Geoffrey

The bug transforms into a (busy) countdown for Opening Day when talking about Spring Training.

CBS 2 CBS News New York recently added traffic to their ticker/flipper, but, once again, the execution is sloppy. Each bus route is listed separately, even if they all say "planned - route change" or "expect delays". The result is a seemingly endless stream of one bus route at a time with generally the same status update. I'm outside of the city and not familiar with the buses, but it didn't seem like there was some bus armageddon the last few days that required so much dedicated screen time, so my guess is that these statuses are fairly routine. At one point on Saturday when I paid attention, the bus-by-bus information filled the flipper for about five minutes. It just seems like they're looking for automated data feeds to stick on the flipper without any care to the utility of the information. (And while we're at it, I've never found the seven-day forecasts for different towns across the area particularly helpful. I'd rather that be replaced with something like a today/tonight/tomorrow with a short text description to go along with the simple icon. And I'm not in love with the lottery there, either -- but hey, it's a feed that probably requires zero maintenance!) My solution, if bus routes were really important to keep, would be to have "expect delays" and then all of the affected routes listed together. Then repeat for other statuses. Same information, but keeps it moving. Below is an example from this morning, beginning at around 0:30 and remaining on screen for the three minutes left in this clip. Sorry for the unhinged rant.

I'm not entirely sure that would have worked. Robin's show did not have the political and international focus that the main network has. While it might have been refreshing to see CNN getting back to reporting more than three or four topics an hour, I don't think they would do that.

Wow, lots of changes again. Very unstable. I feel bad for Poppy and especially Phil, who gave up his (chief?) White House correspondent role and moved his family to New York only to be screwed over a few months later. I hope they are both taken care of as they are both excellent talents and have done everything asked of them. John Berman and Kate Bolduan both separately served as co-anchors of the previous New Day, so this is a return to the timeslot for both of them. Surprised they're keeping the CNN This Morning name at all. Also interesting that the new morning show, News Central, will be 7-10. They briefly had their morning show (I think during the Soledad O'Brien days?) run at these times but eventually moved it back to 6-9. They're replacing one Chris Licht creation with another. And now CNN Newsroom makes its return to weekdays. Am I correct that only three hours of morning/daytime programming will be anchored from NY now, with the rest from DC, until 7pm? Overall, this seems like a massive cut rather than an investment in mornings.

New graphics premiered. The open basically looks the same, but has been made shorter. The lower-thirds look cartoonish and they went with a bold condensed font for the main text. Is the text an afterthought? The logo, now stacked in two lines, stays on the left side of the screen like the other CBS newscasts and local news. (Previously it would move above the lower-third.) Edit: I should add that this is an upgrade over the previous look, which didn't let the text breathe and had too many sections that were just black. This is mostly white and feels lighter. WCBS seems to be having problems with the ticker. It's been blank most of the time, occasionally running a single headline from the website before being blank again. It also remained on screen during most of the first commercial break.

Wednesday Thursday Wonder why they changed Interestingly, it was done on the first day of sweeps (not sure how much those matter anymore).

Strange graphic issue briefly seen at the top of AC360 just now.

I've never been a fan of this look. Either don't put the desk in the corner, or embrace that piece of the building and stick logos there. It looks so poorly done this way.

Nicely done with the graphics. Not to nit pick but I highly recommend getting microphones and making sure your audience can easily hear your talent.

Brianna Keilar and Boris Sanchez are back to doing the "studio stand-ups" for the afternoon DC edition of News Central.

I really dislike this trend of having two logos and a huge bug.

Not used to seeing studios putting much effort into the floor. Wonder if the next studio will continue with that.

Do we think the snowy photo in Lee's screen will change depending on the day?

