Weeters
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Posts posted by Weeters
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If stations have these "fans" who are concerned about their branding, music, and graphics, then it stands to reason that the less popular (at least around here) newscast formats we've seen lately also have fans. Somebody's watching Scrippscasts, somebody is watching Tegna stations. Maybe that's because they like what they see.
If viewers "cared about tradition" the way some of us like to think, we wouldn't be seeing 45% of the news audience disappearing into thin air.
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I think the hyper-fixation on brand and music changes being some kind of driver for viewers to "get upset" and stop watching the station is kind of absurd, when you consider all the other things that can change in a TV news broadcast that the station really doesn't have much control over. Talent is a more important draw for viewers than music and brands, and retirements don't often move the ratings needle much. WPVI didn't see a massive ratings drop after Jim Gardner left, despite his status in the market. The same is looking true at WGN after Tom Skilling left, and I can't imagine a music change or branding would actually lead people to change the channel permanently. It's not 1996 anymore.
I'd also like to point out that a lot of these old 90's era "people were MAD!!!" claims come from newspaper columnists at the time. We cannot know for certain what they embellished on to make their column more interesting. "People were upset" that a station changed their branding the same way people get upset that Judge Judy was interrupted for severe weather. This doesn't mean the whole market was "rioting in the streets" like people around these parts like to think would happen if WPVI modernized MCTYW.
On that subject, the 1996 orchestral MCTYW was arguably just bad and was an abrupt, noticeable change. WPVI has been using new cuts of MCTYW from different composers for years at this point (there have been some new ones since the graphics debut!) and I have a hunch nobody but people involved with this community have noticed, largely because they don't sound as wildly different as the orchestral package did.
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On 4/18/2024 at 10:33 AM, Vlad said:
Thank you Weeters for in a way bringing us back to our roots. (Early 2000s) If we all remember correctly this forum was originally born from an AOL or Yahoo Geocites page haha. if I vaguely remember and it was called Local News Discussion lol. So in away the new name, Local News Talk brings us back to our roots! Glad to be back!
Even though this was kind of an "emergency" rebranding, that was a purposeful little nod to the site's history. That, and the fact that the media we talk about is growing beyond "TV" in the traditional sense.
19 hours ago, bmasters1 said:Is one of them that the dark theme reverts back to light whenever I load up another part of the site?
I think there's something wonky going on with the caching (we're behind Cloudflare now, something else I've wanted to do for a while) that is causing this, I'm going to look into it further.
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General reminder that the "Action News" trademark is owned by Cox (and "Eyewitness News" is owned by CBS!) and stations have to pay to use them. Why should Scripps keep paying for a brand name for a format that hasn't been properly used in decades? I know folks have a weird affinity for these two brands, but come on. This is, by far, a better logo than some of the other Scripps rebrands over the past few years.
Why should they pay Cox for this name? Why should they pay Nexstar for The CW? These are all competitors. People love to think talent at these stations treat each other like this is Anchorman, and while that's not true, there's no good reason to give your competition money for a tired old brand or a second-rate network affiliation.
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Hello everyone,
I'm sure many of you are wondering what's been going on with the site for the last couple weeks. While I don't even have all the answers, I figured it'd be useful to explain a bit about what happened and where we're going from here.
First, a little history. I have never been in control of the tvnewstalk.net domain. Many years ago (we're talking like, at least 10 years back,) I ultimately inherited the responsibility of operating the site while a former administrator owned the domain. This, generally, was uneventful, except for a few instances where the domain registration lapsed and I had to poke them to get it renewed. This just kind of became the way things were, ownership of the domain never really came up, and slowly they stopped coming around the community.
Fast forward to 2024, when in late February/early March, anyone trying to visit the site via tvnewstalk.net was greeted with a page reading "Account Suspended". As far as I know, this was the "old" server (that was still operational, serving only to redirect visits to tvnewstalk.net to forums.tvnewstalk.net) going unpaid. Since the DNS for the domain still pointed forums.tvnewstalk.net to the server I control, the site stayed online and accessible. This issue had happened before, and to my recollection, resolved itself without me having to alert anybody. I was also getting quite busy with work, so I chose to just let it go. Since everything had forever been at forums.tvnewstalk.net, impacts on traffic from the redirect not working were extremely minor.
