Weeters

 

A new promo featuring Jerry and Cheryl debuted last night during the Oscars. It pretty heavily implied that Cheryl is the heir apparent to Jerry, and he pretty much stopped just short of saying that out loud. The setting also caught my eye; it looked to be in a fairly large area in front of several distant monitors and a bright white backdrop. I had never seen it before.

 

https://twitter.com/jerrytaft/status/569994908897042434

 

That's a Hothaus promo if I ever saw one. It was more than likely shot in Dallas at Hothaus' studio.

And to further prove my point...

https://vimeo.com/user13786065

Ok seriously. I want to lay this to rest once and for all:

 

That clears up who is/was behind the "Blue Helio" name, but there are still many questions left unanswered, like why they have no public presence and why nobody seems to take credit for their stuff (Ruth's Behance profile has the one package that doesn't mention anyone else while the other stuff she has mentions people she worked with, like Cake Studios).

And until we get some more answers, it will remain... a mystery.

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Last I heard, Blue Helio was ONE former GO designer and it was set up just to get around some legal issue.

Ruth Dial, also formerly of GO, does graphics packages too. The KTSP package that debut in December that people attributed to "Blue Helio" is listed on her Behance profile. I believe she also did WLS' package. I don't know if she was behind "Blue Helio", but from what I was told, nobody is actively operating as "Blue Helio".

Nobody's going to operate a design company that has no information available online. I think there are probably a few former GO people out there doing stuff on their own.

Sounds like the automation is working flawlessly as usual.

 

I don't think it was a monitor with a moving picture before and don't remember exactly what was there, but now it's a still of "FOX 32," which is relatively small and doesn't take up the whole area like the temporary replacement did. I googled for a picture of the desk and found a Feder article where there is one picture with what I saw on the desk tonight. (Scroll to number 5) http://www.robertfeder.com/2013/12/06/eyewitness-news-better-late-as-ever/ Only difference is that the border I saw tonight was 2 different shades of gray. Light gray in width and the darker gray seen in that picture in height. So I guess it wasn't a moving monitor before, and now I'm just left saying: why have such a small logo on the desk when the space is there to make it larger? More googling shows me that WFLD has done that ever since the set debuted in 2009. I couldn't paste the link but it's a NewscastStudio piece.

 

There was a monitor there as recently as two weeks ago. You can see the logo inset in the desk animate in this video: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10153581516393797&permPage=1

Wasn't there a monitor in that space before?

If that was there prior to the old panel re-appearing, I can pretty much tell you what happened right now: the monitor died and they needed something to fill that spot. No time to get a new panel printed, just slap the old one in there and stick a light behind it. Done.

This is a (very poorly drawn, not to scale) diagram of the studio as it is used today and what I saw last time I saw it (a little over a year ago). The plasma cart used to live in the area that's marked "storage chairs and tables and junk". I think they still use the windows along Dearborn as a presentation area, so it's possible the cart is still in there for those. I think there was an additional static camera somewhere in there, too.

The riser really cuts the studio in half as robotic cameras can't maneuver around it without an operator controlling them manually.

 

But is there any reason why they do not use the full studio?

 

Because at this point it's been damaged beyond the point of having an easy fix.

The fake monitor wall backdrop has been gone since the ill-conceived "Monsters and Money in the Morning" debut. The OTS monitor that was on the right side was ripped out around the same time they first started experimenting with the desk in it's current spot. This is an old picture, but it probably still looks like that. Notice the lack of lights hanging anywhere above the old anchor area.

CBS put a lot of money (Jack Morton PDG ain't cheap) into a set that local management utterly destroyed while simultaneously deciding they just didn't like the studio at all. So not only is it unlikely that they'll want to improve the set, corporate probably worries that whatever money they get to fix/build a new set will be squandered when someone else comes in and decides they don't like the set.

I wonder if they also have specific requirements as to when they use the studio. If they dislike that studio so much, you'd think they'd have already pulled a NBC5 and do all the evening shows from Studio B or a newsroom set.

I'm pretty sure the reason the set hasn't been restored to how it was is because someone would have to admit they made a mistake and wasted money wrecking the thing to begin with (i.e. the failure that was the financial morning show). A lot of people in the industry seem to think their set was constructed to be used the way they currently use it, I wouldn't be shocked if that's what they're telling the CBS executives too.

 

Looks nothing like a Belo open, and more like a gerneric HotHaus mock.

 

KXJB uses it, too:

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Oh my god that open is....

:puke:

The WKBW-centric discussion from this thread has been broken off and moved to it's own theread.

http://forums.tvnewstalk.net/index.php?/topic/14185-scripps-overhauls-wkbw/

 

I follow NBC Artworks on Vimeo and never saw any un keyed Today Show opened.

