C Block

I don't lurk in here because I try to think about Sinclair as little as possible, but I stumbled upon this job posting for a news producer for a national morning newscast. It's based in Arlington, VA (presumably WJLA) and was posted this week. I didn't see any other postings that you would associate with an upstart national project, such as an EP, anchors, reporters, and whatever else, and there aren't any postings on the SBG careers site either. Anyone have any idea what's up with this? https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2243725166

Do you think the ABC News superset will debut at the same time? Maybe Roz Abrams will make a comeback too.

Just in time for election day. Reminds me a little bit of when ABC redid the World News Tonight set and graphics with a look that was maligned on here as "public bathroom tile."

? They can do whatever they want. They can take the national coverage, do their own, or show reruns of Two and a Half Men.

I'm pretty sure Fox did separate coverage in 2016 with Shep Smith on the affiliates and all the usual goons on FNC.

Apparently WITI was one of the very last stations in the country still using Opus, the homebrew newsroom software that Tribune scraped together during bankruptcy. iNEWS may be a time warp back to 1995, but I guess at least it gets the job done.

It's....fine? It doesn't look particularly polished, but that's to be expected from KRON. The lack of a video wall in the outgoing set felt like a somewhat surprising omission given that it was built in what, 2014, so I'm sure they'll have some fun with more chances for different presenting opportunities. It feels rather small market, but KRON is a big market station that's operated like a small market one after all. Timelapse:

Wow! They took over the MTV space. I wonder if that's permanent. MTV probably hasn't been using much of that at all ever since the TRL reboot flopped. Too bad it doesn't look like they're using the windows assuming it's the exact same space. Edit: This Variety writeup says it is indeed the former MTV studio. https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/cbs-news-election-coverage-norah-odonnell-tv-1234806644/

Are they staffing guards only when there's something big like a protest, or is it more common than that? Bay Area stations have one (or several) guards on every shift going out with crews doing run of the mill day-turn stories in leafy suburbs. It has been this way for a few years now. (Not that this question has anything to do with what happened, I'm just curious.)

Here are my thoughts. This whole thing sucks. I didn't know that Denver stations were hiring guards for their crews now – I thought it was something that mostly happened only in the Bay Area market and maybe LA. The Bay Area stations also contract out their guards to another security company. They're usually former cops, and they often work for different stations from one day to the next. They spend a lot on security – last I heard it was in the high six figures every year just for one station. Before the stations were hiring guards, crews were getting mugged left and right, and it

I feel like I’ve caught enough of NewsNation to form an opinion. It’s not that it’s necessarily bad, but it’s just a really puzzling concept and execution. Nexstar could have had a much bigger (but less sexy) impact had they pumped $20 million into their existing stations instead of trying to make something up from scratch. I still think the overall positioning is setup for failure. WGN is a brand that is somewhat known nationally, yet they barely use it anywhere other than in some of the set pieces. NewsNation is otherwise how everything is branded, and it’s such a generic soundin

That’s how most of our breaking news actually shakes out. In rolling breaking news, no producer has time to put together a rundown, no director has time to code one, and nobody cares about flare. As long as it comes off looking clean switching from different video tapes and live sources with maybe a double box or two in there, everyone’s happy. Where I am, our directors can end up switching manually and avoid all the Ignite coding/automation nonsense pretty well. We also have, at minimum, the ability for master control to punch up our newsroom cam and a crawl in the event that there’s breaking

Not sure to what extent this applies, but some non-Nexstar stations that have content sharing agreements with Nexstar stations in adjacent markets are now being told that their partnerships have been suspended.

World Tease Tonight

Losing CNN won’t be that big of a deal for big four affiliates. CNN certainly provides a lot, but it’s all content that everyone else has from being CNN affiliates. I don’t think relying too much on CNN content is a very good producer habit, and at least the network feeds provide something that you know your competitors likely won’t have. Losing CNN will, however, screw over any station that’s not a big four affiliate, particularly WPIX, KTLA, WGN, and KRON. A patchwork content feed of Nexstar stations is a poor substitute.