Spring Rubber

NBC 5 has Brant, Byron, and Pete on tonight as opposed to the standard team of Brant and Alicia that they used earlier this year for storm coverage.

I just played it back on my DVR. Kathy actually said that they'd talk more about the set in the weeks to come. Welp, that all but confirms that they're getting an entirely new set.

Kathy just said that they're gonna talk about the changes to the State Street Studio later in tonight's newscast. Sounds like they're building an entirely new set, perhaps?

Is it the same temp set as last time with the 2006-2014 daytime background?

Oh, the 3 PM Maury is the new one? I wouldn't know the difference, as I angrily change the channel every time that trash show comes on.

Isn't it taking over the extra Maury slot that they currently have in the afternoon? (Probably the 3 PM one)

WGN tasked Sean Lewis with filling in for Mark Suppelsa on the 9 PM news Friday night, which I'm sure was quite the honor for him. It seems his stock at WGN is rising. He had a long feature report on the 9PM news earlier in the week, and now he was given a shot to anchor the big show, as well. This fill-in task doesn't excuse Sean from his normal duties, however, as at the end of the newscast, he said that he'd see us all in a few hours for the WGN Morning News at 6 AM, at which point fellow fill-in anchor Dina Bair gave him a sympathetic pat on the back since Sean wasn't exactly going to be getting much sleep overnight, if any.

So Dan Hampton left WMAQ, eh? Didn't realize that.

WGN is doing tag-team coverage tonight with Jim Ramsey in the Weather Center and Mike Hamernik at the chroma key, plus an inset radar map over the bug and constant warning crawl.

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.