Weeters

Those come from the Vanderbilt TV News Archive. The date/time super on the top is a telltale sign. https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/

Maybe their agreement with YES includes that YES needs their studio and control room during the midday. Maybe WCBS doesn't want to add additional stress to an already stressful situation for their staff. There are stations out there who strategically do NOT cover things, to provide a place for people to go who don't want to be bombarded with news. For a long time, WDJT wouldn't do breaking news or severe weather coverage unless it was an extraordinary situation. Why? Not only because they knew that three other stations would do it better, but also because they knew that some people might not care and just want to watch something on TV. By NOT covering the situation, they were providing something for people to watch that wasn't the news. They very well may be doing this on purpose, because they're in a situation where they might not be able to offer any decent coverage at noon, and also know that there are, what, five other OTA stations on at the same time that can do better? They're working out of a borrowed studio, homes, and news cars. Give them a break.

Essentially he buys Tegna, shoves his existing stations and properties under it, and lets them do the work while collecting money. That's it. That's his motive. This isn't some grand scheme to shake up Tegna. Same goes for Apollo.

Yes, it is a microwave yagi antenna on a gyroscope that keeps it pointed at the receive site. https://trollsystems.com/airborne-tracking-antennas/skylink-hd-az-el-steerable-high-gain-multi-band-bidirectional-antenna

My contacts say this was a special setup just for this story. All the stations pooled their choppers and shared each others feeds, so there were constant aerials of the cruise ship. One would go to refuel while another took its place. KGO offered to pool their chopper feed if they could use the other pool choppers (N62TV which is the one branded with KTVU livery, and N42SL, a generic news helicopter that seems to have replaced generic shared helicopter N75TV which looks to be in Sacramento right now.) It appears that KGO and KTVU are the only two that have full command of a chopper. The generic one might have some 50/50 shared command between KNTV and KPIX, which explains its lack of branding. I would assume Helicopters Inc knew that KTVU might not want to fly to everything KNTV and KPIX might want aerials of, and offered to let them share a generic chopper in addition to the KTVU share. @rkolsen's helicopter project has uncovered some interesting sharing going on in the market. During the Garlic Festival incident is when the "generic" N75TV chopper was discovered, which all the stations were using, including KGO.

The San Francisco area stations are tag-teaming their choppers to have constant pooled aerials of the Coronavirus cruise ship docked in the harbor. Unfortunately, the CBSN Bay Area TD wasn't paying close attention and this was up for about 15 seconds.

It's owned by Helicopters Inc, and they supposedly already flew in a replacement. They are contractually obligated to provide a helicopter to WTVF, so they will do so until Scripps no longer renews the annual contract. Insurance will pick up whatever Helicopters Inc isn't responsible for, like the camera and transmitter. The vast majority of, if not all, news helicopters are housed at airports. Most stations don't have the land for a hangar and helipad. Most stations also don't want to deal with the permitting to house jet fuel on-site.

I would imagine they are keeping the music for now. They don't want to overwhelm their viewers with too much change, after all. C-Clarity will probably start to creep into the shows little by little.

As I understand it, the set itself is finished. Integration and testing takes time, especially if there's problems. I also understand that the LED wall market is suffering from supply chain issues due to the cornonavirus and it's impacting the install of LED walls globally. It's possible they need a new part that they can't get right now.

Yeah, but it's all still Tribune's in-house garbage being replaced. Anyone with a former Tribune station has to do this, regardless of how old or new the facility is. The WREG engineers are probably too busy planning out installs of their own new toys to care.

Digging around online, it looks like the two story building the fire happened in was originally built in the 50's for KCRA radio. It's so disconnected from the "new" part of the building I can see why it's been abandoned. https://www.valcomnews.com/kcra-channel-3-first-aired-nearly-six-decades-ago/ The biggest loss here is a place I'm sure the engineers and IT people loved to hide.

A treasure trove of 1998 WITI, all revolving around the retirement of John Drilling. Some observations: The "Newscenter" set is brand new here (weeks old), and the newsroom and weather office have yet to be renovated to match. There are also still human camera operators in the studio. Also a few clips of Molly Fay, now over at WTMJ doing the Morning Blend, and Scott Steele who is now suing WTMJ/Scripps. A few of these packages were crammed right at the end of the show, so there's a few seconds of the classic Magnum close music sprinkled throughout.

It's the bed from the holiday image campaign SAM released a few years ago. https://stephenarnoldmusic.com/happy-holidays/

Ah yes, the Rampage theme everyone on here absolutely hated when it debut. I remember someone described it as sounding like "a malfunctioning fax machine". Sorry, but C-Clarity is leaps and bounds better than the theme that sounds like it was originally composed on the Floppotron.

If I recall correctly, the current facility is a bunch of separate buildings of various ages connected together. Unless the developer sees some kind of market for the separate buildings and the studio spaces, I would imagine they'll just be demolished and replaced with a new development.

