Someone left me a message last night “the demolition of the plex has begun. as soon as the studio lights went off tonight, the crew started taking everything down”. Similar to WHDH when their studios were under construction there will be a chroma key (green wall) behind the anchors showing a 1hour loop video of the newsplex.
I’ll check out the morning news and post a screen cap in a bit
Thanks whoever you are that emailed me, you didn’t leave me your email
Update:Both Charles Billi and Tiffany Tucker are anchoring mostly away from the anchor desk. She’s at that big tv screen and Charles is in the sat center near the big screen TV.
5:13pm both are on the anchor desk and on a really tight shot. You can only see the monitor wall behind them. Don’t be surprised if things progress faster than expected, someone said a few weeks ago before Katrina hit management wanted everything done as fast as possible. I have scheduled my DVR to start recording 7News all throughout Monday
– I wonder if they’ll tweak the monitor wall. It would be really awesome if they gutted those ugly CRT TVs and replaced them with a nice flat screen wall running from end to end, similar to what SKYNews has, and animate it throughout the newscast. Put a video or a graphic of the top story when having a two-shot of the anchor desk. Or maybe do something like CNN’s Situation Room and display live feeds from reporters in the field, traffic cameras, video from 7Skyforce as it hovers over South Florida and have a steadycam shot of the wall before and after commercial breaks or during breaking news and reports.
Wow. I watched “Today in Florida: Saturday Edition” with Adam Williams today and I didn’t notice. I’ll have to catch the news later tonight. I’m guessing this means no newsplex flybys with a jib for a while…
You can’t tell but it is the chroma key behind Adam 🙂
If you watched the segment about Hollywood donating for the hurricane relief, he had a full screen graphic behind him while sitting at the anchor desk.
WHDH took about 3 weeks to complete their newsplex, I don’t know to what extent they’re changing the WSVN one, there will be a new anchor desk, new news desk and probably more. Go to WHDH.com and check out their studio WSVN’s plex will look something like it
WHDH’s newsroom makeover took about three weeks (it took place in April of 2004). It was done very fast. They only polished up the newsroom. They allready had the basic layout from the original design. They changed the newsdesk to blue and added some light boxes. The main balcony was changed from a red paint to a blue light box with the 7 NEWS logo on it. The rest of the smaller sets were done seperately over the coming months. WHDH just replaced there anchor desk a month ago and added a plasma screen on the front of the desk.
It seems like if WSVN is going to do the same design then they have much more work to do than WHDH did. It seems like they are going to have to reconstruct the whole balcony look. It would be cool if WSVN had offices up on the balcony for sports and health like WHDH does. From being in WHDH’s newsroom very often I can say it is a good size, but I think WSVN’s plex might be bigger.
WHDH also used the chroma method but had issues because they same person was in the background wearing the same thing every day. People called in complaining that she was working to hard. It was actually a still image. They had to do a re shoot to make it look like other people were in the newsroom. They eventually took her out.
UPDATE:
WOW…in less than 12 hour’s the whole place has changed. just as “newsguy” said, they did the blue-lightbox-banner-railing thing is up and working and they have this MASSIVE rear-projection screen where the old “circle-7 with the american flag” used to be. they also repaced the old maps on either side of the circle-7 with 2 large red/white 7’s.
they’re going to debut it on monday, so this weekend, you’ll see nothing buy tight shots of the anchors.
also, the new anchor desk is already built, but not installed, as are other small details of other sets.
WOW!!! Two days, that’s amazing. I can’t wait to see it. They really worked fast.
WSVN’s plex is smaller than WHDH, much smaller, that’s why I think the railing being similar with the one WHDH has on the balcony will make the WSVN plex look even smaller on TV. Right now seeing through the 2nd floor made it look longer than it actually is.
The anchor desk has been finished for a while. It will have an acrylic top I believe, no idea about a plasma screen at the front
I thought WSVN’s plex would be bigger for some reason. But everything always looks twice the size on t.v. especially when they swing the jib around the newsroom. WHDH’s newsroom looks bigger on tv then in person. They have a large second floor which the weather center, sports and health are located. There is also a large glass conference room that is located on the second floor over the newsdesk.
I assume WSVN will change there small sets gradually. From watching at 5pm it looks like the newsdesk, sat ctr and others have not been touched.
The only Newsplex that looks big on tv and in person I can think of is WFXT Fox 25 in Boston, which is a very impressive newsplex.
nope the WSVN plex is probably 2 rows of desks shorter than WHDH. At least that’s how I see it, I may be wrong.
WFXT’s set is awesome hope they’re using it a lot
I’m loving the new graphics 7 news used during hurricane coverage. It’s clean, slick, small, not overbearing like their current package. I hope it’ll be a perminent graphic when the new setup is established.
nope those are temproray hurricane graphics only. Their regular lower-thirds are quite small actually compared with let’s say WPLG’s which are much bigger and boxier.
I’m going to watch 7news at 10 in a minute to see if i can notice the green screen.
I’ve always loved their studio as it is and it doesn’t seem small to me on TV but hey they can make a tiny room look big on tv. TVJ’s studio really is big and in deperate need of a makeover.
..back on topic though, I can’t wait to see the new design. For sure it will be on monday? Labor day? I’ll watch it for sure.
Dean
Wow the green screen looks HORRIBLE!
If you want to see a small studio, go to channel 4. i think its main studio may be smaller than channel 10’s small studio.
what you saw at 5pm/6pm/10pm was NOT a chroma key!…that’s how they’re framing thae shot for now so that you don’t see the still-incomplete set…it looks terrible…looks like the anchors don’t fit on the screen.
Yes..I noticed it too. It is not chroma, I was able to see the anchors live in the monitors beind them. They also went to a reporter by the assignment desk and the shot was really tight.
I can’t wait to check this out tomorrow!! I’m imagining they’ll premiere the new graphics/music as well?
Yes, HDH’s is a good deal smaller in person, but looks great since the renovation. As I recall, during the chromakey phase in Boston, Randy Price came in wearing a dark green jacket, went on-air and had to change it in a break as someone “walked through” his breast pocket!
As for FXT – one word – WOW! That place really is as huge as it looks (a rarity for sets) and just like HDH, they utilize every inch of space they have.
I would be disapointed if WSVN did not touch up the monitor wall. WHDH put steel rods across each row which enhanced the look. I assume WSVN will not do that because there is no chroma to block out the construction, unless they do it between newscasts. Also I would hope they are re doing the newsdesk now, because it wasn’t touched yesterday at 6pm.
This Just In!: The New Newsplex is finally here! and yes it looks exactly like the WHDH set. and the acnhor desk is incredibly awesome. Though I think they might want to work on the first floor.
As for the Monitor Wall, I don’t think anything like “The Situation Room” is in 7’s future. That show uses two control rooms, one for the air, and one for the wall alone. 4 is taxed enough as it is doing all what they do with their monitors/plasmas through the same switcher, and if I’m right I think the capability is basically maxed at this point. So, I don’t think anything much like that is in the future.
You are correct 4 is completely maxed out running everything through the one control room and switcher. However there are updates being made since Viacom now owns 5 stations in the South Florida market (Miami/Fort Lauderdale & Palm Beach). A secondary control room is scheduled to be build later this year or in 2006.