Archive for the ‘Local News’ Category

Connecticut Fox station moves into space shared with newspaper

WTIC-TV, the Fox affiliate serving Hartford, Conn., has moved into the newsroom of the city’s newspaper, the Hartford Courant.

Both station and newspaper journalists work side by side in the new facility, which has been home to the Courant for years.

More details and a photo gallery link after the jump.

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Orlando station changes branding

WESH-TV, the NBC affiliate serving Orlando, Fla., has a new slogan.

The station, which is owned by Hearst-Argyle, had been using “Big Coverage of the Big Story,” but as of Dec. 1 at 4 p.m., switched to “Local. Live. Latebreaking.”

The new slogan is based on the “LLL” branding used at many stations in the U.S., including several of WESH-TV’s sister ones. However, WESH-TV has chosen to swap “Live” and “Local” from their more common locations, likely to emphasize the local-ness of the newscasts rather than “live.”

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Expanding options could rain on TV news forecasts

There could be changes and challenges in the wind for a fixture of TV news — the weather forecast.

We’ve written before about WeatherNation, a company founded by a former Minneapolis forecaster to provide “outsourced” weather forecasts to television stations and now Broadcasting & Cable has featured the company in an article about the changing face of local TV weather.

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Philly CBS properties team up for ‘digital newsstands’

In an interesting cross-platform initiative, CBS has launched 39 digital newsstands in the Philadelphia area.

The stands, branded under the name “CBS Always On,” were converted from existing newsstands and feature an electronic ticker and high definition video monitor. The media outlets owned by CBS will provide news and information to the displays.

Participating are: CBS 3 (KYW-TV), The CW Philly 57 (WPSG-TV), KYW Newsradio 1060, 98.1 WOGL, 94 WYSP, SportsRadio 610 WIP and The Big Talker 1210AM WPHT.

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ABC O&O site revamp meant to make content easier to find

Broadcasting & Cable has additional information about the news we reported earlier about ABC tweaking the design on its O&O station Web sites.

The articles points out the previous version was meant to look more like television screens, a move that apparently didn’t go over well with users.

Beat the Traffic launches BlackBerry App

Earlier this year we covered some of Beat the Traffic’s new innovations for television stations, now Beat the Traffic has introduced an App to make everyone’s commute faster than ever.

The Beat the Traffic App for BlackBerry provides live traffic maps, showing traffic speeds and incidents on major routes for more than 100 cities in the USA and Canada.

Live traffic cameras are accessible in 33 cities: New York City, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Toronto, Phoenix, Seattle, San Bernardino, Minneapolis, Denver, Portland, Sacramento, San Antonio, Providence, Nashville, Memphis, Louisville, Hartford, Buffalo, Salt Lake City, Raleigh-Durham, Tucson, Fresno, New Haven, Omaha, Bakersfield, Boise, Chattanooga, Redding, Macon, Beaverton.

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ABC O&Os dump huge video players

The ABC O&O Web sites have undergone a slight change: No longer is the large video player the centerpiece of the homepage. WPVI-TV, the ABC affiliate in Philadelphia, is shown here.

Instead, the site now features a more traditional rotating gallery of content, a big shift away from the video-centric message the previous versions had.

YouTube introduces ‘YouTube Direct’

YouTube has launched a new tool for news organizations to directly connect with the YouTube community and billions of viewers.

YouTube Direct allows organizations to embed an uploader directly on its site for quick uploading, then a backend system allows the organizations to “quickly request, review, and re-broadcast user-submitted videos with ease.”

Mashable writes:

The potential for this is clearly pretty massive, as it allows news organizations to expand their coverage (on YouTube’s dime), citizen journalists to get exposure, and YouTube to even further strengthen its lead in online video. The company notes that ABC News, The Washington Post, and San Francisco Chronicle are among the organizations already using the platform. You can bet a lot more outfits – online and traditional – will be looking into ways to use it now that it’s live.

With many systems for creating user-submitted video available to news organizations we will see if YouTube can create a niche for its new product.

Visit the YouTube Direct website for more details.

The week that was: Busy first week of sweeps

Sweeps, especially November sweeps, tend to bring on a storm of new sets, graphics, anchor changes and other strategies to boost viewership, though this year’s run on new looks was hampered a bit, no doubt by the bad economy.

NewscastStudio provided full coverage of the first week of sweeps and the various set and graphics changes made at stations across the country. We’ve combined that coverage into one post to bring you up to speed.

Full summaries appear after the jump.

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KGMB-TV and KHNL-TV debut Hawaii News Now

After combining news operations and efforts, KGMB-TV and KHNL-TV have debuted Hawaii News Now, a new news operation in the heart of Hawaii that combines both stations efforts into one “super-station”.

In August, the three stations–two owned by Raycom, one by MCG Capital–announced they’d all be under the same roof as part of a shared services agreement. The process is still going on, says reporter Rick Daysog.

Raycom Media of Alabama, which owns KHNL and K5, said the deal is necessary to prevent one or two of the three stations from going under during a severe downturn in the local television advertising market.

As part of the merger, both stations combined resources and newsrooms. Continue reading to see images of the new joint effort.

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Vegas stations dumping slogans for new ones

The Las Vegas Review Journal has an interesting and witty column on the local market’s use of news slogans.

More details a link to the story after the jump.

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Scripps selects Axis for stations

Scripps Broadcasting has rolled out Chryon’s Axis system at four stations, with the group’s remaining ones to follow.

So far, WEWS-TV in Cleveland, WPTV-TV in West Palm Beach, Fla., KSHB-TV in Kansas City, Mo. and WCPO-TV in Cincinnati have been upgraded to the new system, which uses a shared brown, red and gold graphics package.

Scripps has built a graphics facility at WFTS-TV in Tampa, Fla., which will serve as the hub of the group’s graphics operations.

See another image and read more after the jump.

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