I just had to share this. WCAU the NBC Owned & Operated station in Philadelphia just got a mobile X-Band dual polarity mobile radar. NBC has outfitted some of their stations with either Ford F-250s or Jeep Wranglers with mobile weather stations, the capability to go live on the road via LiveU (one I think has a mobile satellite uplink) and radar systems that were designed for marine based systems with a range of 60 miles. WCAU being located in the hometown / headquarters of Comcast (the owners of NBC) has gotten a ton of toys - a soured up Bell 206 Long Ranger L4 with an HD gimbal camera (think it's been upgrade to UHD) with a telestrator dubbed Sky Force 10, a storm chaser based on a Chevy Suburban dubbed StormForce 10, a Jeep Wrangler with another weather station and live ability dubbed RoadForce 10, during the winter the sponsor a Zamboni for (what I think is the go to) ice rink in Philadelphia that is wrapped and branded and now they have this X-Band mobile radar dubbed Storm Ranger.
— NBC10 Philadelphia (@NBCPhiladelphia) July 4, 2016
I'm wondering how they will treat the radar data. I heard they generate about 3Gbps but for permanently based radar systems the compress it down to 50Mps. So what I want to know is if it will be treated as a regular radar sending the signal back to station via satellite or what ever and appear on their WSI Maps or if they have an engine rendering maps on the truck and beaming them back as a video signal the traditional way.
That being said I think this is a waste - there is not much severe weather in the Philadelphia region. The money would have been better spent on a fixed site.
WCAU (and all the other Philadelphia stations) have long come in behind the 30 + year market leader the ABC Owned WPVI who have continuity and loyalty to their anchors and reporters. I believe someone mentioned that at the turn of the century they still used a chroma key screen for OTS elements on the main set and to show reporters on scene and that they were using a magnetic whiteboard for weather as well. WCAU has been making gains on them as a solid second - but not enough for 6ABC to sweat. WCAU is differentiating themselves with hard news and weather where they focuse less on health / consumer stories (unless it's a bug one) or ones that would be considered fluff (which is what a lot of WPVI Does).
For the Fourth of July WCAU and their Telemundo station WWSI took over broadcast rights from WPVI for the WaWa Welcome America Festival (music, food and other things) and there were people on Twitter why it wasn't on WPVI? For some Philadelphians WPVI is all they watch and can't bother to change the dial. There was some criticism about the WCAU/WWSI broadcast but it ultimately had to do with the acts. The Roots a Philadelphia staple and the house band on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon apparently had a spat with the new mayor and they wouldn't perform and because of that they couldn't get the acts that would come with The Roots.
Philly is a strange market. I know that these live weather vehicles are marketing tools. But it seems like a lot of money to spend. Philly is not known for it its tornadic/stormy weather. St Louis/KC/OKC/Tornado Alley/Dixie Alley or other bad weather prone areas....but Philly. I get it, but this is a clear example of wasted resources. Fine they want to create a "weather tracker" vehicle, which are becoming more popular, but to install a pricey radar seems a bit much. From what I've seen, I dont think any OKC station has gone that far. And the stations warrant IMO any tools they can get their hands consider they are the tornado capital of the planet. Oh well.
Gotta agree, this is a huge waste of money for a relatively benign weather environment. There are other stations in the regions Mouseboy mentions that could have done well with that money/kit to provide a better local service for their viewers.
Gotta agree, this is a huge waste of money for a relatively benign weather environment. There are other stations in the regions Mouseboy mentions that could have done well with that money/kit to provide a better local service for their viewers.
Someone on TVNT mentioned that the branding for the truck is generic. No specific markings to WCAU or WWSI. I think it may be used for more than one station but Philadelphia maybe the home base.
I wasn't sure where to put this (I don't think it deserves it's own thread) so sorry if it needs moving.
Ex CNN New Day host Michaela Pereira is launching her own morning show on HLN on Monday. It's going to be running 7-10 and surprisingly that's on Western time:
There is a CNN thread on here — specifically for CNN International, but other CNN US/HLN/CÑN stuff gets put in there too.
I have always been a fan of Michaela ever since the KTLA days, and I hope her show does well. Though I honestly don't understand what CNN is doing with HLN. It went all-in with the populist, where-is-that-dead-child programming, but that wasn't really a viable strategy. Then they decided it would be the social media channel, but that hasn't really panned out either. The whole channel is now so fragmented with a semblance of its old rolling news ways with Morning Express and Michaela, and that seems to be successful. Then there's the Daily Share, which, to be honest, I have no idea what that show is like on a regular basis. Nancy Grace is leaving at night, which leaves...? And then repeats of Forensic Files fills in everything else in the afternoon and overnight hours. They might as well be running test patterns.
Looks as if something big is happening in Studio 3A (Main Newsroom Studio) in 30 Rock... Morning Joe, and all Primetime shows have moved into Studio 3K (Home of Early Today, Last Word, etc)- while rolling news has moved upstairs into the recently renovated Nightly Newsroom (same area used for Dateline's On Assignment)...
Last big upgrade was, of course, its construction in 2007 (aside from move to HD and recent floor changes)-- seems to coincide with the conventions in mid-July, which possibly gives construction longer.
Looks as if something big is happening in Studio 3A (Main Newsroom Studio) in 30 Rock... Morning Joe, and all Primetime shows have moved into Studio 3K (Home of Early Today, Last Word, etc)- while rolling news has moved upstairs into the recently renovated Nightly Newsroom (same area used for Dateline's On Assignment)...
Last big upgrade was, of course, its construction in 2007 (aside from move to HD and recent floor changes)-- seems to coincide with the conventions in mid-July, which possibly gives construction longer.
It's possible, though they moved out of 3A for a week (or fortnight?) a year or two back, and the work turned out to be maintenance and changes to the floor structure. They could be doing something more extensive this time around, though I'd imagine works must be constrained to an extent by the fact that it's located in a busy working newsroom.
I may be a bit presumptive on this, but the basic set is ten years-old, the fact that an election is coming up and the fact that Andy Lack wants to integrate the MSNBC & NBC News brand seems to signal some kind of change in the near future.
MSNBC has been in rolling coverage of the shooting in Dallas. Brian Williams came in along 12:15 AM ET and at 1:00AM MSNBC broke in to the NBC Network coast to coast for a 12 minute special report.
No other network aired any special reports. NBC was the first and only to run a ticker around 11:45PM ET. ABC has a live show at 12:35 ET Nightline and they did a brief recap then surprisingly went to a pre recorded package on the two murders by police caught on camera.
This was a debut of different lower thirds. If you can see there are two different styles and look a bit sloppy. I'd remove the globe to the left of the text's margin. The last image was a brief gaffe right after the report ended on the network and appeared only on MSNBC.
I'm not sure about the other feeds but the eastern NBC feed during Late Night with Seth Meyers the network cut to the MSNBC control room feed a few seconds early. The MSNBC feed with graphics and Brian Williams advising MSNBC viewers about the Special Report coming up.
