LoadStar

Gotta say I'm not a fan of Invision either. I'll deal, but I definitely don't care for it in the least.

WPBF is, I believe a Rare example of a station to Not have a newscast on a sister station, nor subchannel. EstrellaTV is on 25.2 and the Justice Network on 25.3, but I don’t think either subchannel Has a newscast in English or Spanish, so I say there’s always room for expansion.

WISN has no sister station, and only has a single digital subchannel, 12.2, which is currently the Justice Network (previously "Movies!"). WISN does not air news or any other local programming on 12.2.

(WISN was also notable for being extremely late to add a digital subchannel in the first place. 12.2 didn't begin until August 2014.)

Something I've wondered: at least here in Milwaukee, on Monday through Saturday, there's a local news at 5:00, and WNT airs at 5:30. On Sunday, WNT airs at 5:00 and a local newscast at 5:30.

I don't know if other affiliates follow the same schedule, but in any case, the question remains: why is the schedule flipped on Sundays only? Anyone know?

The tweet must have been deleted. What did it say?

The only thing that this spat between Viacom and Charter has done is to make me realize is just how little I actually watch Viacom channels.

I'm still on a TWC channel package, but have considered switching to a Charter package to get the faster internet speed. I've avoided it because I would have to bump to the "Gold" package to get the Viacom channels. After this? Eh, Silver is good enough... and with that package, I'd get HBO.

What kind of helicopter does WISN have? In a recent article it appears they have an R44 registered to MetroNetworks while some recent YouTube videos have a Bell JetRanger 206B registered to Helicopters Inc.

The tail number on the R44 shows pretty regular activity out of Hollywood, FL, so that must have been an old picture:

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N8369F

The "Made in America" segments almost exclusively take the form of a smaller US-owned manufacturer succeeding against the odds or in spite of competition from overseas. Clearly, the Foxconn story wouldn't fit that format on multiple counts.

Besides, at this point, it isn't even really a thing, not yet, not really worth reporting on except at the local level or in the business media. What we have right now is nothing more than a piece of paper, a "memorandum of understanding." Once it gets further and gets through the various levels of government and they are ready to put shovels in dirt, maybe it might be a little more newsworthy.

Personally, I use to watch CNN during the day and go to MSNBC in primetime but now I stick with MSNBC all day. I think the "MSNBC Live" branding, as opposed to individual shows, with a variety of anchors has really pushed the news side above CNN.

I'm personally watching far more MSNBC than I ever did before. Their news presentation is far superior to that of CNN these days.

CNN has turned the entire network into exactly the kind of thing that Jon Stewart criticized "Crossfire" for back in 2004; a bunch of people shouting at past each other with no one having anything productive (or often anything intelligent) to say. In contrast, MSNBC these days tends to present the news fairly straight, and when they do have guests, they usually contribute something to the discussion.

I have a couple questions about WCVB.

 

1. Why do their reporters say "WCVB, News Center 5" at the end of their live reports? They used to just say "News Center 5",

. Reciting the call letters at the end of a live report is verbose and unnecessary.

to answer your first question Hearst has a corporate mandate that their stations brand themselves based off their call letters. Because "newscenter5" is too popular and iconic in Boston they simply add WCVB before newscenter5

Isn't another reason the same as with radio... for those who are Nielsen diary reporters? I thought that at least with radio, part of the reason they repeat call letters frequently is to make sure a listener knows (and remembers) what station they're listening to so they can report it later for ratings purpose.

Man, they are dropping like flies here in Milwaukee. Not literally, but it seems all of the veterans are all retiring. Within the last several months, we've had John Malan (Weather, WTMJ) and Tom Pipines (Sports, WITI) both retire, and now Mike Anderson (News, WISN) announced his retirement as well. This follows not long after Vince Condella (Weather, WITI) retired mid-last year.

This list doesn't even include Kathy Mykelby (News, WISN), who announced a little while ago that she was scaling back, but doesn't plan to immediately retire quite yet.

I just noticed that the backdrop at WISN still has a duratrans with the logo with the Bank Gothic text below it, *long* after the station and the company stopped using it anywhere else. Is their disinterest in swapping out something so relatively inexpensive as the duratrans just them being cheap... or a sign that they might actually be planning a remodel sooner rather than later?

Forget the graphics and music. I'd rather they spent the money on sets. WISN desperately needs a new set, and I'm sure they're not the only one.

Here's the stations yet to switch:

• WCVB
  
• KCRA
  
• WTAE
  
• WBAL
  
• WISN
  
• WYFF
  
• WGAL
  
• KETV
  
• KCCI
  

KCRA, WISN and WGAL now have the new web template.

