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The Hearst Thread


aleckrohto

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hearst Stations won several headliner awards. WBAL Radio won 2 awards, WBAL-TV 4, WCVB 5 and WYFF 2. It is very interesting seeing their flagships jockeying for the same awards. I wonder how many they were nominated for. I believe their newspapers won several as well but since this is a broadcasting forum I did not include them.

 

Here are the results in alphabetical order:

 

WBAL-AM

 

Best of show: Radio:

“Pimlico Preakness Jockeys of Tomorrow”

Scott Wykoff

 

Radio stations newscast, all markets:

Second place

“April 30th, 4 p.m.”

WBAL Radio News

 

Radio stations feature and human interest story, all markets

First place

“Pimlico Preakness Jockeys of Tomorrow”

Scott Wykoff

 

WBAL- TV

 

Broadcast or cable television stations newscast

Second place

“11News at 5:00 – April 30, 2014”

Shannon Encina, Traci White and WBAL-TV News Team

 

Broadcast or cable television stations continuing coverage of a single news event

Second place

“26th Street Collapse”

WBAL-TV 11 News Team

 

Broadcast or cable television stations health/science reporting

Third place

“Medical Compilation”

Lisa Robinson, Donna Hamilton and WBAL-TV News Team

 

Broadcast television stations website

First place

WBALTV.com

WBALTV.com team

 

WCVB

 

Broadcast or cable television stations newscast

First place

“NewsCenter 5 at 11: Back Bay Fire”

Chris Roach and Nick Terry

 

Third place

“NewsCenter 5 at 11 p.m.: Revere Tornado”

Chris Roach and Nick Terry

 

Broadcast or cable television stations coverage of a live breaking news event

Second place

“Revere Tornado”

Andrew Vress, Gerry Wardwell and the NewsCenter 5 team

 

Broadcast or cable television stations health/science reporting

First place

“Battle Against Time”

Kathy Bickimer, Brian Menz and Anthony Everett

 

Broadcast television stations website

Second place

WCVB.com

 

WYFF

 

Broadcast or cable television stations documentary or series of reports on the same subject

Third place

“Chronicle: Shoeless Joe”

Lee Brown, Jennifer Mihalic and John Hendon

 

Broadcast or cable television stations business and consumer reporting

First place

“Chronicle: Main Street Carolina”

Lee Brown, Jennifer Mihalic and John Hendon

 

Sorry this wasn't organized neatly but I was posting this on my iPad which doesn't allow me to use the WSIWYG editor.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Apologies for bumping the thread ... but WGAL got the biggest update to the current news gfx package yet.

 

New open, New talent open, new cuts from Strive package, modified logo ... and the biggest yet (and something I suggested for YEARS for them) ... the NBC logo on the L3's (you won't see that on the online video tho for some reason).

 

Here is the video from News 8 Today.

 

http://www.wgal.com/nowcast

 

Well done WGAL. Have to get used to the new Strive cuts, but they did very good with this update.

 

-- Matt

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Ratings and revenue make up the difference. WVTM is a distant fourth place station and WALA is usually in either first or second place most time periods with more market share.

 

It's that way because of Media General's cheap asses. The likelihood of it regaining prominence in the Birmingham market is imminent with the building of chaos ensuing with Sinclair's acquisition and slow marginalization of ABC 33/40.

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Speaking of Hearst, has any work been done at WJCL yet? I'm guessing it gets a new logo as well.

I'm guessing WJCL is going to take some time. From what I've read about LIN is that they went the central casting route where everything was played out from one of two hubs. I believe everything is played out from from the HUB and there is no equipment at the station. Based on this I assume they are focusing on building a master control first.

 

Look at how quickly Fox was able to hub KTVU and how long it's taking WFXT to get off the Fox's hub. It's been what at least six months?

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Look at how quickly Fox was able to hub KTVU and how long it's taking WFXT to get off the Fox's hub. It's been what at least six months?