At the end of March, another problem arose. TVNewsTalk.net dropped off the Domain Name System. My assumption is this is related to the earlier "Account Suspended" issue, I guess the domain was registered through the host, and they removed it from their DNS when the bill (presumably) went unpaid. For most users, access to TVNT was cut off. This, however, happened slowly, as DNS servers took some time to update to process the removal. At least until a few days ago, we were still seeing people using the site via T-Mobile.
When the domain dropped off DNS, I reached out to another one of our former administrators, who I had gone through the last time I had to contact the domain owner. They attempted to make contact, and got no response. There was beginning to be a lot of noise in the community wondering what happened to the site, and there was even some sort of unauthorized crowdfunding campaign spun up. It was at this point I decided to take matters into my own hands, registered LocalNewsTalk.net, and began the process of moving the forum over.
That's where we're at now. The site has been transferred over. There are still a few loose ends to tie up, but otherwise we're back in action. I do not know what will become of the TVNewsTalk.net domain that we've called home for almost 20 years. Perhaps it will return, some day, but for the foreseeable future, we're going to be here at localnewstalk.net.
Things still being worked on:
Email (Registration, Password Resets): Email has been changed over to the localnewstalk.net domain and should be working as intended. Check spam folder if you don't see an expected message.
Google Login: Changes submitted for review by Google Trust and Safety. Might be working.
Facebook Login: In Progress. Need to complete extra steps to re-enable this.
Discord Login: Should be working.
Forum Theme: There are a small handful of broken things due to an update I ran while the site was unavailable.
Please feel free to leave any questions or concerns you may have below.
-Weeters
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Please keep the wishcasting for a sale to Hearst in the Speculation board, please.
Most of the groups seem to have reported less-than-impressive recent business results. This isn't a Scripps problem. Returning newscasts to "traditional" shows vs. Scrippscast isn't going to drastically change how people consume media, nor will it change the political landscape to drive up political advertising.
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If ABC was truly that concerned about St. Louis, then the affiliation would have been taken elsewhere a long time ago. ABC could have even bought a station and started their own news operation if they were that concerned. But, I think they know St. Louis is news saturated and doesn't need another newsroom. They don't have to be "happy" about it, but they also know there's a slim chance that the affiliation would end up on any of the existing news-producing stations, and it's not worth building a new one.
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Not sure if this is is a harbinger of new graphics... WISN has a very competent Creative Services team, and this is pre-produced. This seems in line with their recent promo work as well, and if you look closely, there are still a lot of the design language of the current "diagrid" package within those.
Plus, WISN has a history of straying from the
standard graphics"""mandate""", so...-
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Studio 31 has made a rebuttal to the rebuttal.
Studio 31 alleges that I claimed "that The News Center hasn't disabled invites" despite my post reading "TNC previously allowed any user of the Discord to create their own invite links. This was disabled..." and further explanation about the process we have to join The News Center in the absent of user-generated invites and the current lack of a discord.gg link. I don't know what is so hard to understand about this. I specifically outlined the join process and he completely brushes over it because it's not "open invite".
Studio 31 responds to my claims that I am not competing with anybody with a long paragraph full of a bunch of ego-stroking numbers and stats about Broadcast Plaza. I feel like, perhaps, my message was lost, so I'll reiterate: I do not care what stats Broadcast Plaza has. I do not care what stats The News Center has. I am not playing this "competition" game. He then creates a quote that I called this a "TV graphics fandom" out of thin air, I never said this is a "TV graphics fandom". Reading this section of his response kind of made my eyes glaze over and made me realize further engagement is pointless. I do not have time to argue with someone who has an ego the size of the moon and resorts to gaslighting to try and prove a point.
The rest of the post is his personal beefs with Rusty, Emma, and Jess, which I cannot respond to.
