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Monthly Archive for March, 2006
Detroitnews.com reports NFL has made the decision to remove all local news photogs from the sidelines preventing them to get video of the games for coverage on newscasts and sports shows.
They say it’s to protect property rights and reduce crowding of the sidelines. Interestingly photogs from the newspapers have not been removed even though increasingly newspapers post a lot of video and photos on their sites.
Tuned Out /bottom of page/
Anonymos emailer says: “CBS4’s Brush Fire coverage this evening was AMAZINGLY DONE! It’s all online at www.cbs4.com/video”
Best this or best that is rather subjective and I can’t comment since I didn’t watch. CNN Pipeline had the Sky10 feed so I pretty much knew what was the smoke was about before the news at 5 started.
Fanboys and girls feel free to duke it out in the comments.
Looks like they’ve changed the “News Today” bump and it’s pretty cool. Along the lines of what New Video bumper graphics are but much cooler. There’s a sphere, that looks a lot like the borg sphere on Star Trek, that opens up and a 7 logo pops out. Everything is very blue and chrome.
I’m sleepy, lazy and watching the solar eclipse live from Turkey, but I’ll try to get some screen shots later today if nothing crashes. Been having issues with my PC for a while.
Update:
I find it amusing how the 7 logo comes out of a Borg-like sphere 
. And I do like how busy the background is but those things rotate a bit too fast.
Some screencaps. I’m too lazy to to get the video it takes so long to edit and encode.
See I told you something like this was going to happen. They posted Mike Kirsch’s driver’s licence info on the Broward police Benevolent association site where notices of wanted people are. When CBS4 attorney complained they took the info down, and put it back up a few days later this time with his home address, car tag number, censored, on display.
You can see the video and the report on CBS4.com watch the video with the interview of the BPBA who said they put Mike’s info to warn other officers from people like him.
My take on things is, they are basically telling 4 visavi Mike Kirsch, and everyone else too, we’re watching you so be careful what you do. The good thing is there’s no sign of CBS4 backing down.
Now I understand why sometimes stations prefer to be in unmarked vechicles. I would not be surprised if we hear news vans are getting pulled over for speeding.
Thanks to the tipster who sent me the link
It wasn’t long ago they said they were working on a new site and the new look has made it oficially. Not sure I like it
Someone tipped me to this last week or so, but I forgot to post about it, sorry for which.
Adelphia Cable is the provider in Palm Beach County, and up to Boynton Beach their system had WSVN and WPLG on channels 22 and 23 I believe.
Well recently WSVN dissapeared off the channel lineup and someone wrote a letter to Sun Sentinel’s Tom Jicha asking what happened:
Q. I live in Boca Raton. One of the stations we always had was WSVN-Ch. 7. Recently it disappeared. My cable company told me that WSVN no longer wanted to be carried by them. I miss WSVN’s local news in the morning when the other network affiliates are doing national shows. I would be the first to say WSVN might be the National Enquirer of news, but at least it was our news. Can you please tell me what happened? — E.K., Boca Raton
A. Everyone should sit down for this answer, lest you collapse from shock. It appears a cable company has not told the truth to a customer. When I contacted WSVN, the response was, “Oh my God, no!” Miami-Fort Lauderdale Fox affiliate WSVN did not ask to be taken off the system, according to the station representative. Your cable operator decided to give market exclusivity to WFLX-Ch. 29, the Fox affiliate in Palm Beach County.
Tom Jicha TV Q&A (bottom of the page)
Why? Probably because for a long time forever WFLX-FOX29 have been the last station in the ratings. They are so bad, even American Idol can’t help them. I’ve heard thru the grapevine WFLX people have complained that having WSVN on the channel lineup steals from their ratings. They are right, a lot of people like me never thought of tuning WFLX simply because there is nothing to see there but reruns or infomercials. Their only claim to fame is 10pm news, produced and staffed by WPEC and 1 hour of morning news from 7a to 8a also produced by WPEC.
I wonder if Adelphia kept WPLG or if they made WPBF market-exclusive as well? WPBF doesn’t exactly shine in the ratings either.
By the way if anyone wants WSVN back, all you have to do is write the cable company and if enough people do it, you just might get your wish.
“
” They are loud, fast and don’t play by the road rules. That’s why when news happens they usually arrive first at the scene instantly showing us what’s going on. From the latest traffic jams, to car cashes, huge crowds marching, to showing us the dreaded pictures of the latest hurricane aftermath. Sometimes even saving lives. Newschoppers are part of the local news media and in markets such as Miami where traffic seems to be getting worse with every passing month and hurricanes taking turns to see which one can do more damage, they are indispenable.
We don’t see them often but for a few frames in the latest station promo, or maybe flying over on the way to a news story. However thanks to someone nice who was kind enough to take a few shots and share them so we can all get up close and see where these news helicopters live.
