LoadStar

Looks like a variant of WITI Milwaukee's main set. Different desk, but both have an L-shaped desk in the corner. Even the 3x3 matrix wall is in the same place on the set.

11 hours ago, GodfreyGR said:

It's Official. Bally's Is Bankrupt.

To be clear, Bally's Corporation is not bankrupt. Diamond Sports is bankrupt. They were just a licensee of the Bally brand name.

I wouldn't be surprised if Bally wanted to revoke that license at some point.

15 minutes ago, dabx said:

I hope the moderator of this website would start a thread on this topic. 

You don't need a mod to start a thread, you can start one yourself. General TV would probably be an OK place for it.

I'm guessing any major renovation plans will wait until Good Karma vacates and frees up all that space at Radio City.

Edit: when is that happening, anyway? That was originally announced as being late in 2021, then "later in 2022" - how long does it take to build out an office space for GKB?

Completely spitballing here, but I could see another relaunch of "American Gladiators" being a good fit for the new CW... as long as they do it much like the original, as if it were a straight-up sports competition, and not like the 2008 relaunch, that was packed full of reality show tropes.

3 hours ago, Action Newsroom said:

Wow. Maybe in a better world, the CW brand name doesn't carry over,  and WGN America makes a comeback. But that's wishful thinking.

On what planet is WGN America a better brand name than The CW? (I'm not saying The CW is a particularly strong brand in and of itself, but it's certainly worlds better than WGN America.)

The only people I've ever spoken to that have any kind of affinity for WGN America are here on this board.

On 7/25/2022 at 8:31 AM, nycnewsjunkie said:

They got 1.52 million for the championship game, and about 715k on average. Not superb, but not bad for a startup league.

Also, they finished the season, which is more than could be said for the AAF/XFL. And they’re renewed for a second season.

That's actually a lot more than I thought, at least when based on the number of people who attended games in person. 

As far as XFL 2.0, that wasn't really their fault. It was an unfortunate result of COVID hitting and shutting everything down indefinitely. Before that, they seemed to have everything going for them. They had managed to attract decent in-person attendance, a seemingly respectable fanbase, and their TV ratings were (if I recall correctly) relatively decent for a startup league. (I'm sure someone will correct me on the ratings.)

(AAF, on the other hand, was just bad product. Not the joke that was XFL 1.0, but just lousy football. Plus, IMO, the coverage really felt like the "brokered time deal" that I believe it was... everyone involved in the production seemed to be contractually obligated to laud the greatness of the AAF. It was kind of nauseating.)

Based on the unfortunately COVID truncated "XFL 2.0," I'm hopeful for this iteration.

Can't be any worse than the USFL. I think they got ratings of 2... not a 2 share, 2 people.

14 hours ago, iron_lion said:

This is not limited to GMA but has anyone noticed reporters increasingly speaking in the present tense?

 

Example: Last night, Speaker Pelosi landing in Ukraine, speaking with President Zelensky about Putin's next move. 

 

I suppose this is to make things sound more dramatic or current? I've noticed this happening in about the last two or three years, especially on GMA.

 

The comic strip Doonesbury made fun of this all the way back on Sept. 20, 2015: https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2015/09/20

Feels like some consultant saw viewer data that some viewed the FOX brand negatively, and as a result wanted to come up with a "FOX-free" news branding. 

14 hours ago, CalItalian2 said:

I predicted that NewsNation would be a complete failure BEFORE its disastrous premiere.

You're right, you HAVE been aggressively and excessively negative on NewsNation since before it premiered. Which makes one wonder if there is some ulterior motivation behind your vitriolic rants in this thread. Whatever, your contributions in this thread have reached near parodic levels at this point.... suggesting that one singular program is literally the only program that could "save" the nascent news network is beyond ridiculous.

WTMJ-TV's Vince Vitrano (Weekday AM anchor) will be going down the hall to WTMJ-AM to replace Gene Mueller as co-host of "Wisconsin's Morning News."

https://onmilwaukee.com/articles/vince-vitrano-move

WTMJ-TV and WTMJ-AM were previously co-owned by Journal Communications. WTMJ-TV is now owned by Scripps, while WTMJ-AM is owned by Good Karma Brands. Both are presently co-housed at "Radio City" on Capitol Drive in Milwaukee, but AM will be moving out mid-2022 to a new studio being built in downtown Milwaukee.

37 minutes ago, DENDude said:

It's good that they are being overseen by the news department, that should give it some credibility.

That's funny.

This is one of those times when they probably should have tried to come up with a new corporate name that doesn't integrate either of the two merging companies (for example, "Stellantis" for the FCA/PSA merger).

Trying to combine "Discovery" and any form of "Warner," "Warner Brothers," or "Warner Media" just doesn't sound right.