Best wishes to Studio 31 and Broadcast Plaza moving forward,
Weeters
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Addendum #1: Involving Studio 31's involvement with Broadcast Plaza:
A few people have informed us that Studio 31 is no longer the "owner" of Broadcast Plaza, and merely a "partner". This is, and has been, known. It appears some attempt is being made at distancing Studio 31's actions from the Broadcast Plaza server itself. This, however, fails to explain why (if Studio 31 was acting solo on this matter) another video uploaded by a Broadcast Plaza "partner" also featured the same in-thumbnail ad, and why that video, as well as a third, featured a large "FIRST on Broadcast Plaza" watermark through the duration of the video. This appears to show that Studio 31's "marketing" techniques are being adopted by the other server "partners".
If this truly does not reflect the position of Broadcast Plaza, then perhaps the current management of that server needs better oversight and control over the actions of their "partners", who inherently represent the server while acting as one. Standing by as your "partners" "market" your community by demeaning other community members is tacit support of their methods.
Commentary:
4 hours ago, Rusty Muck said:The only quibble I have is that Jim is not creating unique content. He's clipping from livestreams of television stations' copyrighted material, adding watermarks and chintzy "Studio 31 Exclusive" markings and passing it off as his own in acts of sheer pettiness because he doesn't like it when Stephen Walsh snipes from his uploads.
I remember when this was a fun, nerdy hobby. You'd have to wait weeks, months, maybe even years for someone to get a good high-quality copy of some new news open. A station just debut HD news? You'd get a quick "HD" (probably a SD feed cropped to 16:9) upload and some HD screenshots if you were lucky. Things took time. We waited. We were excited with whatever we got.
Streaming has upended that. Now everyone has access to every TV station at a click of a mouse. What was once a fun hobby has become gamified. It's a popularity contest. Who can get the open up FIRST? Within 30 minutes of the WABC graphics debuting, there were at least 5 uploads of the same exact open. Several of these came "branded" by their respective channel, as if this is some kind of contest to be the Mr. Beast of News Opens.
Watermarking your content is one thing, but slathering it with "marketing" is absurd. It's not your content. You get nothing for being "first". It's a pointless exercise. Even watermarks can be defeated. I once (probably 10 years ago) upload a HD "This is CNN" ident to the old TVNewsTalk YouTube page. It had a small watermark in the corner. Months later, a bit on Letterman used the same ident with a strange blur where the TVNT watermark was. I was defeated in the best possible way. I thought it was neat that some video file I uploaded ended up broadcast on Letterman. There was no point in getting mad they took off the TVNT bug. It wasn't my content to begin with, and there was nothing I could do about it.
The community growing through YouTube has unfortunately caused several aspects of "YouTube Culture" to spill in. Create content at all costs. Have a big flashy brand for your channel. You can't just be bob9753 uploading news opens, you need to be The Glendive TV Open Archive with a flashy logo and thumbnails exclaiming you were the FIRST to upload something you recorded off a stream, even though 4 other people were recording the same stream and also uploaded claiming to be "FIRST!".
It's been very sad to watch what was once a fun hobby turn into a popularity contest over something as trivial as news opens that don't belong to any of us.
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NMSA has a broken web configuration. You are trying to access it over SSL, and they don't have SSL configured. Make sure the url starts with http:// instead of https://. Some browsers try to force https:// by default now.
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Yet again, Studio 31 Media Archive is issuing misleading statements regarding (and, apparently, on behalf of) the "Broadcast Plaza" Discord server, directed at both TVNewsTalk and our partner Discord server, The News Center. As before, these statements misrepresent the reality of several different subjects. For reference, these statements have been saved below.
Rebuttal #1: Regarding joining The News Center Discord:
Studio 31 misrepresents our policies regarding joining The News Center by claiming The News Center has "disabled invites". Since we entered into our partnership with The News Center, we have loosely managed public access to the Discord via these Forums. Similarly, we have long managed access to the Forums via Moderator review of new Members. While this restricted immediate access for the general public, there have been alternative ways to join for some time. For at least the past year, TNC has maintained a Discord.gg short URL that allowed access to the server, available for anybody to use, if they knew where to find it.