Isn't this every major industry, though? Everyone tries to appeal to the younger crowd, and they always have. That's been the target demographic for everything since the beginning of time. How many faces can you find in the Coca-Cola Hilltop ad that don't appear to be under 35? That wasn't a coincidence. There are quite a few retail chain CEOs out there that now regret "appealing to the people you know". Didn't work out too well for Sears, K-Mart, or about a dozen other large retail establishments in just the past couple years. Times changed, they did not, and instead of being a leader, they trailed behind, struggling to catch up until they couldn't go on any more. Nothing was stopping Sears from being the first to offer online ordering. In fact, they dismantled their catalog operation the year before Amazon was founded, in the process destroying the infrastructure that could have easily ported over to online orders. They could have cornered the market in online retail if some people in their corporate office just went "What about the internet? What if we let people submit orders through the internet? What if we put the entire catalog on the internet and made it searchable?" Would it have been a crazy idea at the time? Yes. Would it have cost a fortune at the time? Yes. But today, we'd be saying "I just ordered new shoes off Sears, my groceries are being delivered by Sears Fresh, and tonight I'm going to sit down and watch some stuff on Sears Prime." "Amazon" would just be a rainforest in South America. TV executives are well aware that people of all ages are turning from linear TV. Many TV companies are starting to admit this with the "Digital First" concept. They are creating content with the express purpose of said content being posted online. The TV product is NOT their primary focus. The TV product essentially serves as a compilation of the things that have been posted online. This is the transitional period. This is where Sears should have been in 1994: Grandma could still get the Catalog (the TV broadcast), but Junior has the power of the Internet (the Internet) to find exactly what they want, without wasting time thumbing through the entire damn catalog (a traditional linear TV news broadcast). What is yet to be seen is whether or not it will work. If it does? Good. If the only way to keep people informed about the happenings in their world is through clips that last less than a minute, at least they're staying informed. If it doesn't? Well, some of the most recent TV facility builds already look enough like a tech startup office that selling them shouldn't be too hard.

Close, but not quite. These packages are the result of the two founders of GO breaking off to do their own thing. Ruth Dial (Who freelanced during the time, but is now back at GO) did the WLS package, and Rey Rodriguez (now "Linear Drift") did most of the current WABC package until he (allegedly) decided to prioritize work on the current-gen CBS O&O graphics, and dumped the remaining WABC work onto Ruth. Ever notice how the WABC lower third looks a lot like the CBS O&O lower third? The previous WABC package referenced was their combined work under GO. The rumor around the industry has been that WABC wasn't happy with the current package since day one, and who can fault them for that, since day one included running opens with "NEWS YORK'S #1 NEWS" plastered all over them. There is a very good chance they will get new graphics before they move. Speaking of the move: The first renderings of the new building were released a few weeks ago. Current plans call for the ground floor to be all retail, so don't expect another streetside studio. In fact, The View and Live! studios will apparently be below-grade. Maybe the long standing rumors of the SUPERSET(!!!) will finally come to fruition.

Given the prominence of the helicopter in severe weather coverage AND the sponsorship, that sponsorship probably offsets the cost quite a bit. I've watched tornado coverage on KFOR numerous times and they say "Bob Moore Chopper 4" like every 3 minutes. You NEVER hear a sponsorship uttered that many times on television newscasts.

Scripps has promoted the "Digital Director" from WTMJ to "Senior Director of Content Strategy" for all the east coast stations. https://scripps.com/press-releases/scripps-promotes-marcus-riley-to-oversee-content-strategy-for-east-coast-stations/

Houston's KTRK has restored the giant neon 13 signage on the tower behind their studios. https://abc13.com/5710623/

This is what I mean when people on here get all excited about new graphics or whatever when a company takes over a TV station. Fixing this is way more important to a company than a graphics package or standardized set.

A "bunker" full of guns and ammo was found hidden in a wooded area just across the street from WTMJ this morning, after police were called out to investigate reports of shots fired. https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/man-arrested-after-bunker-with-weapons-found-near-estabrook-park

Hello everyone! It's that time of the year again, when local news begins to see preemptions for holiday-themed programming. Traditionally, this site eventually ends up taking part in the ever-festive tradition of creating lists of what your local station is airing on a given holiday. And as is tradition, I am here to remind you of the no lists rule and how it applies here. Basically, you are welcome to discuss (a basic list is not good enough) stations special local (or in some cases, regional) programming. I know in some markets, local programming will preempt network specials. That is also fair game to mention. What is NOT fair game, and what we don't want to see, is posts that tell us what we already know: There will be big parades, there will be sports, and those air nationally, so EVERYONE is affected by them. YES, we get it, there will be no evening news on CBS in Fargo because of a football game, just like there won't be evening news on CBS in Chicago, or Dallas, or Cadillac, MI because of the same game. To summarize: Tell me something I don't know! Good: Not good: Feel free to ask questions below! -The Management

The last couple O&O looks (from 2010 onward) were all done mostly in-house ("Blue Helio"/Linear Drift/whatever he's going by these days was only called in to work on some 3D animation on this current one) by WCBS, and distributed to the other group members. Most stations in the group are on Chyron, but a handful (off the top of my head: WBBM and KCBS/KCAL) are on VizRT. I believe they just kind of share the CG system files among themselves as needed. Other art assets are distributed among the group, and it's left up to the station's in-house artists to implement them. Most stations have different monitor graphic templates to fill out, so they'll take the source files that, say, WBBM sends out and modify them to their needs. A lot of hubbed groups don't do this, and instead stations will get generic monitor graphic templates customized for a particular monitor configuration that will display the hub's preferred formats. Scripps does a lot of this, since their graphics style guide calls for three image formats that everything must fit within: 3x3, 4x3, and 16x9. I have heard rumors in the past of CBS wanting to hub graphics properly (along with another O&O station group (since CBS is one of two not already hubbed, it shouldn't be hard to figure out which)), but there apparently hasn't been much movement, probably because of the Viacom thing. Better to blame it on the new corporate overlords!