Spring Rubber

No pics? Oh well, I'll have to wait until the morning news to see it. Side note: Isn't either this month or next month the 10 year anniversary of their current set? My goodness, it's old.

It looks like Bill Ratner did the top of the hour opener, the talent rejoin, and the Weather opener, but apparently they realized last minute that they didn't have an opener voiceover for the bottom of the hour, so they had Roger Rose do that opener. That's pretty disjointed: brand new newscast, and it's got two different v/os on it.

No throw to the weather segment from the desk. They made a special weather segment opener with voiceover, and Cheryl introduces the segment right out of the break.

So they begin the newscast with a "7 at 7" much like WGN Morning News's "9 at 9", just with serious stories, of course.

I just watched a Bulls game on My50 for the first time. It's so awkward seeing a Fox 32 news commercial, and then when they come back from break on the WGN-produced telecast, they immediately tell you to check out wgntv.com. I still can't believe that ownership bought the rights to a sports package produced by their direct competitor.

I like the creativity of embedding the time and temp into the school closing bar. That's neat.

Cheryl Scott is in for Mike Caplan today. I wonder if she'll be doing the 4 pm all week leading up to next week's 7 pm debut.

So the thing I really wanted to talk about right now is the fact that today's NFL game is being broadcast in terrible quality...definitely less than HD. On their SD channel, they're cropping the image at the sides instead of letterboxing. I think somebody left the weather warning crawl system on from probably earlier this morning when they were scrolling the alerts for today's snowstorm, and they never returned the channel to full HD when the crawl was over. How the heck does one get this resolved, especially on a Sunday? Would anyone be at the station to take complaints?

Might as well make a random thread for all things WFLD even though so little of note tends to happen there.

It was supposed to be completely inane and silly.

Since it's Friday, WGN is just having Tom Negovan anchor solo tonight. 2/3 of the talent on this newscast is named Tom.

Wow, my foggy memory told me that Steve Sanders was only doing the Evening News right after Suppelsa was hired. I was away at college from 2008-2012, so I don't exactly have that much knowledge of the Chicago market during that period. I had WGN America at college, but I don't think I ever watched the Noon news at all.

Not sure why, but WMAQ is completely ignoring the possibility of snow on Monday night into Tuesday. Every other local channel plus the NWS, TWC, etc. all agree that we're going to get snow on Monday night into Tuesday, but I watched Byron's forecast at both 4:30 and 5:00, and neither time did he mention the possibility of snow on Monday-Tuesday, and his 7-day forecast shows a "partly cloudy" icon for both Monday and Tuesday. Usually if a certain channel disputes the common forecast being given by everyone else, they'll make mention of it and explain the models that make them feel that way, but instead Byron and NBC 5's weather team are just completely ignoring the notion that we could even get snow Monday night into Tuesday. Why do you think this is? Are they disputing everyone else's forecast, or is it that they simply don't care about Monday or Tuesday until after Saturday and Sunday's storm system passes? If it's the latter, then that's a major flub. I certainly hope that's not the case.

Well, I assume he's going back to the anchor chair once either Steve Sanders or Robert Jordan retire. Remember, he was anchor of the Noon newscast until his motorcycle accident that kept him out of work for a while in 2009, at which point they permanently slid Steve Sanders into his spot.

Ravi, Linda, Cheryl, and JR tonight.

Speaking of Cheryl Scott, they put her on the Countdown Chicago coverage in this only her third week with ABC 7, partnered with Alan Krashesky. She was so elated at the stroke of midnight, you could really see the excitement on her face knowing that 2015 is gonna be an amazing year for her with her new job at ABC 7. I couldn't help but feel excited for her as well.

Mike Caplan did the 10 pm news. They seem to be trying out random meteorologists on random newscasts over the holidays right now. Maybe they'll randomly reverse it tomorrow and have Mike to the 4, 5, and 6 and have Cheryl do the 10pm.

Tonight's 5pm team was Karen Jordan, Linda Yu, Cheryl Scott, and Mark Giangreco. We're in full holiday mode tonight!

Ravi is in for Ron tonight just like on Wednesday. Was Ron really on last night, or was that a typo?

What the heck...Ron, Kathy, and Jerry on the 4 o'clock show. I'd think that out of anybody, they would be the ones with the week off! I guess they'll all definitely be off later this week and all of next week.

Sean Lewis is doing the 5 pm news after doing the 6 am news this morning. It's the Phil Schwarz experience!

She did WHAT to the promo shots?!? :ph34r:

I guess Tom's illness flared up worse again. After laboring through the day on Monday, he's been gone again yesterday and today. Get well soon, Tom.

All programming on the SD channel is being letterboxed from now on.

It looks to be only a refresh to the lower thirds and the bug. Opens appear to be the same, and the music is the same. EDIT: They've scrapped the custom copyright graphic from the previous package and are just using a regular lower third to display that info now.