Weeters

Not 100% sure, but the blue box in this WTMJ weather graphic vaguely looks like someone took a box from the new package and cranked down the opacity. WTMJ's weather graphics are a hodge podge of random elements, the current Scripps look, and the old Journal look, so it's hard to tell if this is new or just something random that just so happens to look like it.

They still live on in a sense... Since WTMJ's Morning Blend graphics rolled out at the same time, and use a lot of similar elements. Those Morning Blend graphics are coming up on 11 years old.

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.

WTMJ is in bad need of a new set (or at least a major refresh), especially since they started wallpapering it and removing duratrans, leaving the LED back lighting exposed (behind the plexi on either side of the desk). They now have the oldest set in the market, and both WITI and WDJT have essentially received two new sets in the period that WTMJ set has been up. My fear is, since their studio is round, they'll be convinced that the best use of the space is a green wall and floor.

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.

And last I heard, it still pulls better ratings than "Wisconsin Tonight" ever did, except maybe the first couple weeks before they completely trashed the Wisconsin Tonight newsmagazine format and made it a quasi Morning Blend at Nite, with a bunch of people coming on to hawk their garbage without having to pay the Morning Blend segment fees.

Since things I bring up on here keep getting fixed: I'm not sure if this is isolated just to the stream or what, but they've gotten into a bad habit of airing CNN packages that are being mixed wrong in their control room, and have no voiceover track (or sometimes any voices at all) once it hits the stream. This is pretty normal in TV news, where stories will be edited so the left audio channel contains VO and the right contains "NAT" (natural) sound. These are then turned back into "stereo" in the audio console in the control room. Pay attention to those audio meters, kiddos.

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/

The PTZ cameras they have (Panasonic HD130/HN130) are really not good at recalling saved shots "nicely", which is why that crash zoom at the top of the newscasts is really jarring and uncomfortable. They're designed to have their shots recalled when the camera isn't on-air. You can slow down the speed at which they recall the saved shots, but then it wouldn't be as dramatic and timed with the music (big groan). They play up that new ability right at the top of the show, but I have yet to see any camera shots change outside of that, period. The sports segments ALWAYS use the wide shot with both monitors. Weather is ALWAYS showing the whole weather center. The only tight shots are at the news desk, and even those are always the same two shots coming from two different cameras.

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.

Well, we don't have to wonder what "Facebook Graphics" would look like, since they streamed some a few weeks ago when Mark Zuckerberg did a public town hall with employees. (Spoiler: they seem to borrow "the frame" from Tegna. )

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.

So the discontinuation of MI News 26 is extremely sloppy, and from the outside seems to be happening with no thought put into it. The old minews26.com website is being updated as of Friday, but things like weather have frozen in time, being last updated before the transition to Newsnet. Even their own website still features the MI News 26 schedule, with only the website header image referencing the transition to "Newsnet" from MI News 26. The stream appears to have ceased working, and again, there's no redirection to the working Newsnet stuff. It's kind of sad that they've just completely trashed the relatively good idea of hyperlocal news coverage for CNN Lite, and are too busy caught up with trying to make that happen to even transition away from the hyperlocal thing right.

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.

90% of their content comes from CNN Newsource (which is a bizarre arrangement itself.) If CNN gets worried, they can essentially kill the network by yanking their access to Newsource. Newsnet wouldn't have anything left to broadcast.

Well, they have the look, but judging by that echo (echo echo echo echo echo) they can't afford acoustical treatments in this "state of the art" studio. Or maybe, they just don't know that there's more to building a TV station than fancy graphics and sets.

Here we go, bringing WPIX into this again. I don't want to write my thoughts about this debate again, so I'll link to what I wrote previously:

Easier said than done. There's also a hefty price tag attached to a Renderon package, something that Scripps might not be up for paying these days. I don't doubt one reason they went in-house is because of the cost of an outside designer. Renderon is still around. They mostly have been doing foreign work lately. VDO is long gone.

Scripps' hub was stronger when it was just the original stations. They've spread themselves too thin with all the acquisitions, and it shows. I'm sure one reason they chose to go with a basic design was the long render times they had with the Renderon package. It would take them hours to render one 5 second animation. That might work when you have 12 stations, but when you have 60 of them, that doesn't scale well. If they were sticking with the Renderon package, it might literally take weeks of nonstop rendering to do all the station-specific graphics (opens, weather opens, etc) for the 8 Tribune stations they just picked up. This package was designed to scale quickly. It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of this package (such as the interstitial graphics) is built in Viz (and/or Chyron because apparently that's sticking around now) and deploying it only involves swapping out a few layers in After Effects for opens. These opens would take a few minutes to render on a low-end PC. That's really another reason 3D is falling out of favor. It's tens of thousands of dollars of additional expenses when you factor in the need for expensive software licenses and render clusters, for what? Some shiny graphics that have fallen out of favor?

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.