Weeters

The news desk is sacred, and the main anchors should be chained to it. Having a "personal life" is not allowed.

Word on the street is that the ongoing supply chain/chip shortage issue has impacted the ability to get new equipment.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Chj8v2VuCqi/ Just new lights. Temporary set is the old "Everyday Health" set (a sponsored segment that used to air at the end of the midday news iirc) in Studio D. The lighting in Studio A was already mostly LED and fluorescent, but the fixtures date to the installation of that set back in 2012, so they're probably about due for replacement.

Since they were nice and credited us: NewscastStudio has confirmed the split is for WNBC/WNJU.

FIST FIRST on TVNewsTalk... The TVNewsTalk On Your Side I-Team Investigators have obtained building plans that appear to show NBC is in the process of renovating and dividing Studio 3B (last major use was NBC Nightly News/Rock Center up until 2017). The plans show two similar looking studios (however, the plans are marked "Scenic Fabrication by others, shown as reference for coordination purposes only") named as "3B-1" and "3B-2". The plans appear to show a 360 degree track camera in each, possibly similar to what BBC News uses. Could these be for WNBC and WNJU once Telemundo moves to 30 Rock? DEVELOPING...

Keep in mind, the era a lot of these are coming from was when it was still entirely possible for a station's in-house graphics department to create an entire news graphics package on their own. It wouldn't surprise me at all if that's where a lot of these unknown ones came from, especially the larger stations (i.e. WPIX and WGN) You see a lot of TVbD knockoffs because a lot of stations looked at their work and went "we can do that ourselves for much less". You don't see it much anymore because most stations barely have a graphics department, and unless you really like working in local TV, most decent designers jump ship to different lines of work.

We were discussing NewsNation in the Discord the other day, and I went browsing through Nexstar's latest Annual Report to see what mentions of NewsNation they make in it. One thing did jump out at me, in a mention of how much money they've saved cutting syndicated programming and other types of rights (emphasis mine): Dropping syndicated programming and other shows from NewsNation through 2021 saved them $17.5 million dollars. They now control all of that ad inventory, on programming they are paying much less for than what it replaced (hell, dropping syndicated programming very likely paid for the NewsNation programming outright.) This is an important part of the NewsNation strategy, the same strategy the local stations use when they drop an hour of Judge Judy for more local news. The "ratings" might not be as good, but if they're now paying $4,000 an hour to program NewsNation Prime where they were previously paying $8,000 for an hour of Law and Order: Parking Enforcement Unit, they are coming out ahead.

The article to me reads like they're only building a "state-of-the-art weather center" in the space and not trying to replace the current news set. Weather is something that wasn't given much attention on the current O&O sets, so that makes sense.

The contract was originally awarded to Stun in 2019 (Yes, folks, sometimes graphics do take three years to develop).

Given the group's new focus on the CBS News Streaming stuff, and that other stations had dedicated CBSN studio space, perhaps they plan on turning it into a proper studio for CBS News Chicago, or a kind of "hub" for the entire CBS News Streaming operation. If you look at WMAQ's old setup, it's not like you need much to accomplish this. Basically a desk in front of the windows and some lights. They might have to buy some new lights, though. I know they've been holding on to and using fixtures from McClurg Court even on the current news set when it went in.

It looks like a re-creation of the mock-up made by the new logo designers that was included on Page 1 of this thread. I am told that the local station group was not involved with this project and that any mock up local logos included in the design documents leaked are not official new logos.

I wonder where they got that...

Just because something shows up on someone's demo reel or portfolio does not mean they created the entire thing from scratch. If there was some "rule" that you could only include stuff you made 100%, nobody would be able to get a job.

The best-case scenario for the old Master Control space (it's a fairly large room) is converting it into a new control room. The existing control room was built in the 80's and has not been updated much. They did move things around a few years ago when they automated, but it's still pretty tight in there (especially since they simultaneously moved the robotics control from the studio floor into the control room). They might have to wait until Radio moves out, though. At some point, the control booth for the radio networks got moved into the TV MCR, in a small closet-sized booth partitioned off from the rest of the room. Transmissions is also in the MCR, but that could probably be moved elsewhere.

