sanewsguy

All right, get this, KENS5 is hiring a stand up comedian to do traffic. Beginning tomorrow, Jennie Stencel is taking over as the traffic reporter. Nice to know standards have stooped this low. I just puked. Well, I stopped watching KENS5 anyways so it's not a big deal. Just another reason to stay away. Article: http://blog.mysanantonio.com/jakle06/2014/08/meet-kens-tvs-new-traffic-galcomedian/ I usually advise to stay away from E-N comments but this is the one occasion I actually agree with them. Many aren't looking forward to her. This one is my favorite:

How do you know she's going to KSHB and what will she even do there? It does not say which station in the article... And this may just be how I was raised, but you should not make a cross-country move to live with your boyfriend unless you're married. They could break up tomorrow and she might regret leaving Philadelphia. But that's just me...

Sinclair is bringing the "#LiveOnKOMO" hashtag groupwide. Although all the Fisher stations already used the "#LiveOnStation" hashtag some legacy Sinclair stations are now starting to. Examples: WBFF: "#LiveOnFox45" KABB: "#LiveOnFoxSanAntonio" WKRC: "#LiveOnLocal12" And the list goes on. I have no idea why Sinclair loves the hashtag, but hey, to each their own right?

KHOU doesn't have the new graphics...

Yeah I notice WRC only flies mainly within Virginia and sometimes Maryland. It's like a waste because most of the footage isn't relevant. So in DC, if they want aerial views they're forced to do what small market stations do, use the towercam. Or sometimes the masts on the live van have a camera at the top that can get "high-up" views.

1. The evening producers are better about it than the noon producer. I haven't caught a morning cast yet so I have no idea how they handle it. I still KVUE does better with it than KENS. 2. Yep, Jeopardy at 4:30 and Wheel of Fortune at 6:30. It's been like that since '99. I remember KENS5 used to have a 4:30PM newscast many moons ago and after three of four years on the air they canceled it and bought the rights to Jeopardy. Prior to 5 taking the show, NBC affiliate KMOL (now WOAI) aired Jeopardy and Wheel at 6:00 and 6:30 respectively for many years. So 4 did not have a 6PM news until the late 90's. Yep, same Deborah Knapp. She used to work at 5 in the 70's, left for Philadelphia, and has been back at KENS5 for over 20 years. Definitely one of the nicest news anchors you'll meet. I said hi to her and she said hi back and chatted for a minute before she had to go. Was known as Deborah Knapp-Bonilla in the 90's before she got a divorce, many here still call her that though. Also one more note about the graphics, I can't stand the fact they make the stations put the anchors Twitter handle. So, what if the anchor doesn't tweet? I think it only works if they have "professional" sounding Twitter handles like KVUE's anchors, like TylerS_KVUE, for instance. Then you come to KENS and you see handles like "BarometerBill". KSAT only shows handles on anchors who have KSAT in their handle. Otherwise, it's just @ksatnews as a substitute. 29 uses handles occasionally but forgets most of the time. And 4 never uses them. Personally, I don't think stations should have to put the handles in their graphics. And now that I've actually seen the graphics on my set. They're actually not that bad. The two things I hate are the colored coded system especially because I don't necessarily agree with how the producer thinks it should be tagged and how I as a viewer do. The other of course is that fafct that 30-40% of the text is chopped off my screen which makes the newscast extremely difficult to watch. Just because you have a larger canvas to design with doesn't mean you should. There's safe areas for a reason. Also, this is for anybody who knows about TriCasters. Is there a separate CG is it integrated into the TriCaster? Reason I ask is because KIDY/KXVA use a Tricaster to produce their news and the animations are basic. Just like WAAY, another station who uses a Tricaster, has L3s that are rather basic in animation. It makes me wonder whether G3 can port the look over to a Tricaster or if Gannett is forced to either build out a new full control room at KIDY. Or, G3 can create a "dumbed-down" version for KIDY.

Are you sure WJLA has a helicopter? I thought they used WRC's bird unless WJLA recently brought theirs back?

Here's a montage of the 4PM news. Sorry the open got cut off. They turned on the livestream literally as the newscast was starting. You're not missing much since it's the same as the noon. Video includes KENS' spin on what the new graphics mean to the viewer. BTW, the "5" traced transition they're using dates to their 2005 graphics package. It's looked out of place in every pkg they've used since 2007 but it's managed to survive five graphics packages. [yt]XIJoK_1thjE[/yt]

Well he criticized local news. I think that's actually smart of them. He got what he deserved. Don't bite the hand the feeds you, or in the case, gives you publicity.

