Spring Rubber

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.

Meh, I'm not too excited about shake-ups. I enjoy the stability.

It's time for the annual tradition of Ron Magers anchoring the two Black Friday newscasts solo and standing in a bunch of different places every segment. He started out the newscast standing outside with the people on State Street. Let's see where he goes next!

It's like 2001 all over again!

Ok guys, are you ready for the weirdest thing ever? Well, you guys know that ABC 7 is the master of having different people on different newscasts during the same daypart, and you guys know how Mike Caplan does the 4 PM news while Jerry Taft does everything after that, so maybe this won't come as too much a surprise, but in my opinion, this is even weirder than that... Stacey Baca just announced that Troy will be doing the entire Saturday morning and ALSO the 5 AM hour of the Sunday morning news, and Phil will take over from 6 AM onward. My question is if Troy is gonna do the 5 AM, why not have him do the 6 AM, too, and let Phil get some rest until 8 at least?

Very awkward for the transition to happen on Labor Day. Kinda ruins the moment.

Looks WABC-ish, no?

What color is the ABC logo on the ABC7 logo? I've noticed that the ABC network itself is using different colors based on what the program is. I've seen both red and yellow/orange variants thus far. Do any others exist?

I assume the temporary situation will be Phil Schwarz not getting any sleep on both Saturday AND Sunday.

So wait, do all of the maps during the weather segment live inside of these "boxes" now? I'll have to remember to check out the weather segment at 6 or 10.

Are those ABC 7 logo transitions an in-house job or a sign of a future graphics package?