As far as graphics go, KTVU was able to adopt the O&O look as fast as it did only because they were in the process of switching to Chyron when the sale was announced. All FOX had to do was install their templates and get AXIS set up.
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Fox also had a graphics package built and ready to go for KTVU. WFXT has to build from scratch, and they couldn't even get started until they built an art department. They are probably only now getting started on any sort of new look/rebrand.

 

edit: and NOTHING happens quickly at CMG. Takes lots of research and analyzation. They are very calculated in their moves... which is smart.

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WVTM has always been a hubbed station, going all the way back to NBC when they hubbed their master controls. I believe they finally have built or are in the process of building their own master control.

 

Graphics-wise, they went from the WNBC Pyburn package to MGFX, and over to Hearst's look. MGFX probably supported them in the interim until the Hearst changes were implemented.

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WVTM has always been a hubbed station, going all the way back to NBC when they hubbed their master controls. I believe they finally have built or are in the process of building their own master control.

WVTM was hubbed but Media Generals hub was more of a control and monitor where operators in another region controlled hardware physically at their stations making me think they were more a store / forward operation. That article was from 2009 but I don't think there has been anything major aside from software/hardware upgrades. Based on the article it sounds like WVTM didn't necessarily have to make a lot of infrastructure changes given that a lot of their hardware was in place. Assuming everything was up to date it seems like they just need to handle the ingest of content and hire master control operators to build the playlists and monitor the programming.

 

There have to be other things I'm missing but the point I'm trying to make is that WVTM was in a much better position to get off the hub as most of the equipment was already in place handling day to day operations.

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It's that way because of Media General's cheap asses. The likelihood of it regaining prominence in the Birmingham market is imminent with the building of chaos ensuing with Sinclair's acquisition and slow marginalization of ABC 33/40.

I don't think viewers are going to flee ABC33/40 in droves because Sinclair bought it.

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I don't think viewers are going to flee ABC33/40 in droves because Sinclair bought it.

Depends on what Sinclair does to it. If they leave it alone like theyve done with stations like KOMO, you're right but if they start toying around with it, it could have side effects.

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I don't think viewers are going to flee ABC33/40 in droves because Sinclair bought it.

S!nclair only needs to keep James Spahn happy, and they will be pretty much set. The second he leaves, they will be toast.

 

If any station may be on the way down, it could be WIAT. But it wouldn't be a sudden collapse because of CBS's dominance in primetime and their carriage of SEC football (also vis-a-vis CBS). And very little has actually changed at WIAT... the most major change simply being the nameplate of their owners.

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WVTM has the potential to become the #2 station again if they play their cards right. Undoing the damage inflicted by Media General is the first step. They wasted no time putting in their own people and dumped the "Alabama's 13" brand as soon as they could get the Hearst material up and running.

 

WIAT ran out of gas when they reset their managment and rebranded under LIN. They had a good thing going on for the first time in their history and tossed it out the window with all of the changes.

 

For 33/40. James Spann. That is all. The Sinclair look and feel is a massive improvement though.

 

WBRC will continue to rule the Birmingham market as long as Raycom owns them.

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Btw, WVTM 13 has added a 6:30 p.m. weeknight newscast to replace Alabama TONIGHT and moved its Sunday 10:00 a.m. hour to 9:00 a.m.

 

WIAT 42 has added a weekend morning newscast for the first time and their first new newscast under Media General ownership.

 

https://changingnewscasts.wordpress.com/2015/04/29/more-news-one-move-central-alabama-wvtm-wiat/

 

Other than that, ABC 33/40 took away the Good Morning Alabama name for the ABC 33/40 Morning News, WVUA 23 is still kinda crap with just 3 newscasts at 5:00, 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. and WBRC 6 is just... KING in Central Alabama. I just wish WBRC 6 had weekend early evening newscasts as well.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Hearst will be selling KITV/Honolulu and their satellites to one-time KHON owner SJL.

 

http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/20150513_Local_TV_station_sold.html

It makes no sense as I mentioned in this thread as they never sell and rarely buy.

