Author Archive for admin

WHDH Oops: He Does What Now?

Video from WHDH Gustav coverage going into break.
The live shot of the levee included a train car with the words “I fuck till my dick hurts” sprayed on it and clearly visible right under the lower 3rd graphic.

The Bill O’reilly Meltdown Remix

So good, it’s catchy.
Watch out for the bad words

WSVN.com Using MyWeather LLC Tools

It looks like WSVN have finally gotten around to add some better tools to the hurricane section on WSVN.com

They added an animated radar map, done in flash and using Microsoft Virtual Earth. And hurricane tracker map, also in flash, providing projected path and

Both the radar and hurricane trackers are by MyWeather LLC, the online weather solution part of WeatherCentral which provides on-air weather graphics solutions for TV stations.

I believe WSVN switched to WeatherCentral’s HD offering recently as part of their transition to HD.

/hat tip sflv reader/

Obama Speech Beats Idol Ratings

TV Decoder says Obama’s convetion speech got 38.3 million viewers beating the American Idol finale, Olympics opening ceremony and the Oscars.

Nielsen included all the broadcast networks, msnbc, cnn, fox news, bet, TV One but does not include PBS or C-SPAN. PBS averaged 3.5 million viewers between 8 and 11pm. Which would put the ratings at 41.8 million viewers.

Awesome, perfect reason to kill American Idol now.

Alex Trebek Uncensored

Just don’t watch this at the office on speakers. You’ve been warned

WPTV Got the Renderon Touch

Some wondered who did WPTV’s new graphics package. It was Renderon.

WPTV’s new boss Steve Wasserman, who headed WDIV in Detroit, also commissioned Renderon for that station’s WDIV’s graphics which are backed by music from WSVN’s Chris Crane.

Some frameshots below courtesy of Dan from Renderon

Danielle Knox on Lifetime Program

Many have asked whatever happened with Danielle Knox who left WFOR amidst the changes that were taking place well here’s a bit of info.

According to this press release Danielle will be on Lifetime’s The Balancing Act this morning at 7am to interview the creators of a shapewear product called Slimpressions.

The PR also notes that Danielle now has her own company, Play Pretty Beauty, “a natural-based organic bath and body care company.”

Formal Petition Against WTVJ Sale Filed

This from the Save WTVJ Blog

Miami attorney JB Harris announced today that he would file a formal petition with the FCC to stop the proposed sale of Miami television station WTVJ (NBC6) by owner NBC Universal to rival Post-Newsweek Stations, which owns and operates Miami’s WPLG (Channel 10).

The petition is being filed on behalf of a Coalition of Concerned Citizens for Competition and Fairness in Broadcast Journalism, headed by William McCormick, former President of the Fort Lauderdale NAACP.

The petition is 14 pages long!

I guess when someone said there was a grassroots effort to stop the merger they were not kidding.

We wish them success.

Press release for petition filing

WPTV’s Big Olympic Numbers

The Palm Beach Post notes that WPTV ranked No.1 station in the country for the Beijing Olympics with an 8.0 rating 0.2 ratings points ahead of KFOR-Oklahoma City and KSL-Salt Lake City which tied for number 2.

Then from 11 to 11:15pm on Saturday when Michael Phelps competed for his 8th gold medal WPTV had 50 share! As in 50% of Palm Beach and Ft. Pierce counties were tuned to Channel 5.

Unfortunately there may not be much fire in the “money demo”. The article quoted WPTV’s programming director Bernadette O’Grady who attributed the big ratings to large number of “elderly retirees”, “kids at home” and people home from work due to Tropical Storm Fay.

At any rate though No. 1 in the nation and half of your viewing area paying attention to you is not bad. No station would turn that down regardless of demo numbers, if only for bragging rights. Besides, those “elderly retirees” got all the cash stash anyway

NBC6 11pm Exec Producer Leaves

Chris Pena executive producer of WTVJ’s 11pm newscast is leaving for Chicago’s NBC-owned station WMAQ to become assitant news director.

Before heading the 11pm news newscast on WTVJ, Chris was WSCV Telemundo 51’s news director. /via MediaMoves/

New WPTV Graphics Package

WPTV has new graphics. I believe they debuted it before hurricane coverage?

The logo got a minor update, now it’s white color even on the site. And there’s a a peacock logo on the bottom right side.

