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WGN just had a major control room malfunction


Spring Rubber

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Something must have malfunctioned in the control room. When the Noon show was supposed to begin, all we got was a black screen and dead air for a good 40-60 seconds. At that point, the two-shot of Steve and Dina went on the air, but we heard the control room mics instead of Steve and Dina. Somebody in the control room (I'm guessing the director) could be heard saying, "Go to emergency (something)," and then a few seconds later, Steve and Dina's audio came on, but there were no graphics at all. At this point, they did the first 5 minutes of the broadcast without any graphics whatsoever; there was nothing except hard cuts between cameras, live shots, and b-roll. The Randi Belisomo live report was a mess. The recorded portion of her report was audio-only, and they went through the entire report playing just the audio while showing Randi's live shot as she looked down at the monitor next to her.

 

At about 5 minutes into the newscast, the graphics came back along with the bug, but less than a minute later, the screen went black for 5 seconds, and when the video came back, all of the graphics were gone again. There were still lower thirds at this point, but no bug, OTS graphics, or anything else.

 

What struck me as odd is that when Steve apologized for the technical difficulties at the end of the segment, he said that the problems were affecting WGN Chicago only and not WGN America. That surprised me because it certainly seemed like the issue was in the news control room rather than in master control or anything, but I guess not? Was WGN Chicago's master control unable to source the proper feed, and we were getting an alternate feed or something?

 

Everything has been fixed as of the second block of the show.

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Could it be that there are two feeds and the graphics are added to each as it airs and the computer that loads the local feed and puts those graphics up totally crashed? I think to broadcast two feeds you need something more than your average control room. I know that at WXYZ in Detroit their live stream is bugless while the over the air has the bug so maybe it's like that and added after the fact rather than perfectly live? It sounds like they did an ok job for having a malfunctioning computer but it's the second major malfunction in a month -- they had that no audio incident on the morning show earlier this month or the end of last month.

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Yeah, the bug is definitely separate. The one on WGN America apparently doesn't show the Chicago temperature anymore (at least when I checked during the incident today). I can't imagine the lower thirds, OTS, double box, and other graphics being separate for WGN America. I wish I would have thought to look at WGN America while the incident was taking place. I'm curious i8f they were getting the normal graphics on their feed while the Chicago feed was the only one without graphics.

 

What I did find odd was that during the recorded portion of Randi's report, she was looking down at the monitor the whole time and seemed to be watching the video just fine even though the Chicago audience was stuck looking at the live shot of her. That seems to be further evidence that the internal feed was fine and that it was just the Chicago feed that was screwed up.

 

On the other hand, while I was watching the incident take place, I noticed that when the anchors were on their singles, the cameras weren't moving to the right like they would be if the OTS graphics were actually working, so that leads me to believe that the graphics system in the control room was indeed down.

 

Man, this all feels so conflicting. I'm still not exactly sure what happened.

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Yeah, the bug is definitely separate. The one on WGN America apparently doesn't show the Chicago temperature anymore (at least when I checked during the incident today). I can't imagine the lower thirds, OTS, double box, and other graphics being separate for WGN America. I wish I would have thought to look at WGN America while the incident was taking place. I'm curious i8f they were getting the normal graphics on their feed while the Chicago feed was the only one without graphics.

 

 

For the past few weeks WGN America has had a national time/temp bug and no crawl on the bottom of the screen, but the rest of the graphics are the same. I wonder why they couldn't just switch to the WGN-A feed temporarily?
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It actually sounds to me like there could have been some electrical issue which was screwing things up. It would explain how multiple systems were affected and how some other things could remain "normal" the entire time. Things like generators don't switch on instantly, they have to spin up for a few seconds to a few minutes, so the "emergency" thing may have been an emergency switcher that was running on a UPS/batteries until the generator kicked in.

 

Just a theory, but it'd explain a lot. Something big was clearly going on if Master let them sit in black for a minute without tossing up an ID.

 

They could have automated, too. But this sounds like it might be a bit more than an automation meltdown.

 

Could it be that there are two feeds and the graphics are added to each as it airs and the computer that loads the local feed and puts those graphics up totally crashed? I think to broadcast two feeds you need something more than your average control room. I know that at WXYZ in Detroit their live stream is bugless while the over the air has the bug so maybe it's like that and added after the fact rather than perfectly live? It sounds like they did an ok job for having a malfunctioning computer but it's the second major malfunction in a month -- they had that no audio incident on the morning show earlier this month or the end of last month.

Bugs are keyed in from Master Control most of the time. Web streams usually don't feed the air program so you're seeing the raw feed from Production Control.
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Bugs are keyed in from Master Control most of the time. Web streams usually don't feed the air program so you're seeing the raw feed from Production Control.

 

I don't know if this applies, but the web streams of the Philadelphia stations, all O&Os, seem to be the full on-air product, bugs and all. (Admittedly ABC is feeding the full on-air product via its authenticated app.) I am by no means a technical expert on this, though.

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