rkolsen

The only reason I could think of is that those station they're cutting staff /resources are in the red and are trying to balance their books. Perhaps once they even out they get more resources.

Well isn't that the anchors job during a tornado warning? To ask dumb questions that viewers should know but are ignorant to.

Seems like WBAL is still trying to work out combinations for their newscasts. Today at 5 it was Stan and Donna, at 6 it's Stan and Kate and at 11 looks like it will be Stan and Donna. I only mention this because WBAL's doesn't always mention talent moves unless someone's coming in. At the beginning of the fall season last year they added Lisa Robinson to anchor the noon news with Sarah Caldwell. They then moved Deborah Weiner from weekend evenings to weekend mornings filling the spot Lisa left. Finally they upped Kai Reed as anchor for the weekend evening newscasts. They didn't make a mention of it on air until a week or two after they took effect. I thought they were filling in until I stumbled onto their biographies.

I'm impressed they put an UHD camera on board. I imagine they acquire it in UHD and send a down converted image. I guess they also have the ability to zoom in / crop an HD image out.

Normally WBAL kind of makes sure one of their now "flagship" anchors is in when the other is off but today Donna Hamilton and Stan Stovall were out. They had Kate Amara (who normally fills in for the one of the anchors) and Jason Newton do a swing shift anchoring the 5&6PM shows. Maybe I'm thinking too much into this but I wonder if now that Stan Stovall has taken over the 6PM (unofficially - no announcements yet) if they're considering giving in the 5PM show to Jason and having him do a swing shift like Stan did for many years. I believe Stan did the AM shows and the 5 PM shows for about nine years.

WVIT's Todd Piro seems to have been filling in for Betty Nguyen on Early Today/First Look over the past few months. Wondering if they are auditioning him for something else (maybe the west coast retaking of Early Today?)

WPVI launched their Apple Watch app. https://instagram.com/p/3rVxd8LdVU/ Wonder if someone could write off the watch as a work expense.

Does WNBC do any special coverage for the Belmont Stakes like a pre race show? I know that for the Kentucky Derby WAVE and WLEX produced two hour preshows. WBAL produced a three and a half hour preshow for the Preakness Stakes preempting an NHL game. From what I've read the preshows in Louisville and Baltimore win their timeslots by a large margin.

You want to know what's even more fascinating the word WeatheRate name is not trademarked, copyrighted nor does the name get any hits on the US patent office (their technique is supposedly patented). Maybe there are other things that could protect this company's name but if not the stations are paying for a word that they could use with out shelling out $.

Today the 5PM newscast on WBAL was anchored by Donna Hamilton and Deborah Weiner. They didn't make any mention of a Stan Stovall being out but when they previewed the 6PM newscast Stan Stovall was in the newsroom. I wonder if they are trying out anchor combinations with Donna right now.

Thanks for the insight. I guess the switch to the new graphics is imminent. They seem to like to switch on Wednesdays for some reason. I will say it seems like they are moving quicker than I would have thought at WJCL given how much they were dependent on the hub. As far as I know they probably didn't have much of a master control infrastructure in place given how LIN is a central caster rather than command/ control situation.

It does but it's a good way to hide the background.

I've wondered why a lot of Hearst stations have issues with the temperature boxes during weekends? It looks very odd how the column for the weekend is yellow but the box the temperatures are blue.

Richard Engel got married today. I remember an interview he gave to Jay Leno a few years ago he described that his first marriage fell apart during the stress of his job. I believe he got divorced during the early years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. I can't imagine how that type of stress would affect a marriage. But that was then and this is now. I wish him and his wife a lifetime of happiness. https://twitter.com/richardengel/status/604452930578710528

Incredibly sad. Thoughts and prayers to his family, friends and colleagues.

I don't feel like starting a new thread but when I came across the following image from WXII and I BAS was (damn autocorrect) surprised they had different lower thirds compared to other Hearst station. It took me a minute and realized that for some odd reason they are using the header graphic for their lower third. The image came from this .

NBC finished first this season ratings wise but came in second viewers.

Rod Daniels signed off today after 30 years anchoring at WBAL. [yt]ujjXuXeEISg[/yt] [yt]u5U4_ezwNGU[/yt]

I am assuming he's doing an audition because there are others they could have used. A while back before they hired Joe fryer they had him do a month long audition and he went back to KING for a month and then started full time.

I think KTLA's Kirk Hawkins may be auditioning for a job at NBC News. He reported on msnbc Wednesday and Thursday in addition filing reports for NBC news channel (I've saw he was at least KCRA.). I haven't heard anything about him leaving KTLA and was last on air Tuesday night for KTLA and other Tribune stations on the Santa Monica oil slick.

The commercials sound like they may have their timing off. Live programming can be difficult to cover at times because the commercial breaks are (I hope this is the right word) floating meaning they do not have a set time. But I think the timings report should show how long a station has for commercial breaks and those should generally be fixed. I imagine the feed of rehearsals and color bars are what they transmit during the break. Don't the network's send a signal nowadays to trigger the automatic play out of breaks?

I am assuming the slate is used for a station to check and work on the box off air that ABC uses to trigger the local stations logo, time, temp and crawl during GMA. In this case they are testing the time and temperature. VANC refers to vertical ancillary data that is used to transmit any non video information.

I'm curious how often do they use the Chopper 6 360 on air? I still think of it as gimmicky but do think it would have provided a different perspective with the amtrak derailment. Although it's not as powerful as a standard camera I think it would provide an interesting view with all of the cameras stitched together on screen.

Or most likely he triggers the graphics using the remote in his hand. His hands are large enough to cover the clicker and if you look closely you can see his middle finger pressing the button as the graphics. At the very end as he turns to face the camera you can see the clicker in hand.

It makes no sense as I mentioned in this thread as they never sell and rarely buy. Aside from this I want to mention something else. Over the last two to three months WBAL has rolled out new Multi box graphics that are not 16:9 safe. When it's a two box the anchors and reporters generally fall in to the 4:3 safe zone but when it's three or more people their faces are cut off. All the other graphics are still 4:3 safe. I watch in HD most of the time but on occasion I remain on the SD feed. Someone on their staff should have noticed it as in the news room and on their in house computer feed they take the SD Comcast feed which is center cut 4:3. I'm curious are their other stations' SD feeds letter boxed or center cut? Related to this they also center cut network programming that should be letter boxed. It's fine during news but during entertainment and sports programming the score bug is cut off. I've cycled through my TV and cable box settings to see if their was a mistake but no luck. I wrote to them on their contact form and via twitter to mention this but have received no response. I wonder if this is an issue on their side or if Comcast is not encoding the signal right.