 

Aside from this I want to mention something else. Over the last two to three months WBAL has rolled out new Multi box graphics that are not 16:9 safe. When it's a two box the anchors and reporters generally fall in to the 4:3 safe zone but when it's three or more people their faces are cut off. All the other graphics are still 4:3 safe. I watch in HD most of the time but on occasion I remain on the SD feed. Someone on their staff should have noticed it as in the news room and on their in house computer feed they take the SD Comcast feed which is center cut 4:3. I'm curious are their other stations' SD feeds letter boxed or center cut?

 

Related to this they also center cut network programming that should be letter boxed. It's fine during news but during entertainment and sports programming the score bug is cut off. I've cycled through my TV and cable box settings to see if their was a mistake but no luck. I wrote to them on their contact form and via twitter to mention this but have received no response. I wonder if this is an issue on their side or if Comcast is not encoding the signal right.

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  • 3 weeks later...

 

Anybody know when WJCL might get the new look?

 

 

Speaking of Hearst, has any work been done at WJCL yet? I'm guessing it gets a new logo as well.

 

http://wjcl.com/2015/06/01/storm-tracker-forecast-6/

 

WJCL is starting to use the Hearst mandate on their WSI system. The rest of the station is still using the inhouse/LIN-era graphics.

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http://wjcl.com/2015/06/01/storm-tracker-forecast-6/

WJCL is starting to use the Hearst mandate on their WSI system. The rest of the station is still using the inhouse/LIN-era graphics.

I've wondered why a lot of Hearst stations have issues with the temperature boxes during weekends? It looks very odd how the column for the weekend is yellow but the box the temperatures are blue.

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Looks like the template wasnt loaded correctly. I haven't used a newer generation WSI system, but if it's anything like the WXCentral box I used, the 7day "colors" are advanced by clicking on the saved layer for each day of the week.

 

For example, the saved "Monday PM" layer would have Monday as day 7, with the highlighted weekend as day 5 & 6. "Tuesday PM" would advance the colors one column to the left.

 

In this case, it's possible there are two layers (for the highlighted day, and the "wrap" at the bottom of the graphic) and the met didn't click both before rendering the movie prior to air. OR the movie glitched while rendering and didn't load the correct layer.

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Looks like the template wasnt loaded correctly. I haven't used a newer generation WSI system, but if it's anything like the WXCentral box I used, the 7day "colors" are advanced by clicking on the saved layer for each day of the week.

For example, the saved "Monday PM" layer would have Monday as day 7, with the highlighted weekend as day 5 & 6. "Tuesday PM" would advance the colors one column to the left.

In this case, it's possible there are two layers (for the highlighted day, and the "wrap" at the bottom of the graphic) and the met didn't click both before rendering the movie prior to air. OR the movie glitched while rendering and didn't load the correct layer.

Thanks for the insight.

 

I guess the switch to the new graphics is imminent. They seem to like to switch on Wednesdays for some reason.

 

I will say it seems like they are moving quicker than I would have thought at WJCL given how much they were dependent on the hub. As far as I know they probably didn't have much of a master control infrastructure in place given how LIN is a central caster rather than command/ control situation.

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  • 3 weeks later...

So WJCL moved their site to Hearst Television's CMS provider, Lakana (the former Internet Broadcasting). However, they are not using the layout that the other Hearst stations use. Rather, they are using the same layout that Nexstar is rolling out to their stations.

 

It makes you wonder, if the other Hearst stations will get this layout in the near future, because it's responsive and the existing Hearst sites are not (they load a separate mobile skin when I browse on my iPad, for instance).

 

Check it out at http://www.wjcl.com/

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So WJCL moved their site to Hearst Television's CMS provider, Lakana (the former Internet Broadcasting). However, they are not using the layout that the other Hearst stations use. Rather, they are using the same layout that Nexstar is rolling out to their stations.

 

It makes you wonder, if the other Hearst stations will get this layout in the near future, because it's responsive and the existing Hearst sites are not (they load a separate mobile skin when I browse on my iPad, for instance).

 

Check it out at http://www.wjcl.com/

 

Looks like they got the weather portion of the Hearst package at least (not sure if this has already been covered).

 

http://www.wjcl.com/weather/more-very-hot-weather-this-afternoon/20943198/story

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