Spring Rubber

I've noticed over the past month or two that WMAQ got rid of the unique openers for the "NEWS AT 10", "NEWS AT 5", "NEWS AT 6" etc. All of the news openers are now generic openers with no time listed. The city backdrop is still appropriate for the time of day, but there's no mention of times anymore.

Wow, didn't see that coming. All the best to her.

They did a live hit with Gaynor Hall reporting on a shooting in Gresham from 4:53-4:55, and weather with Demetrius from 4:55-4:57. That was it.

In the silliest decision ever, they did a 4-minute newscast with Ben, Lourdes, and Demetrius after the Sox game from 4:53 PM to 4:57 PM, and now they're going to hand it over to Mark, Micah, and Tom for the 5pm news. I don't understand it. EDIT: Also, I imagine this problem is going to creep up a lot during the baseball season. My proposed solution would be to just automatically give the 5pm hour to Ben, Lourdes, and Demetrius whenever there's a 1:05 or 1:20 pm baseball game, because these games all but guarantee that their 4pm newscast will be eaten up. But I don't know if their contracts allow for Ben, Lourdes, and Demetrius to do the 5pm. I just think it would be a better solution than to have them do these silly 5-20 minute newscasts whenever there's afternoon baseball.

On Tuesday, Tom did an outdoor weather hit to start the 5pm news. Not sure if that will remain permanent.

Because today's Cubs WGN game was postponed till tomorrow, when the White Sox have a game scheduled on WGN, the Cubs game will be handed over to CSN since WGN no longer has an alternative outlet (like WCIU or WPWR in the past) for a second game to be aired. http://wgntv.com/2017/04/05/cubs-and-white-sox-wednesday-games-both-postponed-by-rain/ With CSN taking over the rights to tomorrow's game, does this mean that CSN will have to give WGN a game later in the year? Or does CSN just pay WGN a negotiated amount of $$$ for the game and call it a day?

I think the only difference from the previous 4-6pm news with Mark and Micah is that the 6pm news now has a quick-hit headlines piece at the start of the newscast where they recap the top 6 stories or whatever. I was watching while working, so I wasn't necessarily fully paying attention. Also of note is that they don't have proper rejoin opens for this newscast, so they're rejoining with the generic "This is Chicago's Very Own WGN News" openers that you'd typically see on a late night newscast after sports coverage. The openers use the 9-10pm music with the nighttime skyline and graphics.

She reminds me of the style of presentation that you see on the current version of The Weather Channel.

The Accuweather brand officially rolled out today. It's being used for all weather segments, along with the verbal introduction, "Here's Tracy Butler with your ABC7 Accuweather forecast..."

When I was speculating about the reason why they didn't debut the schedule change today, I think the answer is because of the number of people off today. Robin was off in the morning; Mark is off in the evening (continuing from his time off last week). Maybe Mark is coming back tomorrow so that they can have the full evening team together for the 6pm news tomorrow.

Robin and Erin are off today. Lourdes is back in the afternoons. What does that mean? Yep, Ana Belaval gets her shot at anchoring the 6-10am show today! Also, did anybody watch the 4-6am show? Did Dan anchor solo? Did they get somebody else on there? Seems like a lot of people are off right now, so I'm not sure if anything's permanent or not.

Dan and Lourdes are anchoring the big show together on this their final day in the morning as a team (I wouldn't expect Lourdes to be in the morning on Monday, at least).

So is that why, 12 years later, Tribune still can't budget a new set for WGN?

Do we know why they're launching the new evening news schedule on Tuesday April 4th instead of Monday April 3rd? I'm guessing it's just so that they can have rehearsals on Monday? Unless there's something special about that Tuesday that I'm not noticing. There's no sports on that Monday or anything. Actually, that Tuesday will be a non-normal schedule, as there's a late Blackhawks game at 8 pm, meaning that Mark and Micah will do the 5-7pm news, followed by the late night news whenever the game wraps up. After the news concludes at 7 pm, they're going to be a half hour of Two and a Half Men, followed by the Blackhawks Extra pregame show at 7:30 PM. Maybe that's their strategy; launching the new evening newscast on a night that has very little syndicated programming and a LOT of live news and sports programming.

Did WGN get rid of the live transition from the 9pm into the 10pm news? They went to break at the end of the 9pm and came back from break with the 10pm tonight. I will miss Micah's enthusiastic finger point before the 10pm teaser if so.

WGN has rolled out new traffic graphics. Not sure if it's a sign of an overall graphics refresh (Coming April 3rd or sooner?) or if it's just a traffic-specific thing.

Is there an occasion for the pink bug tonight? Also, surprised to see the weather on the bug. EDIT: Looks like there's major tech problems. After the A-block, the LIVE bug remained on the screen during the first two commercials before being removed. Now the bug has been completely gone for the B-block and the C-block. There's also been prompter issues. Lauren had to read from the papers on the desk for the last few minutes of the A-block. Perhaps the pink bug was the result of these many technical issues? EDIT 2: The Sports Sunday teaser froze. The audio was playing, but the video was completely frozen. They immediately bailed out and played the show open. After that, the bug finally came back, this time in standard colors. The weather was gone, but the time and temp were still top-aligned with a large blank area below it. Going into the first commercial break, the bug remained on the screen for a while during the first commercial before they finally pulled it down.

I'm going to predict either Gaynor or Cortney Hall to get the 4-6 AM anchor slot. Gaynor has been used as a fill-in anchor quite a bit as of late, and Cortney has been a 9 AM newsreader for a while now. As for weather during the 4-6 AM news, maybe it'll be someone from CLTV like Tim McGill on a semi-permanent basis. I don't picture Paul starting at 4 AM, and I don't picture them hiring someone new, at least not right away.

I knew this was happening as soon as Ben Bradley signed on with WGN. I didn't picture him jumping ship unless WGN told him right up front that they had a lucrative weekday anchor job for him. Also, any chance they might anchor this 4 P.M. newscast from the newsroom like the old WGN News at Five? I like that concept and wouldn't mind them doing that again.

I feared the worst when I noticed Rob Stafford taking most of January and February off. He was basically only around for the inauguration and for sweeps. The first thing that came to mind was a medical issue, and it's scary to have those fears confirmed. All the best to Rob. I hope all goes well.

Somebody needs to inform the control room that there's a map being inserted upstream and that they need to restrict their lower third text to a smaller area. (Yes, this issue is continuing to happen as of right now. Basically every lower third is getting cut off.)

Congratulations!

Oh wow, I didn't realize Karen was that close to giving birth. I thought we still had at least a month or two. All the best to her and family. Also, if there's new talent opens...Could there also be a whole new graphics package? Or at least a new design for the opens? The current ones have been so over-compressed; they look horrible.

inb4 Dan and Lourdes launch WGN 9: The Ocho y Uno

I think it brings back the nostalgia because it's the last set before the standardized O&O sets. It's the last set unique to Chicago. Thanks for the nostalgia bomb! (Edit: were the keyboards removed by the final years on that set, or were they always present?)