Spring Rubber

Wait, what two-anchor shot with Cheryl Burton?

Troy is in for Phil tonight.

So no closing music and copyright notice?

During the week when Brant was off in June, yes, he did the 11AM show in addition to all of Brant's shows.

Mark shouldn't have had to apologize at all there. There's no apology needed in a life-or-death situation.

Mike Hamernik needs a black cover for that iPad he's using at the key wall. The green light is reflecting off the shiny back of the iPad and is keying out the iPad.

Yeah, this is a good move having the news taking up the majority of the screen with full audio and having the game on screen in the small window. Nicely done.

He sounded extremely ill when he was filling in for Tom on Monday. I hope he feels better soon.

What they had before was just fine where they rotated being inning, pitch speed, and pitch count. They're trying to force way too much information into a small space. The inning up/down arrows are basically overlapping the inning numbers. Here's hoping they tweak this design some more.

Not liking that huge disparity in font size between the two lines.

Ron Magers is back in the broadcast booth today here in the bottom of the 5th for another chat with Len and JD.

Yeah, I think the openers and music could afford to stay; after all, the openers don't really even have anything to do with the lower third and score bug design.

Yeah, I wouldn't mind an all-new graphics package next year. This one has been around since 2011. It's about time to switch it up.

Well, after all these years, WGN has finally moved the score bug into the 16:9 area and has also made the out-of-town score graphic at the bottom smaller. Much better. Only problem is that master control never got the memo to start letterboxing the SD feed, so SD viewers are seeing an extremely messed up broadcast right now.

To my surprise, for the news after the Cubs game today, they're using the Weekend 6 pm opens that we normally only see during college football season. Color me surprised; I was expecting them to use the 5 pm opens just because a 6 pm newscast isn't routine this time of year.

Wow, WGN is airing spring training games in HD this year? Is this is the first year they've ever done that? I wonder if it was mandated by their new contract.

What did I miss? I assume this is in reference to something.

Hmmm, guess we should keep an eye out on Sunday and see if they play Rich King's talent open.

Tonight, Dan Roan did sports, and they played the talent opener featuring him despite it being Friday. Do they always do this when he appears on Friday, or has he been permanently moved to Monday-Friday?

Aww, no more back-to-back Robs.

Cheryl Burton is filling in for Linda Yu tonight. I think Stacey Baca usually does it the other days of the week, but I'm guessing they're keeping her off tonight since she's gotta do the morning news tomorrow.

They've changed the 10:26am news update during the Today show. Previously anchored solo by Stefan and Zoraida on alternating days, today it was anchored by Stefan and Marion together as a tie-in with the 11am news.

It's 2015. WMAQ really needs to start showing recorded video in at least 1080i. Showing all recorded content in 480p, including their big "NBC 5 Investigates" segments, is just ridiculous. Seeing that blurry and pixelated "NBC 5 Investigates" logo in the corner throughout the entire segment is such an embarassing eyesore. I'm trying to make WMAQ my go-to station at 6 and 10 pm, but their refusal to go beyond 480p is making it hard.

During the 7:30 toss to the weather segment, they used a Blizzard of 2015 double box. Oops, holdover graphic from last week!

Something's wrong with WMAQ's SD feed. Normally, all programming should be letterboxed like it's been since the debut of the new graphics in December. This week, however, WMAQ keeps switching between letterboxed and 4:3 cropped based on the program. Today, Days of Our Lives, and Meredith Vieira are 4:3 cropped while local news, Steve Harvey, Ellen, and NBC primetime shows are letterboxed as they should be. During the shows like Meredith Vieira where the NBC 5 time/temp bug is on the screen, almost the entire bug is cut off on the right side, so clearly this constant aspect ratio switching isn't intentional. I wonder why it keeps switching between shows. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it since some network programming is cropped while some is letterboxed, and some syndicated programming is cropped while some is letterboxed.