Spring Rubber

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

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.

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.

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.

Terrell Brown is filling in for Ben today. Is today (or maybe yesterday, didn't watch) his first time anchoring for ABC 7, or has he done it in the past by now?

I mean to say that WLS tends to do it both ways on the 10pm news. I've seen them go straight from the credits into the newscast some nights but go to commercial first on other nights.

I'm pretty sure it depends on the preceding program as to whether or not there are commercials between the credit roll and the newscast.

It's time for everyone to stop caring about 4:3 and to just give 4:3 viewers a letterboxed feed. 16:9 has been the standard for 8 years at this point, and networks shouldn't have to keep designing all of their graphics and framing their shots with 4:3 in mind. It's time to utilize the full 16:9 frame on everything.

So Jerry and Phil had the March Madness, and Mike had a much more unfortunate reason for being off. RIP Mike's dad.

I think Jerry, Mike, and Phil all caught a little March Madness.

That was really cringworthy to hear Mike Caplan introduce the 7-Day as the "First Alert 7-Day Forecast powered by AccuWeather". Yuck.

I don't like it either. Chicago used to be a place where we didn't have stupid gimmicky names for the weather segment. The weather segment is just that...the weather. First Alert, especially with that red color, makes it look like there's some severe, extreme weather going on. It reminds me of 2012 at The Weather Channel when they permanently turned their main on-air graphics red because of the good ratings they got when they used red for their Superstorm Sandy coverage. They figure they can use red all of the time to get attention. (TWC got rid of the full-time red a year later and went back to only using red for severe weather/major snowstorms/hurricanes.)

I want to say it was around the Works For You era or just before it.

The Sun-Times has now been a partner of all four non-Tribune stations in Chicago in the last 15 years, haven't they? WBBM, then WFLD, then WMAQ, and now WLS?

It was a very weird arrangement. It make sense for the segments where Troy was standing outside on State Street, but there were many segments where Tracy would be at the key wall to do half of the weather segment, and then she would toss to Troy at the Weather Center to finish out the maps. The one at the top of the 8 AM hour was the weirdest. Tracy did almost all of the segment, and then she tossed to Troy, who spent like 15 seconds just showing one more radar image and then the snowfall totals before tossing to Ben Bradley for the top of the hour stories. Talk about forced talent usage.

Tracy Butler is filling in for Phil tonight. Weird.

Just saw a typo on the school closing ticker saying "COOL" County. They might as well call it COLD County instead.