KVUE's new open: [yt]9kXjPvVEiHI[/yt]

Yeah, they're definitely handling it much better than KENS is. They're just trying to forget it ever even launched... Then again, it's typical KENS behavior. They've pretty much established they try to resist standardization as much as possible.

Went to go watch the 12PM on my DVR. Highlights: Most of the graphics are cut off on my screen as I figured. The time/temp bug is chopped off entirely. I either have to watch the HD feed with the stupid black bars taking up 40% of my screen or have the information cut off on my TV. I will be choosing neither as I watch channel 4 or 29, whose graphics are center cut so nothing gets cut off on the screen. KENS5 used blue for almost every story except for three stories labeled purple/life: a back to school shots story, a story about hand sanitizer vs soap, and Mr. Food's Test Kitchen. A story about T.S. Iselle and Julio in Hawaii and the weather forecast were labeled as yellow/weather. Everything else used blue for general news. This includes the show teases at the end of the newscast. In other words, 5 is horrible about the colors. To top that off, KENS5 did NOT run a package about the new graphics during the noon news and amazingly, has avoided mentioning USA Today at all. Wow, I don't know how they're getting away with this unless they plan on bringing it up later. It's like they hate the new color system so they're purposing labeling almost everything blue so they don't have to explain the colors lol. They used three cuts of This is Home. The open cut was also used for teases, while that one Advantage-esque cut used in the "Live" sting in my video was used for every sting during the newscast. Then they had five seconds of the closing cut on NMSA but you could barely make it out because the anchors were talking over it and as soon as Stacia Willson said "thanks for watching, have a great day" it cut off and went to the Gannett ID. To sum it up they seem to be off to a rocky start and are trying to keep this switch as lowkey as possible because 5 hates dealing with viewers and they don't want viewer complaints they have to address. I already hate channel 5 to begin with and this is just one more reason to steer clear of them, especially when I can't even read anything that's on the screen. And no, I'm not going to adjust my set just to watch one station's newscast when I can watch all the others where the graphics fit the screen perfectly (WOAI/KABB) or almost perfectly (KSAT). 5 did update their facebook avatar to this: And they're looking for a new Facebook cover photo. Here's one they're suggesting and we know where their inspiration is coming from: I love the comments for it BTW. This one's my favorite: I highly doubt this average viewer has any clue the colors actually allude to Gannett.

I didn't expect KVUE and I wasn't home at 11AM so I didn't get them. Maybe at 5PM I'll cap it unless somebody else did. To be quite honest, I didn't even get to see the entire noon news because I was too busy with the open so I have no clue how they handle the other elements. Though I can tell you KENS was prepared. On the morning news, they switched the fonts in the weather and traffic computers from Futura to DIN and it clashed with everything else of course. Also KENS5 has not mentioned the new graphics online or on social media. Looks like they're taking a cue from other stations and not posting anything that would incite viewers to post negative comments about the graphics. Also, KENS5 has a habit of deleting social media comments that don't agree with their point of view.

Well guys, here's their new open: [yt]E-m2FT-bsas[/yt]

Yes, KENS will debuting them today at noon and I will be capping the open from their live feed. KENS ran a PKG fronted by Meteorologist Jeremy Baker during the 5:30AM news today. He basically said that KENS5's goal is to make information easier to digest (yeah right) and that this new graphics package will do just that. Guess what, they showed previews of the L3 gfx in the PKG and guess what, it gets cut off on my screen! How is that making information "easier to digest"? At least with the current gfx, the L3 information is still within the safe zone. Yes, the live bug and infobox already get chopped off but now some of the information is. They did run a VO-less open in the PKG but it's not anything special because Baker was talking over it.. They are not implementing their network logo (CBS) like the rest of the Gannett group has. This is a first. He proclaimed this new look is "awesome" and is a new approach at bringing you the information you need. They've been doing it on their website for a month and will now be bringing it to your television screen. They did not get specific on colors but I'm assuming they will at noon. The obligatory USA Today reference, which 5 has successfully managed to avoid, will probably be coming at noon as well. Guess I'm sticking with channel 4 or 12. But even with KSAT's new Graham GFX, they adjusted their time/temp bug so now the temperature gets cut off on a tube TV. Not everybody has a flat screen, you know. BTW, Mat Garcia (KENS5 morning anchor) says he pretty confident everybody will be enjoying this new look. Think again. It sucks. I'm just one step ahead of the average viewer because I follow TV news. Most don't and they'll be disappointed at 12:00 when the new look debuts.