The Discord.gg short link turned off automatically in the past few days, after the server dropped a "boost" level, but appears to have been used as recently as this past Thursday. This is not something the Discord administration have direct control of. TNC previously allowed any user of the Discord to create their own invite links. This was disabled after numerous bad actors (several of whom were previously or later banned from what is now Broadcast Plaza) utilized this feature to either invite other problematic users into the Discord, or evade bans with sockpuppet accounts. Despite all of this, access remained available to anybody with an active and reviewed Forum account, which is the same process Studio 31 would have used to join the Discord.
TVNewsTalk believes this claim to be misrepresentative of the situation, and made in bad faith.
Rebuttal #2: TVNewsTalk and The News Center "literally censors any mention of [Broadcast Plaza]":
Studio 31 misrepresents community policies regarding advertising. TVNewsTalk has maintained (since at least 2015) the following rule regarding advertising:
QuoteAny form of commercial advertising or solicitation is forbidden anywhere on TVNewsTalk
Studio 31 has attempted to evade this rule several times, by integrating advertisements for Broadcast Plaza within YouTube Thumbnails. We believe this is to take advantage of the large thumbnail embeds present on both this site and Discord. Studio 31 has claimed this is "marketing", however, this form of "marketing" appears to be unique to Broadcast Plaza, as not even YouTube creators with large followings and merchandising place "marketing" materials like this within their thumbnails. In fact, most popular YouTube creators seem to use very large, very short bits of text within their thumbnails, due to how small these thumbnails can be across devices. In addition, YouTube provides a number of tools for channels such as Studio 31 to market their own websites and communities within the platform.
When this "marketing" tactic was first used during the Summer of 2023, TVNewsTalk and The News Center decided that the best course of action, should this continue, was to continue to allow the links, while deleting the thumbnail/embed. We also made it known to Studio 31/Broadcast Plaza that we were upset that they chose this route to "market" their community. For some time, the thumbnail-embedded ads stopped, but were reintroduced this past Saturday with the launch of WABC's new graphics, which we believe was a targeted attempt at, once again, getting the ads onto our respective community platforms. In response, the embeds were removed, however, the link to the videos remain for anyone to click.This claim misrepresents and exaggerates the advertising policy enforcement actions being taken by TVNewsTalk and The News Center.
Rebuttal #3: Regarding alleged "competition":
(A TVNewsTalk.net Editorial presented by Operations Director Weeters)
Several times, Studio 31 makes references to "competition" within our communities. Let me be perfectly frank: neither TVNewsTalk, nor The News Center, is in competition with anybody. This is a niche interest. It is a diverse community of individuals who are interested in the various aspects of TV news and broadcasting. "Competing" with Broadcast Plaza would simply be competing with ourselves, and that only serves to cause division within the larger community.
Studio 31 claims that TVNewsTalk and The News Center are the only people calling this a "war". This is incorrect. The only one who thinks this perceived "competition" (another term we haven't used previously) is being seen by the other side as a "war" , is Studio 31 and Broadcast Plaza. Despite their accomplishment at becoming "Discord’s Largest Media Community", Studio 31 and Broadcast Plaza indicate that is not enough for them. That they must continue to grow their own section of the community through deceit, gaslighting, and personal attacks against members of our staff and member base. This is not how you build community. This "us vs. them" mentality is how you drive a wedge into an existing community for your own personal gain.
Why do they feel the need to "grow"? I can't come up with a good reason. There is no prize awarded for being "the largest media community" other than bragging rights, which they have already attained. These videos cannot be monetized. The content being shared is not the property of the people uploading it. I have zero interest in fighting these stupid battles. This alleged "competition" is not worth my time. I will continue to enforce our existing policies regarding advertisements. If Broadcast Plaza and their "partners" feel the need to "market" their own slice of the community to the rest of the community in an attempt to "grow", their advertisements will be dealt with accordingly, as I would any other type of advertisement placed on this board. I have zero intention of "competing" with Studio 31 and Broadcast Plaza, but I will not stand by as they attack the community, our Members, and our Staff.
