Spring Rubber

Tracy Butler is filling Phil Schwarz's vacated role tonight.

 

I used to like Caplan until I met him. Flat out arrogant! After that, I had no appreciation for him at all. Glad he's not getting the new gig.

 

Wow, what happened? Where did you meet him?

Erin McElroy got to anchor the Morning News again for the full morning today as both Robin and Lourdes were off. Too bad she'll be permanently relegated to the kiddie desk (traffic) again after today's brief holiday opportunity to anchor again.

I'm watching the Annual Ron Magers/Jerry Taft Thanksgiving broadcast and thinking about how we don't have many more of these left. You never know which one might be the last one.

 

So, the 4pm toss has been compromised. The commercial has returned breaking the two newscasts, but Linda and Alan still close the show standing up.

 

So it was just a sweeps stunt after all. *sigh*

 

Wow!! Lourdes is on at 9!! Then back at 3am.

 

Yeah, that's pretty ridiculous...unless she's gonna have the day off tomorrow maybe.

Alan is off today based on the 6 pm newscast. Does anybody know who anchored with Linda on the 4pm, or was she solo for some reason?

^came here to post this; didn't have a picture, though. You win.

Where? On his lower third? Talent rejoin?

They just did a segment bidding farewell to Theresa Gutierrez and said goodbye to her live in the studio. I forgot that her retirement was today.

Two things:

 

1) The local weather update on this hour of the Today Show was replaced by a Bruce Rauner ad. Not sure if this was intentional or not, but if it is, that's pretty annoying and even a bit unethical. When Al Roker says "here's what's happening in your neck of the woods," the last thing I'd expect is a political ad. I hope it was just a master control error and not intentional.

 

2) During yesterday's 11am show, they did a story about how Steve Harvey was on the Tonight Show the previous night. Did the staff who wrote that story do their research at all? If they did, they would have found out that the episode of the Tonight Show was a rerun from a month and a half ago. I don't think a rerun of a late night talk show should ever merit saying "So-and-so was on [show] last night" when it's a rerun from a month and a half ago.

Really, WLS? Can't leave well enough alone? They're the last station that I thought would screw over their next-in-line for the "young and beautiful" outsider, but that's the new route this management is gonna take, eh? Tear apart the team that got you to #1 and instead hope that putting more attractive people on camera will keep you #1? Maybe Alan Krashesky should watch out. When Ron retires, this management just might be daring enough to go to a young outsider or maybe even Ravi instead. If Cheryl Scott is indeed hired to replace Jerry, than will mean that both the weather and sports positions didn't go to their intended recipients (Mike and Rafer). I wouldn't be surprised if Idler tears apart Emily Barr's entire succession plan and ousts Alan, too. Who was supposed to take over for Linda Yu? Was it Slyvia? If so, that would actually make it 3 of 4 intended successors screwed over by Idler.

 

Feder is going subscription only on Tuesday, that sucks. It's cool they are getting the auto-show back even if a lot of what ABC7 does is sanitized, it's news operation is fairly sterile and safe to be honest. That extends beyond just the auto show.

 

That sucks about Feder. I can't stand paywalls.

Welp, I better get to work on my Theresa Gutierrez Halloween costume.

 

I'm already anticipating a RR repeat at 1am, even though I'd rather have the 10 o'clock airing.

 

Update: Meanwhile, a new executive producer has been hired for the morning news. He comes from The Weather Channel, with previous stops in OKC and Phoenix.

 

http://www.robertfeder.com/2014/08/08/abc-7-hires-weather-channel-whiz-as-morning-producer/

 

Well, I can't exactly say that I like anything that has happened to TWC's live programming over the past 4 years. It's basically turned into a super-fast hype machine where weather takes second fiddle compared to the news and entertainment content. I'm not sure if any of that is Hamilton's doing or if it all came from higher management (hopefully it wasn't his doing), but I suppose a morning show will be good for him. I wonder if he'll try to bring the faster pacing of TWC's shows over to ABC 7's morning show.

Linda is doing the WCL update from the newsroom, and Phil is doing the weather from the upstairs Weather Center as work on the studio continues.

I'm not sure I like the lighting at the chromakey; it makes the meteorologist "pop" out of the screen way too much. The shadowing is also pretty bad, causing the image behind the meteorologist's arm to deteriorate badly. Did they fix it for the 10pm show? I noticed on the 4pm and 5pm shows and forgot to pay attention to it on the 10pm.

"...and I'll say THANKS! in advance as we take a look at what's coming up on Jimmy Kimmel Live tonight..."

 

THANKS Ron!

Jerry's clicker battery died mid-segment. Hilarity ensues.

 

Weather Center should be up and running @ 10p. Work continues in the interview area.

 

Yep, Jerry's back in the Weather Center now.

 

Edit: The new nighttime backdrop fits better with the rest of the set. I still think that the daytime one is just a little two bright for the gray walls above and below it and the dark blue set pieces to the left and right of it.

 

I don't know, but up until the last newscast before the remodel, they used the weather center for every early-show hit.

 

Well, I'm just gonna go with the theory that they're still working on remodeling the weather center as we speak and that they just wanted to get the main part of the set up and running ASAP. I can't picture them actually going without a weather center like some other stations have done.

 

It was pretty awkward during some of the tosses to the weather updates today. The anchors are so used to being able to toss to the weather center on the wideshot, but today they were forced to awkwardly vamp during their toss to Jerry as the camera remained only on the anchors until they finally switched over to the shot of Jerry at the key wall.

They ditched the weather center? I thought they weren't showing it just because they were still working on that area. Did you walk by there and see that they completely removed it for good?

Jerry tripped on the way up to the key wall and almost broke into another trademark laughing fit.

I missed the start of the show, which means I have to wait like 20 minutes until we see another wideshot of the desk during the weather segment.

 

Edit: The right side of the anchor desk backdrop looks pretty much the same as before, but the left side is now a daytime cityscape during these daytime newscasts. I assume we'll also see a new 10pm one later?

 

The one thing that irks me with the two-shot is that the new daytime duratran doesn't blend well with the gray wall below it. You've got this bright daytime cityscape leading into a plain gray wall just below it. It looks a bit weird.

 

Also, when they showed the 3-shot with Jerry, it looks like they've added different decorative lighting to the area between the anchor desk and the weather center. I'm waiting to see a hopefully wider shot of it later.

 

I wonder if they also changed anything with the backgrounds in the sports and interview areas.

I don't see the 6 PM news often, but every time I do, it reminds me of how annoying it is that the opener shows the city in a nighttime state, completely after dark. If I was the station, I would have commissioned both a summer opener (daytime) and a winter opener (nighttime). Either that, or they at least should have done something like the old Hothaus package where the 6pm opener shows the city transitioning from daytime to nighttime. As it stands, having the city be in total darkness at 6pm looks really out of place during this half of the year.