rkolsen

Mike Masco (who when he came to Baltimore freelancing a few months at WBAL was repeatedly billed as Mike Manco) is leaving WMAR and TV.

It appears Kevin Torres who was fired by KUSA a few weeks ago has been hired by the local Fox affiliate. He starts next week. https://instagram.com/p/0MHAHTwU3t/?taken-by=kevintorresagram

She did loose some personal credibility based on her stupid mistake of going out during a self imposed quarantine but she did not commit any journalistic crimes. They started using her less and less to the point of once a week where a year or two ago she was on almost daily. I think she may have seen the writing on the wall with this whole Brian Williams saga and realized that Lester will want to book the people he's most comfortable with. One example of Lester putting his mark on Nightly News is less reliance of Al Roker, Janice Huff and the Weather Channel but now the go to meteorologist is Dylan Dreyer. Since Lester took over I think I've only seen Al and Janice once. I will say I did like "Dr. Nancy" her short lived show on msnbc which had a six month run. The show focused on health and politics. However I don't think there was enough health news for a daily show. I watched it daily while I had to be off my feet between the time I broke my back and my back surgery.

I am surprised that KSDK has yet to stream their newscast yet in light of these two police officers shot in Ferguson.

It goes way way back. WMAR started going down hill was 20 odd years ago when they dropped Oprah. In the last few years they've made good strides.

It's been reported that KUSA's Kevin Torres was unexpectedly fired. I've been following him on Twitter/ Instagram since I heard of a stupid plan (and I think sweeps stunt) of an "election" between him and current anchor Kyle Clark to see if the latter should continue anchoring the evening newscasts. It was a stupid contest that for such a large market only received a total of 700 votes. Subsequently I followed them both on twitter and they both seem very nice. TVSpy quoted the TV reporter of the local newspaper and said that a traffic altercation was related to his firing. I don't know what type of traffic violation that could occur that would result in a reporter being fired with out any mention of it in the press. The day or two before he was fired he posted something on Instagram where he said that only went out to get some craft beer.

Unrelated to the cut of music am I thinly one who thinks it's weird that their open states that WTSP's newscast in HD sponsored by Bright House? I think it's a bit tacky. I hate sponsored segments but I understand it's needed in this day and age as stations need to make money in any way possible. I would honestly prefer if the sponsors logo is unobtrusive and not mentioned. I also would like it if stations stop pushing their newscast is in HD. I can understand the need to point it out if you just switched to make a point to tell viewers to go to the HD channel but it's a bit ridiculous to make a point of it in your next graphics update. The only exception I would make for promoting HD is if Nielsen provides a break down of viewers by source (HD/SD/Provider) and that the HD feed was significantly lower compared to the HD market penetration. I feel like that and the CC logo that appears on WPVI isn't needed any more on newscasts as CC is required by law. As far as I know WPVI is the only one with the CC caption in their open in this day and age. Got a video?

I like it how the individual panels can be angled where the camera blocking can make it appear (at times) to be that they are sitting directly in front of the panel. The GMA panels are just too big to the point where they overshadow the talent. The panels on Today probably max out at 8 feet off the ground while at times GMA's look to be about 12 feet.

Has there been any official release regarding their morning news 4:00 AM? I've checked the schedules and they still list 4:00 AM as Early Today. I came acrosse this Instagram account for their morning news anchors which says they are on the air from 4:30 - 7:00 AM. Then there this Instagram post by Tracy Davidson mentioning a 4:00 AM start time. I'm guessing 4:00 AM is the defacto start time because they've been doing this for a few months now but for some reason they don't want to make it permanent so they decided to keep 4:30 AM in their profile. http://nstagram.com/p/yrGjp0xvwB/

I wrote this in the middle of the night and forgot to make my point. In hindsight WCAU probably shouldn't have started news at 3AM. I personally don't think there wasn't a need for such an early newscast for such little predicted snowfall.

Thanks PhillyHere some other members thought they could fit SkyForce 10 together in one of their studios, to which I voted no.

So today they started AM news at 3AM. Any snow yet up their Down here in Baltimore they started at 4AM. Looks to be about 3" of snow around.

I wonder why KENS doesn't drop their logo bug during the weather forecasts. At the very least they need to make it where the weather graphics aren't blocked by the bug. This reminds me of this image I saw an editor at abc news post. ]

I think that's Nicole's not the person who will argue to get her point across. She is much more rational and level headed in her explanations than Elisabeth ever was. Elisabeth was aggressive, stubborn and let her emotions dictate her arguments. As a liberal I like Nicole Wallace and the way she comes across makes you understand her point of view.