The senior member of the Milwaukee anchors, Kathy Mykelby, is beginning a slow transition towards retirement at WISN. As a first step, she has announced she will be leaving the 10:00 newscast, but remaining with the 6:00 show. She will transition to doing special in-depth reporting that will appear on newscasts throughout the day.

WMTW has switched to the new layout. WCVB and WMUR are still using the old layout.

WISN is still on the old layout as well.

When is WISN's contract with ABC up? Might be time for a change....

I'm pretty sure that WISN is one of ABC's top stations. For a while, they were #1. I'm not sure they still are, but they're definitely up there.

Additionally, Hearst has a particularly strong relationship with ABC.

There's near zero chance of WISN switching to a different network, even if one were available.

(Oh, and Michael didn't "get taken off" LIVE, he got a better job offer from the network and chose to leave.)

Brian Williams on MSNBC this evening covering the Dallas protest shootings.

At 1:00 EDT, he also anchored the NBC News Special Report cut-in on the NBC network. (Is this the first time he's been back on NBC in a professional capacity since his hiatus?)

OK.......So.... How are LIVE's ratings?????? They can't be THAT bad!!! Why take Micheal off of LIVE if He's been a big draw for that show?? SOMEBODY at DISNEY/ABC is not thinking clearly! I'm seeing more and more of it! It NEEDS to stop!

 

I can't fathom Kelly and LIVE being happy about this unless their hands are tied???

No one is "taking Michael off of LIVE." The reports seem to indicate that this is his choice to leave LIVE. My guess is ABC probably offered him a big payroll increase to come to GMA full time.

Keep in mind that LIVE is not an ABC show. Although it airs on primarily ABC stations, it is actually produced by WABC and distributed by Disney-ABC Domestic Television -- in other words, it is a syndicated show.

This may prove to be unpopular, but I don't like the idea of Ginger Zee doing DWTS. No, she's not a hard news reporter a la George Stephanopoulos, but shouldn't a meteorologist not reduce her/himself to twitching around a reality show? It feels like a grab for celebrity at the cost of credibility.

Even if it were a hard news reporter, I'm not sure how doing ballroom dancing on a television show diminishes their credibility in any way.

Did anybody watch Last Man Standing on ABC tonight? Robin Roberts made an appearance on the show. She is a pretty good actress.

She previously appeared on "Nashville," although she did so portraying herself.

ABC World News Tonight is broadcasting live from inside the stadium bowl at the NCAA Div. I Football Championship at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, in my opinion an attempt to draw attention to the underrated bowl games on ESPN.

The stadium is already quite noisy, and is a severe distraction from the news he is attempting to deliver. I think they already realized trying to deliver news from inside a noisy stadium is a bad idea. They started him off with a body microphone, but after the first story, they had already switched him to a Sennheiser handheld microphone. IMO, they should have either reserved an additional press box for ABC News, or reported from *outside* the stadium.

So this is from earlier this month but I just saw it and found it interesting. Basically, both Josh Elliot and Sam Champion are realizing what we already know. They were lured from GMA to NBC simply to tear apart the GMA family, not because NBC actually cares about them.

 

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/confidential/sam-champion-leave-weather-channel-back-abc-article-1.2356308

 

Apparently Sam went to ABC asking to return to GMA and ABC said they didn't have room for him anymore.

 

I also find this interesting,

 

That sounds anything but certain about Josh's future at NBC.

And it looks like Josh finally clued in on all of this. The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Elliott is out the door at NBC Sports.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/josh-elliott-leaving-nbc-two-848553

If there's been one failure of all of this, it's the quality of the video from their remotes. Some of the video is clearly Skype or similar consumer-level video conferencing. It's compressed all to heck and back, but it's generally watchable. The real failure however has been the streaming backpacks. The connection from those guys have been so unbelievably unreliable. I just watched Dr. Besser struggle through a planned segment where they took a tour of a maternity ward of a hospital where the video was worthless, and eventually they threw in the towel and gave up.

I'm not saying that the backpacks don't have a place. They seem to work best for fairly stationary outdoor segments, not "walk and talks" indoors.

I'm amazed at how Charlie has aged.

While he looks quite a bit older, he doesn't sound old, if that makes any sense. Just listening to him makes me think he could jump right back into the anchor chair at any moment. (I sort of wish he would... he's right up there with Peter Jennings in the list of legends over at ABC News, IMO.)

There have been so many fascinating moments in this conversation between Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous. For one, George seemed amazed when Charlie commented something like "It must feel nice not having to fit a piece into 3 minutes 30 seconds." George responded "3:30? Try 2:30," indicating the show has shifted to a more rapid-fire style than it was in Charlie's era.

There was a very honest discussion between Charlie and George about suggestion of bias in reporting, with an acknowledgement of the difficult position George is in given his background.