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NewsNation Launch Thread


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Thread Notice: On March 1, 2021 WGN America will rebrand as NewsNation. As it will then become a proper cable news network, this thread documenting the start of the show as it existed on WGN America will be closed on that date. Please consider starting new threads to cover other aspects of the new network.

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15 hours ago, CalItalian2 said:

The ratings, households, demos are getting worse by the day. If you can't see this is DOA, you don't understand the delivery of news today and in the future. NewsNation has no future. 

Let me ask again, who hurt you and why do you want to see WGNa/NewsNation fail so badly.

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15 hours ago, CalItalian2 said:

The ratings, households, demos are getting worse by the day. If you can't see this is DOA, you don't understand the delivery of news today and in the future. NewsNation has no future. 

 

The ratings are doing okay, they are certainly not failing as you suggest.  I think NewsNation will be around for years to come--it's better than the ratings that WGN America had before with comedy reruns. 

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59 minutes ago, hmaxhanson said:

The user probably misses the WGNAmerica of olds.

Tell him this: Blue Bloods is on streaming, Movies: Streaming, sitcom reruns, dramas, etc. Streaming and or physical (DVDs/BluRay).

 

Change is hard, but its an adjustment.

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49 minutes ago, ColtFromGulfcoast said:

I miss the old days of Superstation WGN too but these are the times now. I do think that WGN could be a successful hybrid general Entertainment/news channel.  We shall see.

I miss the CUBS games. 2014 were the last time they were on WGN AMERICA. I'm sure BRAVES fans say the same thing for WTBS  I miss analog TV also.

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3 hours ago, jrogo said:

If any of you are interested in looking at more pictures and renderings of the NewsNation sets, Clickspring has posted them:

https://www.clickspringdesign.com/portfolio/wgna-newsnation-2020/

They portray the anchor desk to be rotated into multiple different positions, but it seems like they have no intention to do so on the live broadcasts. I wonder if they tried it during rehearsals and scrapped the idea.

 

I also thought we'd be seeing a lot more of the newsroom studio on the cable side of things, but they're barely, if ever, using it. Are they doing any professional shots of the newsroom studio on the digital side of things?

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The Fox ads were being broadcasted over the NN Live stream (which appeared to just be taking what WGN America is piping out to satellite providers, as if you tune in a couple of minutes before 8 PM Eastern you'd see the credits of Last Man Standing) so it may be national. 

Speaking of which, the one day where they DIDN'T just pipe out WGNA and tried to use an internal feed to not show TV commercials online, they botched a handoff and so instead of going to the story about the black ballet dancer, you saw anchor Marnie Hughes recording a promo and eating her salad, which was referenced on the Thursday newscast. 

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I really liked the west coast fire "team coverage" they had on Friday, utilizing some of their local Nexstar reporters (from KOIN, KTXL, and KTLA). Just wondering where Nancy Loo fits into all of this.

 

Also, NN is utilizing Rich on Tech and Dean Richard's entertainment reports this weekend... didn't fully catch Rich DeMuro's report, but Dean Richard's was a NewsNation specific report (ie. it wasn't just pulled from WGN9's rundowns).

 

Update: WGN9's Dina Bair also has a NN Health Report this evening.

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19 hours ago, Spring Rubber said:

They portray the anchor desk to be rotated into multiple different positions, but it seems like they have no intention to do so on the live broadcasts. I wonder if they tried it during rehearsals and scrapped the idea.

 

I also thought we'd be seeing a lot more of the newsroom studio on the cable side of things, but they're barely, if ever, using it. Are they doing any professional shots of the newsroom studio on the digital side of things?

  
I believe it’s a 3-4 person job to rotate the anchor desk/base. That said, they probably like having the option, but just don’t want to have to deal with the hassle of moving it. Could be saving that for Election Night.

 

The newsroom set(s) are likely not being used that often because of the pandemic (limiting the amount of people in one space). 

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Nexstar had Jaime Chambers fly up from San Diego to plop him outside Detroit, Oregon, one of the cities which burned, while Nancy Loo was in Phoenix, OR on the southern Oregon fires (outside of Medford). I guess Jaime is reporting for other Nexstar stations as well. 

Are you talking about the set with the three chairs kind of casually around a coffee table? I just don't see the need to move the hosts up there, this isn't a morning show. They do have the digital newsroom set for NN Your Morning, which basically interrupts what Ji Suk Yi or Elizabeth Chmurak are doing for two minutes every hour to read headlines behind background video. And, the "feed room report" (Ashley Ketz/Felicia Bolton) is supposed to be in the newsroom reporting. 