 

There are two or three Artworks channels.

How should the "little guys" (i.e. smaller companies) be treated? Since they will garner far fewer posts and less frequently but may get some attention - as long as they don't sell.

In most cases, whatever's going on, regardless of company size, should get it's own thread. Company matters here, individual station matters in General TV.

For example, let's say XYZ Corp is meging with KableCorp. That should be posted here. KableCorp clearing house at WXXX after the merger would go in General TV as it's own thread.

The "general thread" concept is fundamentally broken and wasn't really supposed to end up outside of the NY board, where they were supposed to serve as a catch-all for really small things that didn't warrant a new thread. Now everything's messed up I'm slowly trying to correct it.

I don't want to tell anyone what they can and can't post. If you want to post a scathing review of the bathrooms at Sinclair's HQ, you're welcome to, just post a new thread about it!

Those don't look like monitors or even RP. They barely look lit from behind at all (The pieces running along the top are casting shadows onto the image).

I'd be surprised to see that they change.

That set looks like it's probably been around for a while. You can see the old graphics all over it. I'd bet it's part of an contingency plan in case something drastic happened to the street level studio. Though why they're using it now is anyone's guess.

I bet if the "car incident" happened an hour earlier, they would have been on this set that night.

 

Has any station ever switched out their graphics system while a news/weather emergency was taking place? This could be a first.

 

 

you're talking like the ones used for EAS? There probably is a downtime no less than 15 minutes I bet. Maybe an hour at the worse case. I'd assume (knowing general IT and older tech) is you prep up the new machine, switch over to the new one and shut down the old one in a timely matter to have a seamless cutover (to the viewer in this case.)

 

A hardware changeover would just swapping different cables into the switcher frame, something that would have been done before well before that day for rehearsals. If they kept the same hardware, it's just a matter of loading different templates.

I remember a couple of years ago, WDJT accidentally reverted to a previous graphics package's lower third during severe weather coverage. Apparently someone never bothered to clear it out of the Chyron. Whoops!

 

I see KING has this map graphic style.

 

king5mapgraphics.jpg

 

WFAA just started using it recently. >Ugh

Nah, it looks like this:

http://i.imgur.com/FkxYBMIh.jpg

I can't recall what they used before 2011, but the link above is just the latest incarnation of what they've been using since then.

 

I don't think it's all that standardized. I don't think WISN uses anything like that - I've never seen it, at least.

 

Yeah, they don't use anything like what WBAL has. WISN has had the same general design for their severe weather ticker since 2011, except sometime between then and now they decided to scale down the program video and add "WEATHERWATCH 12" sidebars to it, for a grand total of four '12' logos on the ticker graphic alone.

I thought I had a screenshot, but you'll just have to take my word for it. This market is terrible when it comes to weather tickers.

 

How is that a promo? Is that supposed to be a promo for Fox 5 or something? Ridiculous.

 

"I told my daughter I didn't want her going out with that loser Bob from down the street, and she did anyways! I bet if we tell them not to watch, they'll watch!! That's how the kids work, you know!!"

 

Not. A. Clue.

 

There's a lot of clear inspiration from ABC 7's sister stations, so I dunno.

 

I've heard that Ruth Dial, formerly of GO, worked on the package. I've also heard that Rey Rodriguez worked on these at WLS' request, and that WLS originally wanted to go with GO, but he had left (obviously this was all going on in late 2012).

Whether or not these people are operating as "Blue Helio" is up for debate.

 

It's obviously live though, because when they were covering the yankees, Scott said "ok guys do we have the tape" or something like that. They did have it, but it probably would of been edited out if it wasn't live.

 

 

Oh, it is, alright. There was a moment where Scott asked producers if they have a tape of a bit on deck. They do, but that clearly indicated that this show is live.

 

That's the kind of stuff they'd slip into it just to pretend like it is live, even though no one at home would notice (or care) otherwise.

That could have been done live to tape and left in because it really didn't affect timing. If the tape didn't air at all, they would have re-done it, but if it worked and the segment hit it's timing, why fix what ain't broken?

 

A New promotion: A tablet a day in May?

 

Where on earth are they getting the money for this? I don't blame them on this one, because I have seen WNYW and WNBC pull the same stint with iPads (but not every day though). Not sure if it worked with respect to ratings.

 

It's sponsored, by Radio Shack no less, so if Radio Shack didn't give them the tablets outright, they were probably discounted or offset by RadioShack's sponsorship contract. 30 low end Galaxy Tab 4's would only run you $6k retail, so...

Running a separate "show" after an abbreviated newscast is a little trick used to make the usually poorly rated Friday night news not count in ratings.