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Saturday, March 1, 2014
My Favorite News Set: NBC Bay Area's Cool Desk in the South Bay; Saturday Short
NBC Bay Area, (KNTV)--Sleek, cool, refined, and 21st Century to the max. A slight Star Trek look complete with high-def TV monitor bank, supreme desk and pretty nifty logo utilizing NBC's peacock with the stark and dark lettering.
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Does anyone even watch local news anymore? Just out of curiosity, how are their ratings? I stopped watching local news years ago. Sure I'll tune in for the occasional local news story (for the video) or consumer advocate type story but I don't need to sit down and watch at 12, 5, 6, 10 or 11 because all they are doing is repeating to us the news we have already read in the paper that day or on the internet as the day has gone by. Even their weather "forecasts" are something we can find with 1 click of a webpage. Does anyone here besides Rich actually tune in or care about the local newscast?
ReplyDelete> all they are doing is repeating to us the news we have already read in
Delete> the paper that day or on the internet as the day has gone by.
It's worse than that. I often see stories on the news--drummed up like they just discovered whatever it is--when I read it on the internet two days ago! Local is good for one thing: local breaking material--and that means mostly crime and grime, so that's all you get nowadays. Learn what street had a robbery or carkjacking today! Otherwise the internet has EVERYTHING better.
I do have an uncle in his mid 60s that watches KTVU religiously at 10pm every night. I myself have to turn off local news. So depressing and again just a rehash of what the Mercury News covered that day at 5am when the paper was delivered. Local news hasn't been must see for me since Dennis Richmond and Elaine Corral were there nightly. Even to a lesser extent Leslie when she took over for Elaine. Now SHE was a looker in her prime.Much better than all the nationalities they feel they need to trot out nowadays.
DeleteSince discovering Tunein and iHeart radio years ago I never tune in to local news anymore. The constant teases are annoying as hell. The other day I happened to tune in to KTVU at 10pm they spent 30 minutes teasing the Richmond gas station worker tackling a would be robber! People are used to instant gratification. No one is going to stick around to watch all those teases...except maybe Rich!!??
ReplyDeleteIf I watch local news, I watch this station. Best newscast in Bay Area for me. Maybe not for others. Typical Bay Area newscast: shooting, knifing, traffic, weather, fluff, sports. Oh, when it rains, storm, weather, sandbags, coping with rain, shooting, knifing, traffic, fluff.
ReplyDeleteNotice all the video monitors in the cubicles are big, old and bulky....the kind they haven't sold for at least a decade. Nice lipstick on old infrastructure.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing I need to know is does Christina Loren fit underneath?
ReplyDeleteLOL!!! Long live the First Amendment, right? (freedom of speech). It took me a whole nanosecond to figure out your remark.
DeleteI prefer ABC7's with the live HD monitor shot of the Embarcadero behind the anchors. It almost distracts me from Ama Datez.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the opportunity to comment on this from someone not in the industry, but just a viewer/listener: I have always HATED the bizarre sets on news shows. Weird furniture and desks that exist nowhere else in life, all that shiny glass and chrome, swooping lines, and retina burning colors that just give me a headache. I have for years only found it nothing more than distracting, irritating, and artificial. If I were an art director for local news at a station I would just have. . . no set at all! Just the bare room of the studio, whatever it happened to look like, with no hiding of all the clutter of the technology--lights, cameras, cables, monitors, whatever--and simple, undistracting wooden tables and chairs, maybe even kind of beaten up and scuffed. Okay, maybe all that would still be a design choice, and therefore arguably contrived, but it would at least be simple and honest and refreshing. I'm so tired of the phony futuristic look. What does it have to do with news anyway? Is this what consultants dream up and talk all of you into thinking it's what everyone wants? The closest I've seen to what I'd like was Channel 7's recent use of the anchors with the newsroom in the background and the weather forecaster up on the roof. I wish they would have kept doing that! And yes, in answer to an above post, I do still watch some local news--Channels 7, 5, and 4 mostly--but not as much as I used to, because they frustrate me so, for many reasons, and because, yes, there is so much more one can find online.
ReplyDelete3;47, you have some very good points. The news set often appears to be a case of Art for Art's Sake (sorry 10cc). " Weird furniture and desks that exist nowhere else in life". YES, YES! so true. I think CNN has tried the simpler approach you have mentioned. The news orgs must presume we will equate intersteller stage craft with intersteller (or interplanetary) scope of news comprehension. One reason this happens is that computer graphics make it easy and relatively cheap to try unusual radical choices that get talked about.
DeleteNutty thoughts from both of the above in the minds of most people. These million-dollar-plus sets are there for a reason and have nothing to do with the news that eminates from behind them with anchors, reporters, meteorologists, sports people and commenters.
DeleteThe fact is, it wouldn't be 'Star Wars' without a slick looking set, or 'Star Trek' for that matter. These sets are m ade to be hi-tech, not like they were in the dqys of Douglas Edwards and Huntley/ Brinkley.or even Cronkite. It's about young, glqmour and glitz as well as 'power'. The more powerful looking the set, the more dynqmic the news, supposedly. The time for 'retro' in a competive hi-tech world are long gone now and anything that helps declining ratings is where it is todqy. KNTV has an attractive, network pqid for set to the max.
...and look how far "simpler" got CNN. To the dump.
DeleteHuntley/Brinkley, Cronkite, etcetera never had what I have in mind. If it must be reduced down to one word (which I resist as, well, reductionist) I was suggesting something more like "industrial", not retro. Just an unadorned studio, maybe painted flat black, with equipment in view, if it happens to be there.The contrived, glitzy sets do not impress me. The only thing they say to me is "ugly", not power, and they make me conclude that they care more about goofy, contrived sets than they do about solid news reporting. But, as I said before, I'm not in the industry. (However, my career has been in design and the arts.)
Delete