Merriam-Webster defines "competition" as "the effort of two or more parties acting independently to secure the business of a third party by offering the most favorable terms" and "a contest between rivals", I am not putting in effort to secure anybody's allegiance. I do not see Studio 31 or Broadcast Plaza as a "rival". It's about time they start acting that way, too.
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Closing this thread as it's gone wildly off course from the initial topic.
Folks, it costs nothing to create a new thread... Just Saying...
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I really like the overall lower thirds/OTS/boxes/etc (though there are some questionable choices in certain aspects). You can really tell a lot of thought went into making this into a comprehensive package where everything works with everything else. The in-show graphics remind me a lot of the original NewsNation graphics and the ABC O&O package being rolled out.
But... and I know this is a tough pill for some to swallow, but the 3D stuff ruins it. They look like they came from a graphics package that debut 12 years ago. The opens being a bunch of 3D text and logos flying around with no reason is completely out of place in this package where everything else is designed with some thought and order. It honestly looks like they debut a mashed up old and new graphics package. Did two different firms work on this or something? Did they change course halfway through and not want to pay to redo the opens and interstitial stuff?The very first transition out of black and into the show in that WAXN video seems like it "fits" better. You can have some 3D, but stuff like the logos flying in and the letters twirling around has been a news graphics cliche for at least the past decade (where it should have been left.)
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Oh, this again. Fun fact: It's been longer since WPVI tried changing music (27 years) than it was from when they started using MCTYW to when they tried changing it (24 years.)
Only on TVNT will a graphics package or set that's older than 5 years be declared "ancient", but a music package used for 50+ years is something that shouldn't be touched. A lot has changed in the last 27 years (namely declining viewership!) and I suspect that a subtle modernization of the music (the 1996 version was anything but subtle, it was a drastic change that tried to make MCTYW into a serious, The Mission-style orchestral news package, which it is definitely not) wouldn't result in the "riots in the street" people around here like to imagine happening.
We know they have selection of 615-made cuts they've been using for a few years now, I would imagine most viewers are now used to hearing "the music" that's not specifically the 1972 version.
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6 hours ago, T.L. Hughes said:
contradictions of being unable to continue local news investment despite high executive compensation...
This came up in the Discord the other day and isn't even true. Sinclair executives have a base salary close to or equal to that of most of their peers, and even with stock grants are lower than others.
Compensation in 2022 (Source: salary.com)
Chris Ripley (President and CEO, Sinclair Broadcast Group): $9,632,015 total compensation, $1,379,700 base pay. (David Smith has an identical pay)
Perry Sook (Chairman and CEO, Nexstar Broadcasting): $39,318,892 total compensation, $1,995,193 base pay.
Hilton H. Howell Jr. (Executive Chairman and CEO, Gray Television): $7,922,375 total compensation, $1,350,000 base pay.
Adam P. Symson (President and CEO, E.W. Scripps): $15,043,797 total compensation, $1,200,000 base pay.
David T. Lougee (President and CEO, Tegna Inc.): $7,271,601 total compensation, $975,000 base pay.
Any of these 5 could take a symbolic salary of $1 and live solely off their stock grants (which makes up the majority of the difference between base pay and total compensation) and all it would net the company is a little wiggle room for a handful of station's CapEx budget.
The FCC is not going to revoke anyone's licenses because they canceled local news and replaced it with a regional newscast. That's insane. It would be a political nuclear bomb that would likely end up gutting the FCC of those and other powers. How long have New Jersey politicians been complaining about WWOR's news coming from New York City? Literally nothing has happened there and it's been going on for almost 15 years.
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On 7/16/2016 at 2:02 PM, Weeters said:
The logo changed by the time they moved into their new building in 1978, which may have been when it debut.