I didn't realize they just moved. New studios are on 5 S. Chadbourne and their previous facility was on Irving St. I was looking at the Irving St. facility which was super small. Though the new building isn't super big by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, looking on Google Maps, it looks like it used to be a bank building and then KIDY bought it and moved in. Wow, news to me. EDIT: Yep, a former CitiBank and the list price was $550,000. London got it dirt cheap. It's 12,130 Square feet, so it's not huge, but for that market it looks to be a reasonable size. Maybe there's room in the building to build a new set... http://www.sanangelo.org/uptown/realestate/Under%2020000%20sq%20ft/Citibank.pdf KXVA would have to find its own facility they are currently in an office building which I assume is just a sales office right now. Maybe they'll be looking into the LIVE-U backpacks that KABB here uses. The quality isn't great but it's reliable for the most part, unless the cell network in that area is congested, which unless there's big news, it's not. But it's always nice to have at least one truck to go live with. But the cost is much cheaper. I think the backpack is $10,000 while a live truck is half a million. Take your pick.

The picture they used on Twitter was not a good one. Here's a better one (and I should have included one in the original post but kinda forgot about it): I guess she's "pretty" if you want to call it that, but by no means would I get my weather from anybody based solely on their looks. Though since she is a meteorology student I guess she does have an interest in it. There's some reporters that have to do the weather every now and then and they have no interest in weather and you can generally tell by how they do the weather and whether they try to avoid any complex weather terms, or how they do a forecast (such as giving everyday a high of 80 and a low of 62 and yes I've seen weather anchors do that) or they'll go to weather.com and just copy/paste the forecast. But hey, as long as they're pretty...

So it doesn't matter what her knowledge of the weather is as long as she's pretty... I understand it's TV and all but when it comes to the weather I'd rather get my information from a degreed meteorologist who loves their craft. Being pretty is secondary to that. But being pretty is probably what got her hired, yes. Same with KSHB's old wx caster.

TVSpy is getting around to the news I told you here first about two weeks ago: They did not say what slots she will be taking. She is definitely filling the anchor vacancy left by Kit Andrews but as for what time slots she's taking, I would assume at least the weekday 4, 4:30 and 5:30PM slots Andrews had. But if she's also going to be a reporter, then I don't think the noon newscast since she would probably report for the 6, 10 and 11. Also Sheila Gray can do the noon news. Or, they can be bumping somebody else entirely like Paula Toti to the weekday slots vacated by Andrews and then Benter will be a weekend anchor/weekday reporter. In any case I guess they will make a announcement tomorrow. Benter herself has been quiet on social media so I don't have confirmation. Also, I don't think Kirk Varner ever issued his statement publicly because I did a google search and TVSpy's story was the only one that came up. I'm surprised the Cincinnati Enquirer TV writer has not picked up this story yet but I assume he will tomorrow. As for some of the comments on that story, I usually avoid TVSpy comments like the plague but these are worth noting: This dude must not follow TV news regularly. It's not like Alex Holley where she's going from Myrtle Beach to Philadelphia as a second job (working at KOMU doesn't count). These kinds of jumps are pretty common in TV news. Also, I believe she's a Cincinnati native and it wouldn't surprise me if one of her career goals was to work in her hometown. Also as an intern she had to have some sort of inside connection. Also she's a great anchor, definitely doesn't stumble on her words as much as some people I've seen even here in DMA 36. Though if we want to talk about hiring standards I think in TV news as a whole they have definitely sunk, no doubt about that any day. Experience over inexperience would be how I see it. However it's about cost these days and if you can get cheap talent, that's a plus. It's not like she's going from intern to anchor at the same station. She was WTWO for three years, she has experience. Also the news director has many years of experience and WKRC is number one in the market otherwise he wouldn't have a job now. Also, I should note Kit Andrews was probably forced out in favor of Benter, who has got to be much cheaper. I noticed looking at Andrews' correspondence with the Enquirer TV writer and her unwillingness to talk, that it definitely wasn't her decision and Sinclair probably either said, take a pay cut or get out, and she chose the latter. Andrews' good bye was also low key and they didn't roll out the red carpet for her. Something has definitely been going on here. But their new hire has market familiarity because the Enquirer did a story on her a couple years ago because WTWO was piped in as substitution for WLWT due to retrans disputes with Time Warner. That's a bonus and she'll fit right in. I agree with these comments, they definitely sum themselves up but I think they're worth sharing. Also, it took WHDH two years to fill the vacancy on their weather team left by Dylan Dreyer after she left for NBC but today, WHDH hired a new weekend weathercaster. This news I'm regurgitating from NewEnglandONE: This is a bad hire because she is not an actual meteorologist, and they really should have waited until she is a real meteorologist before making the hire. Also, she's jumping from Boise to Boston. Well, they must have gotten her for dirt cheap. Having said that, she's not a bad forecaster because I saw clips on YouTube and I think she has a good on-air presence. I just don't think she's ready for DMA7 yet. But I'm not the ND so of course my opinion doesn't count. But whatever...

