WXYZ Graphics Oddity

[MidwestTV 1173]

 

Seems like they wanted the 7 to be more visible, you can barely see the abc logo anyways. KGTV debuted the updated ticker a few weeks ago, when they updated the ABC logo in the 10. Have you seen the Breaking News L3's? I just saw them a few weeks ago as well, and they turn red when there is a breaking news story. I will say that this Scripps package is very versatile compared to the previous one, and each station has their own unique customization to it. Too bad that they can't use other colors beside orange/white in the opens.

 

Can't they? They have special breaking news packing essentially; the normal ones, just using red instead of blue (split screen, OTS, everything). They could probably use other colors, it would just look odd since we're so used to the blue and orange.

[ns8401 846]

 

Seems like they wanted the 7 to be more visible, you can barely see the abc logo anyways. KGTV debuted the updated ticker a few weeks ago, when they updated the ABC logo in the 10. Have you seen the Breaking News L3's? I just saw them a few weeks ago as well, and they turn red when there is a breaking news story. I will say that this Scripps package is very versatile compared to the previous one, and each station has their own unique customization to it. Too bad that they can't use other colors beside orange/white in the opens.

 

I'm pretty happy with the new L3's they have for the breaking news. The tab that says BREAKING NEWS is twice the size of the normal tabs, we just got a "This is breaking news from the 7 Action Newsroom" VO for our newscast intro's, if they lead with them they will skip the news open and use it. This package is good but WXYZ still has the nasty orange box and it's really hard to look at, I've heard people complain about the color hurting their eyes. I have no idea why it isn't their standard blue color that would match the L3's so much better. They are the last station to have orange after WFTS switched to I think it's red? WXYZ almost has a clone of WFTS's take on the graphics, there is very little customization. What's amazing to me is that this package and that horrible package they last had are both Renderon. The only other issue besides the box that I have is that when you look at the 7abc logo in the weather forecasts it is really fuzzy and distorted even in HD kinda like my profile pic. It just doesn't look right. And that circle-7 bug looks like it has a jagged edge on-air because they wanted to make it look slightly tilted towards the viewer but it should have been kept like my profile pic. I wish they would just be plain blue and white. I miss the days when each station had a package, maybe some day the larger stations will get that chance again.

 

Is the ABC logo on the 7 the current version of the ABC logo? I ask because I just looked up KGTV and their logo seems shinier in comparison, I actually like it better. Yeah having the ABC logo on that thing was really silly since it was so small.

 

To try to explain that graphic a bit better:

This is their last Giant Octopus package, from 2008-09, at 0:03 if you look you will see "On Air, Online, On Your Cell, On Your Side" at the bottom. That is the font for the two vertical bands. At 1:04 you will see the "Live" bug with a "7 HD" logo below it. That is the same size and design for the 7 that I saw on the graphic except it was grey/silver and not clear and turned 90 degrees clockwise. Until I can find the actual graphic that'll provide some idea of what it had as far as lettering with a large 7abc logo at the bottom. It was red and maybe 2-4 inches wide. Not sure how easy that is to picture. But it looked like it belonged to this old package more than anything from the standard package. It may help to full screen it.

 

[Jess 1110]

WPVI still uses several names. While they've done an amazing job getting "6ABC" out into the nomenclature, they still haven't adopted it universally. Reporters tag out with "I'm some person, Channel 6, Action News", and Gardner closes out his newscasts by teasing "next on Channel 6". Teases for ABC programming, or for World News With Diane Sawyer Good Evening America will usually reference "6ABC".

 

For the newscasts and promos, they just straight up use "Action News", no prefix. Occasionally you'll see a mention of "6ABC Action News" or "Action News on 6ABC" in a promo, but that is about the extent of the usage of "6ABC" as far as its combination with the Action News brand.

 

(Sidenote: The official name for the PHL17 newscast they do is "Action News at 10 on PHL17", though a "My" has managed to slip into some of the graphics now and then. They use normal 6ABC graphics... which is kind of, y'know, the point because Action News/6ABC are such strong brands.)

[Jess 1110]

 

I think the WEWS 5 is nice looking. I just wish that ABC would stop requiring that their logo be nearby. It's like they're stalking their affiliates! And besides, most people know where their ABC station is, so they don't always need to put the ABC logo there.

 

Here's the reason ABC (and the other networks) require their logo be displayed beside the station logo.

 

When Fox affiliates began "foxifying" their look and incorporating "Fox" into their station names, people would commonly tell station personnel that "the station had gotten so much better since Fox bought you." Nevermind that the station's ownership, calls (usually), or employees were exactly the same even though the name had been altered from, say, "TV29" to "Fox 29". Nor that the programming hadn't really started to change yet since Fox was programming 3 or 4 nights a week. Fox gave the station more brand recognition.

