caliwxdude

The bones of this set look exactly like their old KUSA hand me down set, which FX zhuzhed up when they went HD in 2008. It looks like they're also retooling their presentation style by moving out of the "content center" and back into the studio. I haven't watched a full KXTV show since last November, but they were mostly single-anchored shows from a standup desk in the newsroom. Seems like this would signal a return to a more traditional dual-anchor style broadcast.

Tucked away in some cabinet at my parents house is a stack of 35mm film photos of me sitting on this set in 1997 when I was a 9 year old obsessed with TV weather. Got to hang with then-weekend met Jon Slater for the afternoon and 5pm news. Good memories.

99% of stations don't own the choppers, they lease them (or have other sharing agreements) from helicopter operators that provide the maintenance, pilots and photographers. Helicopters Inc. is one of the main players in the US ENG market—in the SF Bay Area for example, they own/operate all helicopters. These days only KTVU's N62TV and KGO's N7QY carry station branding but the feeds are shared among all affiliates in the market. They also have a couple generic birds based at the Hayward airport—for example, N42SL (KTRK's former chopper before Helicopters Inc. upgraded them to a next-gen Bell 505/JetRanger X) flies around occasionally and shares video among everyone in the market. AFAIK, these contracts are usually billed hourly. Here's another example: SKY Helicopters provides aerial coverage for Dallas/Ft. Worth stations with a couple Robinson R44 Newscopters based out of their own facility in Garland, TX. They list aerial videography at $1750/hour (all in), so that should give you a baseline price for the R44, which is among the cheapest helicopters to operate. I'm sure the station groups have negotiated something cheaper. The only stations I know of that actually own helicopters outright are Griffin's N9TV at KWTV in Oklahoma City and N196TV at KOTV in Tulsa. Griffin built a heliport/hangar for N196TV at KOTV's new(ish) facilities in downtown Tulsa, but it seems like the chopper is based at Jones-Riverside Airport in South Tulsa these days.

I mean, last night NBCSN was showing a night full of drone racing... which (even as a drone pilot) seems to me like it belongs on YouTube or another streaming service and not on linear cable.

If that's the case, it's time to figure out how to differentiate graphics feeds for mobile app streaming vs. TV. This sucks.

I'd be willing to bet that was stringer footage. Amusing to see this top story since I live a few blocks from this spot (which is still a taqueria); a good reminder of how much the hood has changed since the early 90s.

What exactly would Nexstar be acquiring in such a transaction? NewsNet has a staff of what, like 15 people of ...questionable qualifications and capabilities, and a cute little broadcast facility in the middle of Michigan. Not gonna happen, just let NewsNet die; the money has to dry up at some point.

Wow, that's actually a pretty nice upgrade over the standard Sinclair look. Gotta be an in-house job though—doubt this is a sign of things to come for other Sinclair stations. Reminiscent of the pre-diagrid Hearst days when a few stations started to design their own interpretations of the corporate look—e.g. WESH, or WISN's outsourcing to Hothaus.

The only station group that does virtual studios reasonably well is what Global is doing north of the border at the major-market Global O&O stations originally with Orad, and now Avid. Had hopes Scripps might have figured things out by now for their virtual studio shops but clearly there's more work to be done.

Strong beard game on Kent. Too bad @SuitSnob isn't around here these days to comment.

Huh, you'd have to think this a temporary look. Also surprised they didn't just use the existing license for Icon News to get away from the NBC chimes of The Tower. Weird and sad at the same time.

Apparently someone in the KPIX graphics department reads TVNT. Now roll this out across the O&Os!

The few times I've watched CBSN (mostly back when the 10pm show on KBCW was still a thing), the slight misalignment between the bug and lower-third bar drives me crazy. Can't believe no one has fixed this yet.

What a terrible drone shot to use. For a mid-tier US city the Tulsa skyline is actually pretty interesting, and they decided to use a shot that cuts off the top of the BOK building?

I would think it'd be challenging to maintain that voice pitch for extended periods of time...

KZSW was a low-powered station broadcasting from Temecula at the time and served a forgotten corner of the Los Angeles DMA. College operations probably have more budget than what they were working with. Regardless, KZSW's newscasts and local programming were canceled shortly after this video.

Why toss 24 years of brand equity when Microsoft isn't asking NBCU to change it?

Have to wonder how long Jerrick remains employed after that... although, if no one is watching, it might not matter.

Agreed. (In my defense, I've had this username at various incarnations of this site since 2000. Christ, I need new interests.)

Wow. I'm impressed with KJRH's ability to pick up the castaways from other stations in town. Lisa Jones returning to TV was pretty unexpected.

While you're asking, please include a request for some clean cuts of the old KRON music...

XETV isn't going to be merging with anyone on the U.S. side of the border, and it will be a cold day in hell before McKinnon does anything with a Mexican company. I feel like if Televisa was ever going to pull the plug on XETV's news operation, they would have done it by now. They're essentially running two stations with XETV these days (6.2 carries Canal 5 programming for the Tijuana market now), so that might be keeping the whole operation in the black.

Not to mention this WKYC promo look borrows heavily from the WPXI look that Hothaus worked on last year.

It's anchored by KRNV talent, so it's definitely produced by/at KRNV's staff/studios. Strange that they decided to start a local morning newscast before a local 10:00pm show—from the looks of it, they're still simulcasting KTVU at 10.

Belo was mostly organized into two major geographic clusters in the South (WFAA, KHOU, KENS, KVUE and WWL) and Pacific Northwest (KING/KONG, KGW, KTVB, NWCN). These two clusters acted independent from one another, branding-wise. Belo's "outpost" stations--KHNL, KTVK, WHAS and WCNC--were left to do pretty much their own thing. The only made it outside of that area to KHNL and WHAS, where at the latter station it didn't last very long before they adopted a custom Giant Octopus look. Same story goes for when WCNC briefly took on the ; that stuck around for a couple years before going to the "NewsChannel 36" in-house look and finally the NBC Charlotte brand we're seeing today. I was slightly surprised that KTVK even took on the Hothaus-designed Belo package, especially since their brand has always been so heavily dependent on a red/yellow color palette. Who knows, Belo might have had plans to finally standardize that look across the entire group before Gannett came knocking.