I'm pretty sure the reason they're relocating has more to do with space for people than equipment. Most stations technical cores are surprisingly empty these days - where you'd once have three racks filled with VTRs (which take up the space one 2" VTR took up 50 years ago) you now have one rack with two servers doing the same exact job as those tape decks. ParkerVision was a product of the time period in which equipment space needs were peaking. You can now fit multiple switchers and automation servers into a single rack.

They've indicated a few times that they intend to run the Ion stations separate from the rest of their portfolio. I'd be surprised if they tried to do news on them.

They've been using this music for a long time... It's been on the 11pm for a while. This probably has nothing to do with new graphics, and more to do with their News Director liking this particular style of music (I've heard that he wasn't a fan of Inergy at Scripps, and that's why KTNV didn't have proper news opens until he left for KOVR)

It's worth noting that Congress let STELA expire. They didn't care enough to renew it for the people that needed it. There is zero chance they would reimplement it with some provision to let cable/sat providers just pipe in whoever they felt like during a dispute. The station groups, networks, and NAB would absolutely not support that. Period. Syndex already prevents this from happening. The local station retains it's local rights even if it's not on the cable provider.

Piping in other stations is a dubious choice and would not hold up. If I owned the out of market station replacing a fellow affiliate, I would immediately order it pulled off. The whole reason the first station got pulled down was because the owners want something from the provider. I'm not going to let them use my station as some negotiation tactic for free, and I'd hope other stations would do the same if the same happened to me. Cable providers do not have some kind of free reign over just running whoever they want on their systems. Also, if Comcast piped in a O&O to replace an NBC affiliate, I can almost guarantee you that would nearly immediately be brought to the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission as an unfair, monopolistic business practice. Sorry folks, but this idea is right up there with the fantasy of another mass affiliation swap or ABC buying Scripps. Not. Happening.

That would be a violation of their affiliation agreement with KIRO.

There's nothing anywhere that says the copyright needs to reflect station ownership. It's a Nexstar-produced newscast, featuring people paid by Nexstar, airing on a station that Nexstar has a contract with to provide services for. There's not much difference between this and a news share agreement where one station provides news for another owned by a different party.

The ground floor lease that included the streetside studio also includes the current studio as well as the control room. There are floorplans on the site for the streetside studio space. Anyone leasing the old streetside studio would sublease it from CBS. From what I understand, they lease the ground floor studio space and the first two floors of space above it, plus the garage below. There are 12+ years left on the entire lease according to the streetside studio listing. Fun fact: The elephant doors to bring large items into the studios (i.e. set pieces) are actually in the mall entry immediately north of the streetside studio.

NewsCentral was before its time. Technology has changed so much that it's impossible to compare with what we can do today. We have meteorologists working from home covering severe weather. What's the difference if they're 30 miles from the station or 3000?

I'll summarize my thoughts from the Discord: I don't think this is an attempt at a new OTA weather channel or anything close to WeatherPlus. I think this is a vehicle to enable the hubbing of weather. The press release says "Fox Weather will feature local, regional and national updates... [Drawing] on more than 75 meteorologists across 17 stations and Fox News Channel’s news gathering teams." and makes no mention of affiliate stations. This is a project that involves only the O&O group. Rebrand all the local weather departments under the "Fox Weather" banner (Which would be similar to WeatherPlus) and now you have a unified brand that anyone can appear in front of. Do you really need weekend meteorologists at both WITI and WFLD? Or can you just "regionalize" these markets and do both out of one station from time to time? Oh no! A Tornado warning has been issued on a Sunday morning, and nobody's at the station! Not to worry, the Mothership in NYC has somebody on duty, and they were going to cover the Tornado warning anyways, so they might as well just simulcast Fox Weather on the local FOX O&O. I would not be the least bit surprised if midway through next year, they announce they're "streamlining" the O&O's and are taking advantage of "operational efficiencies" presented with a network of meteorologists and suddenly some stations lose their weekend/fill in mets. I've said for some time now that Weather and Sports were ripe for hubbing, and I think this might be the start of that.

They've been on the same tower for years, and WDJT relays them on 58.3. Problem is Weigel has so many channels relaying on WDJT's main signal that none of them have a decent picture quality.