CBS and NBC do not have a national ticker. The tickers that appear during CBS This Morning and Today are inserted locally by the affiliates using a relatively simple character generator. ABC provides a national ticker and affiliates have to key their ticker on top of the networks. I am not sure if ABC provided a standard solution for their affiliates as I've seen different styles and results.

This reminds me of the aqua look Apple used on their first iteration of OSX on a different font. I think they kept the same structure so their affiliates wouldn't have to update their LIDIA equipment (the hardware that plays out the ticker.) It wouldn't be that much to ask or difficult for their affiliates to upgrade the configuration file over the weekend. An engineer told me that when Today updates their graphics, NBC (which uses the same hardware as CBS) sends out an updated configuration file where they essentially upload the files and initialize the settings. This process should take less than an hour but NBC gives the affiliates a weekend where they won't trigger the ticker.

I meant to does ABC offered This Week as a 30 minute program? I didn't think the show was like Face The Nation. Or is this a special case.

They only offer 30 minutes of ABC This Week?

Couldn't ABC cause a cancelation by pulling the show would lose their largest markets but I'm sure another group could snatch it up quickly.

WBFF launched their 4PM newscast with Kai Jackson today. The 4PM hour is conducted standing up either against the gian RP screen or a flat panel, while the 5PM hour is at the newsdesk. They also refreshed their graphics package today where the chyron takes up the entire screen now. Unfortunately they couldn't get the chyron to work functionally until the 5:30 block when they finally got the ticker on screen and for some reason the bottom most ticker used for sports scores doesn't show up until the sports segment. Their ticker is still a bit buggy as it sometimes stutters as the headline makes its way leftward. Have any other stations refreshed this package? Edit: Sorry about the size of the images, I cant figure out how to resize them. If a mod wants to change it feel free to do so and it would be much appreciated.

Their studio looks good. Edit: I see they are renting studio space from a company called Pelopidas.

If ABC did cancel The View they could move the time slot to the 9AM-10AM. I don't the affiliates would have a problem with it as long as they don't loose an hour of syndication (remember NBC cannibalized Passions so they could launch the fourth hour of Today which cleared almost every affiliate.) I think it will be successful as long as it's a continuos show because of the momentum GMA provides that I don't think syndication could offer. The only problem I could see with this plan would be with Live with Kelly and Michael which airs primarily on ABC but also airs on at least 20 other affiliates. I would expect ABC would want Live to remain live on their affiliates but this would cause the non ABC affiliates to redo their schedules.

I thought that as well but it seems like recently the days he has been off he was actually on assignment conducting an interview. I only really noticed this when a month or two ago he was off Friday and that day on Nightly News they had an excerpt of an interview that aired the proceeding Monday. But I wish if he was truly off they would just come right out and say it instead of them being "on assignment." Of course that was true with Walter Cronkite because he had a sailboat named Assignment. Plenty of people when they have seniority they start getting an RDO on Friday's (or any other day) off every other week and I think the viewing public would be okay with that.

That miniature desk is the one (or similar design) used during Rock Center and I think that monitor has been used in MSNBC's studio 3K. There have been a few cases where Brian has done a Nightly standup from that desk in the past year. But last week they did the cold open with out the desk but with him standing in front of his regular news desk.

If broadcasters go all in and invest in new equipment prior to widespread adoption is that they would be cutting off most of their over the air viewership. I don't know how they could maintain backwards compatibility with ATSC 1.0 when the stations would be broadcasting an ATSC 3.0 transport stream. Somehow the ATSC 1.0 receivers would have to figure out how to decode the 3.0 stream. The only way it could them maintain backwards compatibility would be is if the FCC allowed a companion channel similar the analog/digital simulcast but I can't see the FCC allocating additional spectrum. In addition I doubt that Congress would run another Converter coupon program so soon (but if they did I hope they would make it where boxes could take software updates for future standards.) Your right the way the UK muxes are setup is that every transmitter broadcasts the same channel number nation wide. If we were to launch DVB-T2 kind of system I think it would be similar to our channel structure today where each station would have sub channels like for WJZ all of their channels would be 13.2, 13.3 etc. You mentioned that channels carried UK's Freeview (how they brand their OTA) are bit of a basic cable type of channels. I however don't see any basic cable channels ever being launched terrestrials here in the U.S. First of all I doubt the cable networks would want to give out their content for free, given the fact they command a per subscriber fee from the cable companies. Second I believe the cable companies would protest the cable networks giving their signal for free there by enabling cord cutters. The only way I see cable channels being carried over the air would be if they are encrypted requiring a subscription to decode the channels (in the 1980s there were services that broadcast movies overnight that required a special receiver to receive the channel.) You know there should be a thread discussing all things technical and discussions about nitrates bit rates (iPad keeps auto correcting.)