 

It's one of the reasons I keep saying that KYW should have gone to "CBS 3" lonnnnng before they actually did so in 2003. "KYW", to me, has always been way way way more associated with 1060AM than channel 3. And WCAU was so wrapped in CBS branding, even right up to the end (promos still had the eye and 10 together, even though the eye left newscasts), that KYW needed to make a branding effort that was stronger than "CBS On KYW-3". Meanwhile, at 10 Monument, that station was dropping "NBC 10" references left and right, and promoting that "Channel 10 is becoming NBC 10". Even though only the ownership and GM changed, they were still using the same news set from 1990, the new News 10 opens were based directly off of WBBM's 1994 graphics, and Impact wasn't THAT much different than PNP Phase 2... they managed to embrace the peacock even more than they embraced the eye.

[Samantha 2878]

And it's now written into. Every. ABC. Affiliation. Contract. The network also now must approve your new logo!

[ns8401 846]

Why can't they require a gari theme and top notch graphics and go whole hog on it? That would actually be kinda nice not that the Scripps graphics are terrible but the ones I linked to above were a bit better. I would really prefer some variation on those.

 

Could it have been even cheaper than commissioning a whole new package to just use the best graphics already in use and just distribute them to all the stations an individual company owns? I'm kind of a novice at how this all works.

[Jess 1110]

The hubbing model works thusly:

 

Graphics production, in an unhubbed group, would be done primarily at the local station by a team of dedicated artists. They would put together graphics such as "DEADLY EXPLOSION", "PREPARING FOR THE POPE", your weather franchise logo, etc. The station wouldn't necessarily build the actual on-air look, but contract it out to another firm like Giant Octopus or Hothaus.

 

In a hub, all graphics are produced at a central location. For Scripps and Fox, that's Tampa. NBC's hub is in Fort Worth. CBS' hub is in NYC.

 

Most of the intense graphical production, then, moves from the local station to the national hub. The station will likely retain an in-house graphic artist or two to handle promos and other things of that nature. However, most of the in-newscast graphical assets would either come from the hub, or from templates at the local station that producers can quickly create.

 

Since you now have one team handling ten stations, instead of ten teams handling ten stations, it now also makes sense to unify all the stations under one graphical look. This isn't always the case (NBC's Fort Worth hub has always handled at least two packages simultaneously). Sometimes, that will be a look created by an outside house with some work handled internally by the hub. Other times, the hub creates the entire look. To save extra money, groups are standardizing music packages as well.

 

The idea here is cost savings above anything else. The first few years of NBC's Ft. Worth hub, at least here, weren't exactly pretty. Apparently the graphics house that created the first standard look for Gannett threw in the music for free, and that music was WIDELY reviled. Moreover, I find everything that spews out of the Fox O&O graphics sewer to be pretty abominable. And CBS' graphics hub has made decisions that are questionable at best - like, oh, using the wrong CBS eye in their latest package.

 

Increasingly, however, some of the hubbed looks ARE the best graphics in use. I absolutely adore Gannett's current package, because it allows for a lot of visual freedom and it really stands out amongst the crowd. NBC's Fort Worth graphics hub has become so good other companies - that own other network affiliates! - are contracting them to create looks. And I think the Hearst Diagrid look and "Strive" theme are fantastic.

[ns8401 846]

 

The hubbing model works thusly:

 

Graphics production, in an unhubbed group, would be done primarily at the local station by a team of dedicated artists. They would put together graphics such as "DEADLY EXPLOSION", "PREPARING FOR THE POPE", your weather franchise logo, etc. The station wouldn't necessarily build the actual on-air look, but contract it out to another firm like Giant Octopus or Hothaus.

 

In a hub, all graphics are produced at a central location. For Scripps and Fox, that's Tampa. NBC's hub is in Fort Worth. CBS' hub is in NYC.

 

Most of the intense graphical production, then, moves from the local station to the national hub. The station will likely retain an in-house graphic artist or two to handle promos and other things of that nature. However, most of the in-newscast graphical assets would either come from the hub, or from templates at the local station that producers can quickly create.

 

Since you now have one team handling ten stations, instead of ten teams handling ten stations, it now also makes sense to unify all the stations under one graphical look. This isn't always the case (NBC's Fort Worth hub has always handled at least two packages simultaneously). Sometimes, that will be a look created by an outside house with some work handled internally by the hub. Other times, the hub creates the entire look. To save extra money, groups are standardizing music packages as well.

 

The idea here is cost savings above anything else. The first few years of NBC's Ft. Worth hub, at least here, weren't exactly pretty. Apparently the graphics house that created the first standard look for Gannett threw in the music for free, and that music was WIDELY reviled. Moreover, I find everything that spews out of the Fox O&O graphics sewer to be pretty abominable. And CBS' graphics hub has made decisions that are questionable at best - like, oh, using the wrong CBS eye in their latest package.

