Spring Rubber

At this rate, we'll have the WGN News at 11pm soon, then the WGN News at Midnight, then they'll just take it all the way until 4am. Edit: According to my Xfinity program guide, this is a permanent addition to the schedule. I'm guessing Feder will have the announcement in his morning post either tomorrow or Wednesday.

Lots of F-word and lots of nonsense...

Despite the cutbacks, WBBM stayed live until shortly after 11:30pm with rioting and looting coverage. Only WLS stayed on later (still going as of right now). Kudos to WBBM on that.

Yikes, that stuff is scary. People are such jerks and things worse that I can't say...

Everyone in the market went live shortly after midnight due to a tornado warning in the western counties of the market. WGN had a very rag-tag broadcast with Demetrius in the weather center for the first time since the mets started working from home. There was no time/temp bug and no lower thirds For whatever reason, he was wearing two separate lapel mics (was one being used for radio simulcast?), and instead of wearing an IFB, they just had Bill Snyder sitting slightly off camera relaying information to him live on the air. Bill was clearly audible to the audience as he provided information to Demetruis throughout the segment. I guess this is the nature of overnight storm updates, especially in this COVID-19 era.

Sad to see. Anyone know why TV stations would be hurting? I would think viewership should be up, not down.

And an interesting result today is that Ben Bradley is filling in for Dina Bair, making this the first time on WGN that I've seen a male anchor sitting on the right, and a female anchor on the left. Ordinarily, they would never have a male filling in for a female anchor, but now that the normal pairing is two females, they're willing to have anyone fill in for Julie or Dina regardless of gender.

Have we reached the point where all graphics are so flat and generic that there's no creativity anymore? I say yes. I mean, the former example from Italy is a blatant ripoff, but can you blame them? (yeah, you can blame them) But still, I want some 3D creativity in my sports graphics!

Oh dear, so sorry to hear...

Good point. It doesn't feel like it's been that long already, but you're right.

Wow, that was unexpected. I suppose him being at home has possibly allowed him to return to the air sooner than I otherwise would have thought.

It seems that the article implies they'll alternate days. I feel like they should alternate weeks instead. Just seems like a better idea to me, but hey, maybe this works better for them.

I like these graphics better than their standard graphics, I think. Makes me miss the 2014-2017 set, which I strongly preferred to their current set.

For the Midday News, they're going with a double-box setup with the two anchors. They're both still in the studio but are being shown with a double box instead of a wideshot.

With the COVID-19 outbreak, Instant Replay has been shelved in favor of more news. Also, Jackie and Tahman are distancing themselves in the studio, and Mike is doing the weather from a chroma key with a relatively low-res camera elsewhere in the building.

Looks like sadly, the Chicago Fire telecasts are not produced by WGN-TV; they are instead produced by the team and/or ESPN. The graphics are ESPN's 2014 graphics package, and the mic flags display the logo of Chicago Fire FC. They keep saying, "Thank you for joining us on WGN and ESPN+" throughout the broadcast. There's no presence of WGN Sports branding anywhere on the telecast. Yeah, I'm disappointed.

Looks like the outro of the WGN News at Ten has been removed and replaced by a teaser for GN Sports. They now do a wideshot of the desk, throw Micah's Bu-Bye graphic up on the video wall, pan out to reveal Dan and Jarrett sitting at the GN Sports desk, and then toss to Dan and Jarrett to do a full teaser for GN Sports leading into break. The Nexstar copyright graphic is also gone from the 10pm news; guess they're just looping it in with the copyright notice that appears at the end of GN Sports, just like they did for ages on Sunday nights where only Instant Replay, not the 9pm newscast, had a copyright notice.

It definitely puts them in a pinch losing Steve Sanders and Tom Negovan on the same day. Until the replacements are hired, I'm expecting to see Sean Lewis and Patrick Elwood getting a lot of time behind the anchor desk, and possibly several female+female pairings when extra fill-ins are needed. Heaving Dina Bair and Jackie Bange this past Saturday was quite unexpected.

Yep, Feder confirmed Negovan's departure effective Feb 28th. No word on where he's going next. https://www.robertfeder.com/2020/03/04/robservations-ratings-deliver-gratifying-victory-univision-chicagos-wojo/#more-24721

Speaking of which, Sean Lewis also was the election results reporter in studio tonight. I feel like that's normally a role for Tom Negovan if he were still around.

I've noticed that under Nexstar, they seem to always have a sub on the weekend evening newscasts when one of the anchors is out. They even have Dina Bair anchoring the 5, 9, and 10pm tonight with Jackie. Under Tribune, tonight definitely would have been Jackie solo.

All the best to Skilling. I didn't think they usually did gastric bypass surgery to patients above age 60 due to increased risk, so it's a bit scary. Hope all goes well.

Ok, that might explain it. I didn't bother to tune in until 9:30pm to catch the weather.

So uhhh, you know how Feder and others called out CBS 2 for not doing a sports segment on Tuesday's 10pm show? WGN just took a page out of their book and didn't do a sports segment on tonight's 9pm show. They instead opted for a very long Black History Month long-form piece during the usual sports segment. I didn't see the first half of the news before 9:30pm, so idk if they did an early sports segment, but I've never known them to do such a thing in lieu of having sports at the usual time.

With both Dan and Jarrett out tonight, Lauren is finally on GN Sports with Josh tonight.