I don't really understand why the lower-third graphics (including the time/temp box and the ticker/flipper line) "expand" when there's a split screen/double box graphic being used. When I first saw it last night, I thought maybe it was just that the background was designed to "continue" the other graphics, but there is a motion to the graphics when they expand for the split screen and then shrink again when the video is taken full. And then I'm sure this has been noted on the overall O&O thread in Graphics, but it's just interested to me the way they incorporate the time in certain full screen transitions, and the time, temperature and forecast in the open. It feels like someone realized they had the ability to program the new graphics this way but it feels like unnecessary clutter. But as I said before, this is a massive improvement for ABC 7. I believe Fox 5 now has the oldest graphics package in NY.

Lots of motion, perhaps too much, but overall it feels fresh and slick. A definite upgrade, though the lower-thirds will still feel familiar to longtime viewers who may be resistant to change. Fonts seem to be unnecessarily large but this is ABC 7 so that shouldn't be a surprise.

This was at 6 a.m. Doug Williams anchored first, saying the storm caused technical difficulties with the studio. My guess is that this was being switched from master control and not the regular control room. There were no graphics or video. He tossed to Craig Allen in the actual weather center, saying Craig couldn't hear him but someone would cue him to go. Craig did weather for something like 12 minutes, before Doug tossed to "In Focus." At 6:31, Andrea Grymes did basically the same thing, with Craig going about as long. This time, however, they were able to go to a John Dias live report. I didn't catch the rest to see if they filled out the half hour but things appeared normal when they were back for the 9 a.m.

In the city, no. In some of the northern suburbs, sure.

John and Tony seem to be just as confused about the arrangement as we are! From the video the station released: John: "What do you think about doing team weather?" Tony: "I'm excited about it!" John: "How do you think this is going to work?" Tony: "That's a good question. We've gotta figure that out, don't we?" John looking into the camera: "We have NO idea!"

So Curt Menefee and Michael Strahan are Sunday colleagues, but will be competitors (in New York, anyway) during the week. Interesting seeing more of this Sunday NFL/weekday morning crossover. Can't forget Nate Burleson on CBS either.

Not sure if the other stations did the same but CBS 2 brought in the weekday morning anchors to anchor this Sunday morning. Not much snow in the city and Long Island, but some places did get some accumulation. They also had a bunch of reporters in the field, including weekend morning co-anchor Doug Williams. Interestingly, John Elliott and Tony Sadiku swapped roles this morning. Since joining a few weeks ago (not including holiday fill-in duties), Tony has been in the field while John handled the regular studio work.

CNN Max has a few original newscasts but also simulcasts a lot of CNN International (which is itself often a simulcast of CNN/U.S.). I'm not sure how much might have changed since the September launch but this was my post of the schedule then:

I've been thinking of making a similar observation here, as I have CNN on in the background while at work, but I'm not watching too closely. I wasn't sure if this was due to the increase in breaking news, mostly Trump legal news and news from Israel. I have noticed occasional standup-type presentations, but it used to be almost everything. I very much dislike the desk setup. It's a boring desk with a very boring background.

It's early but so far Tony Sadiku seems like a good hire. He was out in the rain and wind all morning as a third live reporter. Unless I missed it, they haven't made clear mention of his shift. At 5 p.m., Kristine Johnson read a quick story about his first day, then said of both John and Tony: "Look for them weekdays at 4:30." I wonder if he'll be doing weekends, and a weekday morning backup two or three days a week.

I would have to imagine there was certainly some incentive. Lots of excellent people in this group. A combined 325 years at WCBS-TV among these nine.

First impression: Not a huge fan. I'm fine with cleaner looks, and the previous package almost felt dated the day it launched, but this feels like it wastes a lot of space. The lower "ticker area" feels too big for the little information displayed. Also, maybe they fixed this later in the day (I'm only checking out the first few minutes of the 5 a.m. show), but it doesn't seem smart to have full screen animations/stingers (Breaking News, Market Alert) take up the full screen, even covering the bug and ticker. I wish NBC didn't feel the need to make all of these graphics bigger while showing less information.