 

 

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Quick observation: Having prerecorded weather coverage on the rerun isn't much help, especially when we're talking about an actively-evolving situation with tornado warnings, flood warnings, etc.

 

They had both Albert Ramon and Gerard Jebaily in studio for Hurricane Sally coverage with a plethora of reporters out in the field.

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9 hours ago, Spring Rubber said:

Quick observation: Having prerecorded weather coverage on the rerun isn't much help, especially when we're talking about an actively-evolving situation with tornado warnings, flood warnings, etc.

 

They had both Albert Ramon and Gerard Jebaily in studio for Hurricane Sally coverage with a plethora of reporters out in the field.

 

NewsNation didn’t go live for all six hours with a hurricane inching closer to landfall to an area where they have resources on the ground? Not what you need to be doing if you want to be a 24-hour news network in the future. 
 

Your local crews will be on the air for 12-24 hours straight after this is said and done, national crew can suck up doing six. Bring in the weekend crew to anchor the back half if need be. 
 

This was an opportunity to really own a story while other outlets blabbered on about something else or to show how your coverage would be different from, say, The Weather Channel’s.

 

But the second you turned on the tape, you lost it. 

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This is the problem with having this whole "west coast feed" issue. The network is programmed like a primetime scripted programming block rather than a news network. I get the impression that regardless of any major event happening, they're always going to be forced into reruns starting at 1 1pm ET.

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Guys.. this aint CNN. Its a low budget channel to sell adds, save on syndicate and showcase their local stations with local filler stories. 
 

as for the newscast last night.. I liked all the reporters adding lots of coverage. However, it came with a price. A lot of the local reporters are not ready for primetime, and it made the show appear like some small market feed service. The newsnation correspondents are decent. But some of the small market reporters contributing made it feel like a college newscast.

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1 hour ago, Spring Rubber said:

This is the problem with having this whole "west coast feed" issue. The network is programmed like a primetime scripted programming block rather than a news network. I get the impression that regardless of any major event happening, they're always going to be forced into reruns starting at 1 1pm ET.

 

Can't they just preempt the 11pm rerun for breaking news?  Or is there a contractual obligation to end it at 11pm?

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3 hours ago, newsman123 said:

As for the newscast last night.. I liked all the reporters adding lots of coverage. However, it came with a price. A lot of the local reporters are not ready for primetime, and it made the show appear like some small market feed service. The NewsNation correspondents are decent. But some of the small market reporters contributing made it feel like a college newscast.

 

It's the luck of the draw when it comes to utilizing the local reporters. Some rise to the occasion and some don't. Like I have said before, the local stations are the back-bone of this operation and NN has to work with what they got. Maybe better coordination amongst the team (at the local level, in Chicago, etc..) is needed to improve overall coverage of major stories. 

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Twice this evening, NN had a WGN Morning News-esque moment where the phoner with Dean Reynolds got cut off live on-air. It happened at the top of the 1st hour, so it might appear on the rerun (if there is one this evening).

 

WGN really has to work out their phone system. 

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They are rerunning the hour at 11 pm EDT as is from 8 pm. If they wanted to provide the most updated show without having to keep the anchors around they could have had Rudabeh Shahbazi hang around with the clips from talking with the interviews earlier in the show edited. Since the first two hours were essentially commercial free, Nexstar is giving up a decent amount of revenue for what would have been a little bit of editing time. 

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3 hours ago, polyiguana said:

They are rerunning the hour at 11 pm EDT as is from 8 pm. If they wanted to provide the most updated show without having to keep the anchors around they could have had Rudabeh Shahbazi hang around with the clips from talking with the interviews earlier in the show edited. Since the first two hours were essentially commercial free, Nexstar is giving up a decent amount of revenue for what would have been a little bit of editing time. 

I think we're getting more and more proof that as of right now, no matter what happens in the news, this will always be a precisely a 3-hour show that automatically reruns exactly as-is from 11pm-2am ET no matter what.

 

Maybe this changes someday, but this is how it is for now.

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12 hours ago, ED2 said:

Twice this evening, NN had a WGN Morning News-esque moment where the phoner with Dean Reynolds got cut off live on-air. It happened at the top of the 1st hour, so it might appear on the rerun (if there is one this evening).

 

WGN really has to work out their phone system. 

 

If they're using the same VOIP system we had under Tribune (which we replaced), then I am not surprised.

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