"Works For You" memories..

[lazynetjunkie 34]

I happen to come upon this video on YouTube last night:

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It's hard to believe that it has already been 6 years since that time. The set and anchor desk is really the same set and anchor desk they use today; however, it looks much different now. The weather center is now on the opposite side in the old "Problem Solvers" area. The old weather center has been walled-off and is now used for storage. Much of the stuff you see in that set in the video made it to the dumpster not even 7 months from when that set was built.

 

 

They didn't even bother to keep the nice custom built portable plasma monitor stands for too long after they remodeled the set in October 2002. You can see one of them being used over Cynthia Santana's shoulder in the video. When the set got the blue makeover, those stands were even painted to match the blue set. Those stands ended up getting trashed for the cheap plain black 2 pole Plasma monitor stand on wheels that most stations out there seem to use. That set originally had three plasma monitors in 2002. Two of them made it to the current set. Today, only one of the two still works. The other one, which was used in the current weather center, broke a few months ago so they bought a new one. I don't know what happened to the third monitor from the original set..

 

 

I remember hearing about Ahern's first day as President/GM of WBBM. He stood there in the studio looking at the set just shaking his head. The first things to go on his first day at WBBM were those glass panels dividing Weather Central from the rest of the set, all traces of the slogan "Works For You" from all the graphics, voiceovers, etc., and all the "CBS 2 Works For You" image campaign videos. One thing that I didn't really understand was they didn't really make full use of that projection screen behind the anchor desk until Ahern came around. However, that too ended up getting ripped out.

 

 

Two things in that video that they still use at CBS 2 today are most of the transition effects from the Giant Octopus graphics package and the sound effects from the sfx/toolkit CD of the CBS 2 Works For You package.

 

 

Someday if I get the chance, I'm going to dig through my boxes of tapes at home and see what I can pull up. I know I have quite a few newscasts from that time on tape somewhere around..

[Spring Rubber 611]

I know I also have quite a few videos from that era, as well. I've got the first newscast from that studio somewhere; if only I knew where it was...

[Link 3]

I think their current set has way too much blue or the wrong shade. I like ABC 7's blue backdrops but at CBS 2 I don't.

[Oliverolang 41]

I was a Senior in High School when WBBM started the "Works For You" era, which debuted only a couple weeks after 9/11. Everything from the music, the promos, the graphics, and especially the set were incredible. I was a Freshman in college in West Virginia when Ahern took over, and it was thanks to lazynetjunkie that I saw photos of the first Ahern set. When I first saw the photos, I was thinking WHAT THE ?!?!?! Their current set was such an improvement. We'll have to wait and see what happens when they go to State Street, but nothing can top "Works For You."