I found another article from 1981 talking about WISN and Hello Milwaukee, which references ad agency Frankenberry Laughlin and Constable as WITI's "long-time advertising agency". They resigned from the WITI account by the time the 1982 article about bringing back the Gari "Winners" campaign was published, but that means one thing: Gari was in the Frankenberry Laughlin and Constable Rolodex. The article also mentions two campaigns I haven't seen, "It's Always TV6" and "It's a Milwaukee" (???).
I vaguely remember hearing part of a "You sure look like a Winner" jingle in WITI's 50th anniversary special, but it looks like that's been scrubbed from the internet. Might have to dig through the VHS archives at One TVNT later.
6 years later, we have an answer.
In the past 6 years, the promos in question were re-uploaded
and, going down a rabbit hole in the Copyright Office search tonight led me to
So... There we have it.
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17 hours ago, 13 Eyewitness News said:
And I'm not sure I understand this idea of standardized graphics anymore, [...] So, yeah, even though I don't like it, the package at WLS is much better done in that it was clearly designed for them and everything seems to be an appropriate size, while what's at KTRK looks like a rushed copy-and-paste job with changes that don't make sense which make things a lot less legible.
It's a base graphics package that both stations' meteorologists have customized for their needs. If you don't like the way it looks on KTRK, well, that's the way their meteorologists have decided to use it. It's essentially a LEGO set. They were sent a box of parts, and this is how they've assembled them.
There's nothing more that can be said about this.
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I think we've gone over the weather graphics debate enough. People love to claim on here that viewers will switch away from Channel X in droves because they adopted the Tegna music, or because the weather graphics aren't "weathery" enough, and are almost always proven wrong.
It's not even worth my time to rebut the absurd claims being made.
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2 hours ago, 13 Eyewitness News said:
but KTRK has had similar looking red High pressure icons in their last 3-4 weather graphics packages, which were all made by Hothaus Creative.
Those are generic WSI icons as well. Here they are being used on a WTOC weather map from 2019. It's extremely rare for a broadcast graphics package to have entirely custom weather graphics. Most stations just go with whatever defaults are available on the system (WSI Max, Baron Lynx, Accuweather) they have for stuff like high/low icons, hurricanes, etc.
I used to have the "menu" of icons WSI licensed out (to prevent multiple stations in the same market from using the same icons, there were 4-5 default packs that get exclusively licensed in each market) but I don't think I have it anymore.
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Daystar's YouTube thumbnails are all high quality design work, it wouldn't surprise me if they did that all in-house and WWJ just went with it.
The logo is probably official, because someone had the common sense to refuse to slap anything with the word "News" on this show. Don't get your hopes up that they'll start rolling it out elsewhere... I'd wager this was done specifically to distance this from their news product, regardless of what time it airs.
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Firstly, blue for high pressure and red for low pressure is the NOAA standard marking. Also, I'm fairly certain those are both just generic graphics that came with the systems... That KTRK one was designed in the weather office if it isn't a generic one. No broadcast designer would have made that.
For what it's worth, WLS is using generic WSI high/low pressure system icons...
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- Popular Post
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Thread cleaned up and unlocked. The user that initiated the disruption has been banned.
In the future, I humbly ask members to use the "report post" function and the block tools built into the forum over "backseat modding" users disrupting a thread.
-Weeters
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There's not many things I dislike about this package. I'll agree the opens are a little busy, it will be interesting to see how they evolve over time.
The music though... The music is bad. I am sure some people are going to love that previously unheard cuts of the "classic" music are being used, but hoo boy, they are 22 years old, and you can tell why they were tossed in a drawer in 2001 and forgotten about. My understanding is these might not have been their first choice, but for various reasons this is what they ended up with. It would be nice if they find the money in the coming years to commission something new. It's past time for some of these Gari packs on the O&Os to be put out to pasture, or at least updated to not sound like a bunch of 90's synth work.
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Scripps - General Discussion
in Corporate Chat
Posted
Must just not be listening close enough. They're on some of the stinger transition animations.