Click here to see the photos – 1.4MB download
Update 03/27:
Here are some questions I asked about flying a news helicopter. If you have any questions that didn’t get answered you can use the tip link and send them to me
Q: Do you spend the whole day flying around or only when there’s news?
A: No, we have a contract of 70 hours a month to fly, we only fly when there is a story that warrants the chopper. Fire,Accidents,etc. The LA market is the only city that flys news choppers all day long, 24 hours a day (they shoot chases that never make the news)
Ch10 and Ch7 both have about 60-70 hours a month to fly, ch6 and ch4 have about 45 hours a month. The hours are like cell minutes, we have to pay a preimum if we go over per hour. Plus every 100 hours of flying, each chopper has to go through a 2 day check up, where they check everything for safety.
Q: What happens if you are at a big story and the chopper starts to run out of fuel? How long can you be in the air before needing to refuel?
A: Choppers can stay up about 3 hours before they need to refuel, if we are on a big story (hurricane coverage,chase,plane crash) Channel10 has an aggrement with Ch7 to pool the live signal to each other. This started during the FTA riots, while they were up, Sky10 was getting fuel and vice versa ( they will super wplg on their video).
Fort Lauderdale intl airport is the only place that can Hotfuel us, we will go there and gas up much like a race car, we call them 2 mins out, the gas truck is ready, runs to the chopper , fills us up and we take off again without shutting down the engine, (its illeagal in dade to hotfuel, so we love fort laudedale airport for that) the hotfuel takes about 8 mins.
Q: If all of the stations keep their choppers at the same place, and they always want to be first with breaking news, when a big story happens and everyone else is “asleep at the controls” but your station, do you tell your colleagues from other stations where you are going or do you sneak out as soon as possible and try to get to the scene before they do?
Its hard to sneak out, cause the choppers are loud, but during ratings, the choppers are always taking off and landing, its hard to keep track of where they go. We usally dont share info, it just depends, the pilots always have to talk to each other though for saftey reasons. Sometimes we will call our station and ask if anything is going on cause everyones taking off.
Q: How high do you fly? Every time I see a news chopper around they are always suprisingly low. Few weeks ago Skyforce flew over and it was low enough to see the logo.
A: The choppers can fly at any height they want, for saftey of the public below, they hover at 700 feet and fly at 500 feet, during a chase though the news goes up to 1000 feet so police can have 300-500 feet, over the water in the ocean we can fly lower, since there are no people below the pilots can fly at 100-200 feet, 1 time we were 50 feet over us customs speed boat getting video of them in the ocean and they were waving back, we were going to send them a copy but never did.
Q: How many other cameras besides the gyro are on board?
A: ch10 only has the gyro, ch6 has 2 cams on the tailboom (to get the logo shots) and 2 cams inside for reporters, ch4 is the same, only 1 on the tail, ch7 is the same as ch4.
Q: One of the photos shows all of the equipment was on the left side of the helicopter, doesn’t this affect it somewhat when it’s flying?
A: The pilot can adjust while flying, ever chopper here is diffrent, we have the pilot and photog on the same side so the action can be out our same windom, ch7 photog sits in front, ch6 sits in back on oppiste side of pilot, and not sure about ch4
Q: On the photos all the chopers sit on these things that look like carts, are the helicopters really that light that you can push them around or do you use a little truck thing like they have for the big airplanes in the airports.
A: The choppers are about 4000 pounds, yes they are pulled by a john deer tractor and put back in the hanger at night.
Q: Can helcopters glide in case of a problem, or do they fall down?
A: Choppers are actally safer than driving on the palmetto, but when a chopper crashes its usally dramatic, if you lose engine power in the air, the pilot goes within 1 sec into auto-rotation mode, we basiclly do a steep dive, then pull up at the last minute, it would be a hard landing but we may survive. the pilots actually are always looking for places to do a auto rotation when they are flying, they can land it anywhere in a emergency, but choose fields, water, etc – anywhere there are no people. Also roofs are a bad place to land.
Q: Are we going to see any of the local stations at least have 16:9 video from the helicopters and when?
A: Not sure about 16:9, or HD, its very pricey, LA and NY are the only stations that have HD chopper cams, and the picture is amazing. It could be years before that happens.
Q: Do traffic reporters fly in the helicopter during the day?
A: No they don’t, all stations have 1 photog and 1 pilot.
IBS have finally got around the bend to get the new WTVJ site out. If you click here you can see a small preview of what’s to come, if you haven’t seen the new IBS design. In my opinion it’s a much needed improvement over the current IBS-created mess.
You can see what the new site will look like by going to Dallas NBC affiliate, DC NBC affiliate WRC, obviously the header will reflect WTVJ on their site but the rest of the layout will be pretty much the same.
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