The open is flashy, the teasers also have a lot of swooshing graphics elements. In all the new look has picked up speed it seems.

I wonder if the change is the idea of the new chief, Steve Wasserman, who took over the helm of WPTV in early May. He headed KPRC-Houston and WDIV-Detroit. WDIV got a similarly faster paced more flashier make-over not long ago when he stepped in as a general manager.

I think the new look is pretty nice. It’s not too annoying although the logo transitions in the teasers are a bit overdone. And the lower 3rds are just huge!

Overall much nicer look than what debuted when WPTV went HD with the blue/white which looked very cold and sterile.

New Open:

New Teaser:

Previous Open (high quality):

Hi from Seattle

I has arrived!
Sheesh, finally made it.

Sunday evening actually but Mariott apparently doesn’t give much love to their Courtyard digs so I had to leach WiFi from somebody with an open connection and didn’t want to type passwords that someone could be sniffing.

Continue reading ‘Hi from Seattle’

No She Wasn’t

Someone has confused Belkys adjusting her mic with … um … something else, like grabing/adjust certain parts of the female body.

But that’s not as striking as the fact that the video as of this writing has gotten over 405,000 views and climbing steadily.

That’s more eyeballs than Channel 7 newscasts get in one day probably.

/thx Brandon/

Save WTVJ the Blog

Someone, I presume a viewer from reading the first post, has created a blog called “Save WTVJ“. It pretty much says what many have said in the comments here that are against the deal going trough, listing all the reasons on why the FCC should reject Post-Newsweek’s buy of NBC6.

So far the Miami Herald has come against the deal. And even WTVJ partner Sun Sentinel printed reader comments who opposition to the deal. Others have posted in forums and other sites and encouraged viewers to let the FCC know.

As someone once said - But will it work? We’ll find out soon enough

Former WPTV Sportscaster Passes Away

Buck Kinnaird who was the sports director at WPTV from 1962 to 1983 has passed away at age 82 at his home in North Palm Beach.

Ironically Kinnaird gave a eulogy for Jim Gallagher, WPEC’s sports director, who passed away 5 weeks ago.

WPTV’s Jim Sackett had a report remembering Kinnaird and his time at WPTV

Palm Beach Post: Ex-Channel 5 sportscaster Buck Kinnaird dies at 82

*Including Spanish Stations For WTVJ Sale Approval

I’ve been wondering about something for a while.

Call me crazy but why are Spanish stations used to support the approval of the WTVJ sale?

If the public airwaves are supposed to serve the public, ie taxpayers, how is including a station that broadcasts in a foreign language serving the public interest?

And yes Spanish is a foreign language so don’t go about arguing with me how it’s not. When you go to get a visa at consulate abroad, such as student, work, or even a visitor visa a decent command of the English language is expected from you. I know, been there done it. English is also a requirement in the citizenship test.

And yes I know public interest bla bla you’re on crack. I haven’t smoked anything, really, I know it’s all bullshit, business and all about making money for the rich white guys to buy their hookers and everything but still. Just wondering, or ranting as it is by now.

This rant of course assumes there will be no news on WTVJ once, or if, it merges with WPLG. So there are a lot of unknowns still at play.

I don’t particularly get my news from local tv stations anymore even for someone with a blog like this, but many other people do. It would be elitist to assume everyone wakes up in the morning and checks RSS feeds and what not.

Even though the polls say majority of people think the media isn’t honest and the daily sludge that passes as news is anything but I’d like to think there is still some redeeming quality to local news in general.

Still. The more I think about it the more I’m starting to believe the removal of an English language newscast, if it should be done, should be considered on fair terms.

Based on data from english language stations only since viewers of Channel 6, or most of them, probably do not speak Spanish so Spanish stations can’t really be considered a choise.

But then WTVJ wouldn’t be 6th overall. On many days WTVJ’s news finish 3rd and 4th at 11pm and lead in the morning. Assuming ratings data is correct and don’t even get me started on flawed ratings.

So if we were to accept that the newscast is the most important part of the station then using sign-on to sign-off ratings data and include Spanish stations is another way to adjust the numbers to suit the goal. Kind of like car dealers.

And FYI, I’m not anti anything, I just feel like there’s an apples and oranges thing going on

* My views are in constant state of flux in a space where gravity and normal laws don’t apply. So if you feel they’re wrong do tell why and why I should change them