All indications point to that happening. Also, somebody else will need to get the open because my tuner hasn't come in yet and I won't be at home during the day tomorrow. Bonus points to someone who can get the open without using Bandicam (because I hate the damn watermark because people won't pay the $35). If nobody can't get the open or somebody uses free bandicam to get it, then I will post full evening newscasts. That video was from before their current news operation launched. I don't even think they have newscasts on the weekends currently. I can tell you that was actually an improvement from what they had under Bayou City: [yt]Zhpr7JkFH2c[/yt] If you look at some of the oldest videos on that YouTube channel, I love how they have all these promos for KABB's news and basically attempt to pass it off as their own. If Gannett wants to build out a full studio then they would need to find new quarters. The current building in San Angelo looks super small so I think the use of a virtual set and in that particular space was kind of necessary and not by choice. And I think Gannett will build them out a control room. It looks like they're using a TriCaster system. That's not a bad thing, but its capabilities are limited over a full PCR system. I don't know if they have any microwave vans either to go live. It doesn't appear so. If they want to see how a small market standalone Fox affiliate should be run, they need to take a look at KJTV in Lubbock. For that market size, KJTV does an impressive job.

Thought I'd get the word out, but a new blog started Monday that posts nothing but local newscast expansions. The dude who runs it has already broken a couple stories before my buddy FTVLive has. It's a good place to go to if you're interested in the latest newscast expansions. http://changingnewscasts.wordpress.com/

If no other station got a special look, what makes you think KIDY and KXVA will be treated special? There's Fox affiliates like Sinclair's legacy stations that didn't get anything special.

Probably when local news talent got younger and younger and of course TV is trying to go after the younger demo now. The young perceive these old people with "authority" to be mean-spirited goons. So, in an effort to get the younger demo, it seems like TV is stooping down to their level. Is it inappropriate? Absolutely. It kinda sickens me actually to look at the social media pages of anchors/reporters that viewers perceive as attractive and read all the comments from perverts, such as "You always look good, (insert name here)." or "Good Morning, ---. I hope you're having a great day today!" Almost always it's some weirdo posting that because most regular people do not look up to the news personalities as their friend. If I saw them in a grocery store and said "Hi", that's one thing and something I don't have a problem with people doing. Sometimes you can't help it, as somebody you see on TV. But I think social media takes it too far. To think they're attractive is one thing and I'm sure it's a feeling a lot of us have. But to actually engage in conversation with them is kicking up a notch and I think it takes it way too far. Technology and social media has definitely made it easier to communicate with these news personalities. All I have to do is find them on Twitter or Facebook. Hell, one local meteorologist here in San Antonio (won't say who) doesn't even have a public fan page. He just allow viewers to friend his personal Facebook page. That I think is taking it way too far. You don't even personally know them and quite honestly I don't need to know or care about what's happening in the weatherman's personal life. Then again, I wouldn't limit it to just news but look at society as a whole. Some teachers in grade school now give out their cell phone numbers to students and try to be their friend. Maybe I didn't know better then, but now at an older age, I think it's inappropriate. They're there to be your teacher, just like the news anchors are just there to give you the news. Nothing more. It's definitely a blurry line.

They do, as Al-SA-TX confirmed it here.

Haha, the irony of the question... (btw you dodged it)