 

Increasingly, however, some of the hubbed looks ARE the best graphics in use. I absolutely adore Gannett's current package, because it allows for a lot of visual freedom and it really stands out amongst the crowd. NBC's Fort Worth graphics hub has become so good other companies - that own other network affiliates! - are contracting them to create looks. And I think the Hearst Diagrid look and "Strive" theme are fantastic.

 

Thanks for explaining all that. Still no sign of that graphic, I will say that the station promo production has nearly ceased, we haven't had new ones in 3 weeks which is way slower than the previous pace. There are still feature story promo's, those do not have the slogan. The ones we do have no longer have the slogan in the VO, it is now only shown on screen except for one that is over a month old and still mentions it.

 

I assume since it's hubbed graphics are created by request of the station when it comes to things getting customized? I doubt the hub mistakenly used the wrong slogan since it had the correct logo on it. I'm kind of finding it odd that I only saw it that one time and then it just disappeared. I'm thinking it ran early by mistake and everything else isn't ready to go. Even that is a shaky explanation. I'm still streaming it on my phone and I will get some kind of screen shot of it when it appears again.

[Rusty Muck 4168]

And it's now written into. Every. ABC. Affiliation. Contract. The network also now must approve your new logo!

One would think that ABC would eventually require usage of "ABC" alongside the channel number in general station branding (e.g., ABC 7 Action News, Pittsburgh's ABC 4, ABC 7 WKBW, etc.).

[Jess 1110]

 

And it's now written into. Every. ABC. Affiliation. Contract. The network also now must approve your new logo!

 

The NBC affiliation contract has it too. In fact, it explicitly says something to the lines of being acknowledged as an "NBC station" like the O&Os are. In other words, "we want people to think NBC actually owns you".

[Big Country News 435]

 

I absolutely adore Gannett's current package, because it allows for a lot of visual freedom and it really stands out amongst the crowd.

 

Anybody can throw together color boxes and transparent squares over an uninspired music package.

 

 

The NBC affiliation contract has it too. In fact, it explicitly says something to the lines of being acknowledged as an "NBC station" like the O&Os are. In other words, "we want people to think NBC actually owns you".

 

WOOD and KWES rarely ever have an NBC Peacock in their stuff. WOOD has recently started using a very small black Peacock in their logos, but KWES does not have an NBC peacock anywhere in their branding. The only place I see KWES use the Peacock is at their studios and on their news vehicles.

[ns8401 846]

Officially the graphic was a mistake, no plans to go to any rebranded stuff. I'm not really sure how that is possible but that is what I was told by a person from wxyz who was nice enough to return a phone call inquiring about it. They feel On Your Side is a bland slogan in comparison to Taking Action For You which plays on the Action News name. I will order a copy of the segment with the graphic and post a screen shot here. That graphic will never air again according to this person.

[Jess 1110]

 

One would think that ABC would eventually require usage of "ABC" alongside the channel number in general station branding (e.g., ABC 7 Action News, Pittsburgh's ABC 4, ABC 7 WKBW, etc.).

 

Given that they're not consistent amongst their own stations with the usage of "ABC"... well, at least not in New York (Channel 7 Eyewitness News) and Philly (Channel 6 Action News, though "Channel 6" isn't mentioned as often as "Channel 7")

[Samantha 2878]

 

The NBC affiliation contract has it too. In fact, it explicitly says something to the lines of being acknowledged as an "NBC station" like the O&Os are. In other words, "we want people to think NBC actually owns you".

 

Wow, now that I'm looking through the KRBC contract I've found language like that as old as December 1995:

 

"Station agrees, during the first year of the agreement, to begin working with NBC to further "brand" the Station as an "NBC Station" in its market through cooperative efforts in areas such as on-air promotion, unified graphic design, use of the NBC peacock logo and NBC identification."

 

The KRBC contract is not only unredacted but is pretty much every material from 1995 on. The older materials reference KACB. It is highly unusual for the FCC file.

 

The WHEC contract (which applied to all of Hubbard's stations) from 2002 has similar but longer wording:

 

"...Group and each Station agrees to endeavor to cause the Stations to be identified, in the perception of television viewers, as "NBC Affiliated Stations"."

[Jess 1110]

 

Anybody can throw together color boxes and transparent squares over an uninspired music package.

 

[yt]8C0uKM6iMzo[/yt]

 

...look, I had to.

 

Honestly it's less the total newscast look and more the potential of what can be done with it. Gannett Graphics Group has posted its own examples on its site.

 

You can just take the look and move it in interesting directions, and that page shows how much they've been able to do with their own "canvas" (best way to describe it).