1 hour ago, ColtFromGulfcoast said:

Who exactly would be the surviving company?

Looks to be mostly WarnerMedia. AT&T shareholders will own 71% of the company, while Discovery will own 29%. AT&T will appoint 7 board members, while Discovery will appoint 6.

That said, Discovery CEO David Zaslav will run the new company.

I understood the Discovery/Scripps Networks Interactive merger, because there was strong affinity between their families of networks.

In contrast, there's really no affinity between WarnerMedia and Discovery, and as a result, I'm a little puzzled by this. The only reason I see that AT&T is approaching Discovery with this deal is because both Disney and Comcast would have anti-trust issues to deal with, and there really isn't too many other companies left, other than Discovery.

Guess this is the best thread for it... unless I'm wrong, it looks like for the coverage of the Derek Chauvin verdict, Spectrum News 1 has a national feed going out on the regional news channels. First time I've seen them do live national coverage.

Definitely a little unusual compared to the very soft news that they typically have on Spectrum News 1 Wisconsin.

NewsNation snags Adrienne Bankert from ABC:

https://deadline.com/2021/04/former-abc-news-correspondent-adrienne-bankert-joins-newsnation-1234740011/

1 hour ago, iron_lion said:

What I've also noticed is that many average viewers don't make a distinction between The Fox News Channel, the Fox broadcast network and their local Fox affiliates. Case and point, someone I know questioned why I would watch "Fox News", after I had shared a screenshot of a weather forecast from a local Fox affiliate. 

 

Similarly, a friend of mine expressed skepticism that a network like Fox (associating it with the Fox News Channel) would air something like "Empire" , unaware that  broadcast Fox had a history of airing urban and (and less conservative oriented) shows like In Living Color, Martin, Living Single and Married With Children.

I still run into people that think FOX and/or FOX News are owned by Disney. They heard about Disney buying 20th Century, and didn't realize that the purchase excluded FOX and FOX News.

16 hours ago, Newsjunkie24 said:

 

Dump the ticker entirely,  or just use a blank logo entirely, just like ESPN used to do for live sports except for the 15/58 hourly updates.

It should be fairly easy for them to just program in a slight vertical squeeze, a vertical shift up, or a combination of both for the Bally Sports feeds to get them to fit in above the ticker. They'll fix it, they probably just didn't get a heads-up on the graphics redesign to know that they'd have to do that.

20 minutes ago, dman748 said:

This is probably the Brewers crew as I don't think RSN announcers are still allowed to travel with the teams on the road as of yet.

Correct, this is the "Brewers Live" (pregame/postgame) team of Craig Coshun on the left, and Tim Dillard (new to the team) on the right.

4 hours ago, Georgie56 said:

Here's intro to the Miami Heat pregame on Bally Sports Sun.

 

 

Too much sound effects. That's all I hear, I barely hear any music.

If that's what they use for all the regions for the NBA theme, it'll be a major downgrade from the FOX Sports NBA theme.

2 hours ago, dman748 said:

Sinclair is apparently going to be launching a 3rd channel known as Bally Sports Extra, which would serve as a multipurpose channel for at least initially, conflicts of at least 2 or more games. Depending upon the situation it'd be a mix of either or both OTA (within the market) as well as on services such as DirecTV (outside of the market) and on the Bally Sports apps for non-DTV customers that still gets the Bally RSNs.

Unless I'm misreading it, Bally Sports North Extra is not really a channel... it's just a way to brand the programming when they're being carried on broadcast TV.

3 hours ago, Surplus Engineer said:

It's about money. If they looked at the books when they were making the Ion purchase and saw that Qubo and Ion Plus were losing money and HSN/QVC were in the black, then guess what they keep.

 It could also be contractual; HSN and QVC could possibly have long-term carriage contracts with less than favorable termination clauses. (But more than likely, you're probably right, it was a financial decision.)

On 3/1/2021 at 2:18 AM, Weeters said:

The best-case scenario for the old Master Control space (it's a fairly large room) is converting it into a new control room. The existing control room was built in the 80's and has not been updated much. They did move things around a few years ago when they automated, but it's still pretty tight in there (especially since they simultaneously moved the robotics control from the studio floor into the control room).

 

They might have to wait until Radio moves out, though. At some point, the control booth for the radio networks got moved into the TV MCR, in a small closet-sized booth partitioned off from the rest of the room. 

 

Transmissions is also in the MCR, but that could probably be moved elsewhere.

Aren't there a ton of spaces at Radio City that have been barely (if at all) renovated, some since the building was built? I've seen pictures that look like early era radio studios that have been just repurposed to hold equipment or serve as storage rooms.

It's a shame that Radio City is losing the radio folks, but it does seem like an opportunity for a major renovation/revitalization (if Scripps wants to spend the money on it).