Weeters

Stephen Arnold Music has debut yet another great "image campaign in a box" today. "This is the Place", being marketed as "hyperlocal" is a uplifting, inspiring campaign which has a summertime feel, just in time for stations planning for the upcoming season. SAM's image campaign kits have proven to be popular, many stations across the country adopted the "It's All About Early" campaign, often ordering custom lyrics or even using entirely locally-shot video in place of the stock video included with the package. "This is the Place" won't only be a image campaign jingle - Stephen Arnold's website says that a full music package based on the campaign will be available later this summer.

NBC has announced that "30 Rock" will return next season for an "abbreviated season" before being canceled. "Parks and Recreation" and "Community" apparently will not have the chance to have a farewell season.

http://www.slate.com...o_rumored_.html
http://www.opposingv...arks-recreation

EDIT: "Community" now has a abbreviated season order: http://m.deadline.co...-episode-order/

With demand to integrate social media into newscasts at an all time high, a new web service aims to help stations accomplish that using an easy-to-use interface and, perhaps the best part, cheap hardware. Vidpresso is a web startup that allows stations to push social media interaction, whether it be on Facebook, Twitter, SMS or even from Email, directly to air with only a few clicks of a mouse, complete with the person's name and avatar attached to the post.



Although the service seems to be primarily marketed towards use by a producer, the interface is simple enough that even talent could use it. I know of at least one station who's anchors are responsible for putting social media interactions on air... using a poor quality, standard-def hookup to the computer built into the news desk. The clean, easy to use interface (coincidentally, built with Twitter Bootstrap, the same UI toolkit we use on TVNewsStreams and we plan on using for TVNT) allows users to pull comments from Facebook posts and search for Twitter messages, even allowing search by hashtag or keyword. This could come in handy not only for general interaction, but during breaking news or severe weather outbreaks.

The cost of a Vidpresso system is pennies compared to the tens of thousands of dollars it costs for your standard Chyron or VizRT systems, as all Vidpresso requires is an off-the-shelf desktop computer and a scan converter (Things that some stations might already have on hand). The subscription fees for the service range from $400-$900 a month, meaning an average sponsorship deal could pay for the system for months, or even years.

The system has already debut on KSL in Salt Lake City and on KTXL in Sacramento. You can see how those stations are using it here.

Discussion is ongoing in this thread. Thanks to TVNT member Neilium for the tip.

When it's time to replace a set, many sets end up in the dumpster, pieces taken off and stored away in the off chance the station may need an old news desk someday. Other times, pieces may be sent to a college. Even with network sets that have a lot of history behind them, their pieces may ultimately end up shoved into a news nook, out of sight of the public eye.

That's not the case for the Tim Russert-era Meet the Press set that was replaced in 2010. Recently, several pieces of the historic set were donated to the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago. The Museum posted a video featuring the unloading and assembly of their newest exhibit.




The set pieces the museum received include one of the iconic Meet the Press logo lightbox walls, duratrans, and of course, the table and chairs. The donation of the set is part of a partnership between the museum and NBC News, which includes almost three million dollars of financial support from Comcast/NBC as well as additional artifacts and video clips from NBC News and local NBC O&O WMAQ.

The set will be on permanent exhibition at the museum, located in downtown Chicago. It's slated to open later this year.

http://www.hollywood...cal-news-314617

Whoops.