[ns8401 846]

They showed my On Your Side graphic again during a story about the President visiting the University of Michigan today. It was used this time as a frame for some file footage replacing the clear side frames they use now which just blur the picture. This time both sides got a graphic and not just the right. Looks like a rebrand is actually in the works. Does anybody recognize these border graphics from the current Scripps package?

 

24994J got the link right below.

[24994J 5276]

Somehow, that link you gave isn't working, but I found the video...

 

http://www.wxyz.com/news/president-obama-to-talk-about-minimum-wage-at-university-of-michigan

 

After seeing it, I don't think this is a sign of things to come, If you notice, the image of their logo on the bottom of the right sidebar is using the old, glossy, pre-2013 ABC logo.

[ns8401 846]

 

Somehow, that link you gave isn't working, but I found the video...

 

http://www.wxyz.com/news/president-obama-to-talk-about-minimum-wage-at-university-of-michigan

 

After seeing it, I don't think this is a sign of things to come, If you notice, the image of their logo on the bottom of the right sidebar is using the old, glossy, pre-2013 ABC logo.

 

Huh, I wonder what these are then? That fatter version of the 7 logo with the non-glossy ABC debuted with the 2012 package so it looks like a work in progress to me, there were two thinner bands running down the sides the first time and now there's just one larger one. The "On Your Side" branding and that fat 7 never coexisted so the fact that they are together is odd. Also their new app has simply a fat circle 7 and "WXYZ" as it's opening screen now so there are other things going in the same general direction around their branding that match the

7 WXYZ on these, it's too specific and correctly done to be a mistake. Maybe they used the glossy one to make it stand out better? It isn't like anyone would notice or care outside of us, especially mired in all that red. Their YouTube page and "Spotlight On The News" graphics still use the glossy logo as does a lot of their set. But that's a 2008 logo still in use and the 7 is thinner.

[MidwestTV 1173]

Jeff Vaughn...huh. I remember when he was down at KSHB. I went to check his bio just for shits and giggles and noticed something odd...it mentions a lot how he's a native Kansan and stuff, yet neglects to mention that he worked at KSHB and KENS. I wonder why?

[ns8401 846]

 

Jeff Vaughn...huh. I remember when he was down at KSHB. I went to check his bio just for shits and giggles and noticed something odd...it mentions a lot how he's a native Kansan and stuff, yet neglects to mention that he worked at KSHB and KENS. I wonder why?

 

A lot of those bios neglect a lot of stuff, one doesn't mention that the DeFacto chief investigator started as an intern and then an investigative producer that was then allowed to front his own stuff, or that the youngest of the 3 sports guys was hired directly out of Marquette University.

[sanewsguy 509]

 

Jeff Vaughn...huh. I remember when he was down at KSHB. I went to check his bio just for shits and giggles and noticed something odd...it mentions a lot how he's a native Kansan and stuff, yet neglects to mention that he worked at KSHB and KENS. I wonder why?

 

Well his contract wasn't renewed at KENS, which was a cold sendoff from someone who wanted to "retire at KENS". So I'm sure he doesn't hold them in high regard. And I'm sure San Antonio will always have some meaning to him since his son was born here...

[Rusty Muck 4168]

Huh, I wonder what these are then? That fatter version of the 7 logo with the non-glossy ABC debuted with the 2012 package so it looks like a work in progress to me, there were two thinner bands running down the sides the first time and now there's just one larger one. The "On Your Side" branding and that fat 7 never coexisted so the fact that they are together is odd. Also their new app has simply a fat circle 7 and "WXYZ" as it's opening screen now so there are other things going in the same general direction around their branding that match the

7 WXYZ on these, it's too specific and correctly done to be a mistake. Maybe they used the glossy one to make it stand out better? It isn't like anyone would notice or care outside of us, especially mired in all that red. Their YouTube page and "Spotlight On The News" graphics still use the glossy logo as does a lot of their set. But that's a 2008 logo still in use and the 7 is thinner.

To me, it looks like they just reused archival footage from a story done years ago that had the HD sidebars added back then.

 

It's clearly not a new design, and no one thought of replacing the sidebars with whatever design WXYZ currently uses.

[ns8401 846]

To me, it looks like they just reused archival footage from a story done years ago that had the HD sidebars added back then.

 

It's clearly not a new design, and no one thought of replacing the sidebars with whatever design WXYZ currently uses.

That makes sense. They don't have a design per se right now like this. It's just having the edges blurred out in about the same dimensions which is somewhat distracting. To my knowledge this did not air previously but I could always be wrong. The Red doesn't match the previous designs they used. I've been spending time trying to find it on some of the old shows but no luck. I started seeing the blurry sidebars maybe a year ago.