Weeters

WTMJ "News Force 4" promo (An apparently short lived designation for their ENG teams) from 1980 WTMJ News Open from the same era as the above promo: And last but not least, a complete WTMJ 10pm newscast, with commercials... from 1968! Includes a few minutes of The Tonight Show at the end.

CBS and Fox News Channel have had a content share agreement for a while. It's just not very often used, and when it is, it's usually transparent to the end viewer. For example, a Fox News satellite truck may uplink live signals for both FOX and CBS. Additionally, WFLD, WBBM, WGN, and WMAQ have had a news share agreement in place since 2009. I know everyone on here likes to think there's all this in-fighting behind the scenes between stations like a scene out of Anchorman. That couldn't be further from reality. Stations share content with each other all the time and work together frequently, regardless of affiliation or ownership groups, and this has been going on since TV started.

That's their Investigative unit package. They've had it for a while. From what I've heard from people "in the know": -The weather graphics were only changed to the CBSN local package because most stations don't have the resources to maintain two looks. -Any plans for new graphics are indefinitely on hold due to the Viacom takeover and COVID. I'm considering closing this thread, it's becoming a "graphics speculation" thread where people just point out any random oddity as a "sign" of new graphics.

What this part says is that Sinclair cannot apply for "assignment or transfer of control" (broad enough to include any purchase or divestiture of a station) without the applications being approved by Sinclair's legal team, and that any such application must also be accompanied by a certification from the designated Compliance Officer enforcing compliance of this order, stating that the application is accurate and that it's following all applicable laws. They must also submit an explanation as to why it was certified accurate and lawful. So, in other words, for the next few years, any time they buy or sell a station, they will need to certify that they are following the rules and not trying to pull a fast one on the FCC. The text applicable to the retransmission agreements is:

This is a bunch of nothing, really. The two largest parts of the Consent Decree deals with sponsorship identification and retransmission negotiations. Basically: Sinclair must have their lawyers review all applications to the FCC, and said lawyers must certify them to be compliant with all communication laws. Sinclair must set up policies to ensure sponsored content is properly labeled as sponsored (they are not the first broadcaster to end up with an FCC Consent Decree with this included) Sinclair is not allowed to see, or be involved with, retransmission negotiations for stations they do not outright own (i.e. they are not allowed to see or know about the agreements negotiated by Deerfield Media stations)

Nothing new. The current graphics package was supposed to launch with Aerial. That didn't happen for some reason, but they apparently paid SAM for the rights to the package, so it pops up randomly.

That's just one of NBC's chime sound effects provided to affiliates, played on top of C-Clarity.

A tour of WPXI's old building a few months after they moved out, before they demolished everything but the transmitter/engineering portion (the video comments actually indicate the new exterior wall was built through one of the old studios)

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.