International News Presentation: Past and Present

The evolution of news intros from the (defunct) Independent Network News in the United States:

After work, tagesschau presenters in Germany make good use of their video wall.

Here's a just-uploaded video of the refresh:

A new compilation of current local news intros from Canada's CBC:

One thing I never got with CBC was when they transitioned from analog to digital they also switched from 1080i (analog dual channel era) to 720p (digital era). They claim it’s because of the additional bandwidth, but if they were already transmitting a 1080i plus a SD analog signal how would that add additional bandwidth? They don’t carry any subchannels. I think the reduction would be fine if they carried say English feed and the French language ICI Radio-Canada TēLē either in dual 720p or dual 1080i (it works well with stat muxing). I believe other HDTV (certainly the broadcast) stations in Canada are 1080i.

It's bad enough when a bit of snow dominates the headlines here but surely snow in Vancouver and Calgary isn't news.

Snow -- at least beyond trace amounts -- isn't all that common in Vancouver. From Wikipedia:

"Snow falls in the higher-lying areas of Greater Vancouver, such as Burnaby Mountain, Coquitlam, and North and West Vancouver, every winter. It is also common in places close to or at sea level, however in lesser amounts. There is a general misconception among visitors and residents of other parts of Canada that Vancouver does not receive any snow at all, but in fact there has never been a year in which traceable snow has not been observed at Vancouver International Airport."

Indeed. It was described to me when I was there a couple of years ago as; 'about the same as it falling in London'.

The local authorities don't make winter tyres mandatory in the metropolitan Vancouver

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/transportation/driving-and-cycling/traveller-information/seasonal/winter-driving/winter-tire-and-chain-up-routes

Is 720p "cheaper" to do? That may explain it too, they're practically running on fumes.

Historically 720p has compressed a bit better than 1080i if you are using MPEG2 or h.264 (interlace isn't compression-friendly) - and was seen by many (outside the UK) as a good transition to 1080p. Lots of European PSBs went 720p for broadcast (*) - SVT, NRK and DR in Scandinavia, ARD & ZDF (**)in Germany for example.
(Freeview HD on PSB3 uses some clever dynamic encoder switching to flip the encoders from 1080p25 to 1080i25 mode based on whether content has any interlaced motion, so benefits from improved efficiency when carrying 1080p25 content compared to leaving the encoders in 1080i25 mode - even if MBAFF interlaced coding is used.)

If you are using ATSC 1.0 MPEG2, as the CBC are, and need to carry more than one HD service, then 720p may deliver a better subjective picture than 1080i. With modern encoders the difference may be less - but may still make a difference with MPEG2 (which is less optimised for interlace than h.264)

If you go to HEVC then don't use interlace. There is no optimisation for it - and it sends each 1080i field as a 540p progressive frame effectively (like the terrible first gen h.264 encoders)

(*) The Scandinavian PSBs run 1080i internally (and produce drama in 1080/25p not 720p25) and convert to 720p for broadcast.
(**) ARD and ZDF accepted both 720p and 1080i delivered content ISTR - and now run 1080p50 on DVB-T2 using HEVC. I don't know if they are producing 1080p50 content or just upconverting 1080i25 to 1080p50 using a high-quality deinterlacer.

As do the HD channels on COM 7 and 8 too

And here's one for CTV's local news: