Chicago ABC begins stretching its wings with new set

Now in its fifth day on its new set, Chicago’s WLS-TV is starting to branch out and explore some of the possibilities the set has to offer.

During this morning’s newscast on the ABC O&O, for example, the station opened the 6 a.m. hour with a virtual window of a live shot of the city. The image was framed in a shiny blue rectangle on top of the still stylized cityscape that normally appears behind the anchors.

abc7bg-2

Then, after greeting viewers, the anchors switched to discussing the rainy weather and the image behind them switched to a radar loop before they tossed to a first weather segment.

It’s worth noting that many stations with large video arrays like WLS-TV’s actually use live camera feeds as the primary background — but by using a library of still images, WLS-TV is able have tighter control over the image quality and consistency of its imagery while still incorporating live feeds into the video wall when the story warrants it.

Advertisement

WLS-TV has also been using the rectangular OTS graphics, also overlaid atop the cityscape, more regularly, including the use of incorporating video clips and tosses to live shots in them.