports.com to name a few) have been ended. They stopped the segments too, afaik.

A little odd, but CBS 3 just aired a story from KCRA (Hearst-owned) in Sacramento, where they have a sister station in KOVR.

That's pretty normal in the industry... It probably came from CNN Newsource.

Producers usually don't give a shit whether or not a "sister station" did a package on the same story... They just grab the first one they see or will readily admit the other station's is a better package.

One other interesting thing the last couple days was this customized for Detroit ABC promo. That VO is definitely an ABC talent and not a Scripps one (I heard her do the tonight on ABC for their TGIT programming last night at 8). I haven't seen them do anything close to this before but it's pretty cool. Maybe it's because ABC does so well here and we're usually their highest rated affiliate?

That looks like it might be a "promo swap" spot. Promo Swaps are where affiliates get to opt-out of airing a network promo (usually during primetime) and use that time as they please (local commercials or station promotion) in exchange for airing a different network promo somewhere else (usually during things like syndicated programming or news). It might be from the station's "Co-Op" promo inventory as well, where the network provides content for the station to air on local radio and cable.

Also if you were curious what happened to the old desk...

[MEDIA=flickr]21269483763[/MEDIA]

It's now in the NBC Experience store for people to take photos at.

Something new to MSNBC primetime tonight, a news ticker with the current time. For as long as I can remember, MSNBC has not used a ticker during primetime. This is more of a switch to news based during political primetime shows.

Towards the end of Maddow tonight, an alternative ticker design came up for hurricane coverage. It was divided into 4 sections with storm information. It looked like it would be a "flipper" but I did not see it do anything (wasn't really paying close attention).

Maddow won't get axed, and Hayes just won an Emmy so I can't imagine they'd throw him out either. Wouldn't really miss Lawrence O'Donnell though. He's just... Dry? I don't know how else to put it.

I think their traffic info and reports come from another company. The videos I've seen have what looks like a law enforcement officer giving the traffic report from what looks like a different studio.

 

If it is a California government provided service, that could explain a lot.

The traffic ticker at both stations in question is generated by Newsroom Solutions hardware and fetches data from various sources on the web, either public data or from a subscription service. The station can't fix it themselves afaik, they have to get Newsroom Solutions to fix it.

So why are we going to screw the former Journal stations whom have invested "invested potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in duratrans, vehicle wraps, signage, etc."? Why not leave everything status quo until a new package is needed group-wide?

Because Scripps is obsessive about how their stations look and want to get the former Journal stations onto something that doesn't suck ASAP. All they're waiting on is the VizRT graphics, then it's a matter of throwing some logo files into the existing RenderOn templates. And like I said before, the only people who won't know these aren't brand new graphics are people who use this forum or work for Scripps.

The Journal graphics need to go. It's not like they're (generally) using something only a year or two old.

This.

I wish that Scripps had taken the time and at least designed a new package for all of its stations, new and old, to use. The current one is years old now, so it just annoying to see them give their new stations a package that's already 3 years old and that they will use for presumably at least 3 more.

There really isn't a good reason to get a new graphics package other than this one being three years old. It's three years old but some stations haven't had it that long (WKBW), and it will be "new" in the ex-Journal markets (where WTMJ has had the Journal package for nearly seven years with no updates) once it's ready for them. The older Scripps stations have invested potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in duratrans, vehicle wraps, signage, etc. that all reflect the current look, it'd be stupid to throw that all out for no real reason.

I've heard that Scripps is quite happy with this look and will continue to use it for the foreseeable future. I wouldn't be surprised to see it updated here and there, but I think the core orange/white/blue boxy look will be around for years to come.

Are there any stations that have the graphics now?

What do you mean? The older Scripps stations have them. None of the former Journal stations have them because they are not ready yet. Simple as that.

tmj4.com has relaunched with the Scripps web template.

For the first time in years, they're actually using the domain across the entire site! No more of the jrn.com/scrippsmedia.com bullshit.