Hey WHEC - kill the closings and give me my damn HD!

[fybush]

So, it's 6:30. I can watch Katie in HD on WROC-DT, or Charlie in HD on WHAM-DT.

But on WHEC-DT...it's a tiny little corner of Brian Williams in SD, because they can't insert the closings over an HD picture yet. (Or rather, can't afford to buy the gear that would allow them to do so.)

And what are these closings? All the stale afternoon activities that would be ending by now anyway, half of which are misspelled. So Trailways/Greyhound has "No Innercity Service" tonight, huh? And WTF is the "Onandaga Center"?

(Same station, incidentally, that forgot to switch to HD on election night until Obama's acceptance speech was almost over.)

The future is in high-definition...and the picture in Rochester is increasingly blurry, especially at East and Scio...

 

[fybush]

6:48...and flipping around, I see they've killed the dated closings, but still no HD.

 

[rochnewsman]

Better was the other day....I think it was Wednesday morning. There were THREE, not a typo. THREE whole school DELAYS, and they decided to run the closing crawl throughout the Today show, losing the HD. So, I just switched to 13 to watch GMA instead. I've already given 10 up on the local level. I guess I'll just have to adjust if I watch the national shows in the am when I rarely do depending on the school closings for the day.

 

[fybush]

If I were designing a school-closing system for a TV station, I'd include a "kill by" field. If the event being cancelled is supposed to start at 4, there's no reason to keep that closing running as on-screen clutter at 5 or 6 or 7...or even at 4, when anyone who'd be going to the event would have left the house already.

WHEC is hardly the only station out there that doesn't seem to give much thought to how real-world viewers use closing information - the others in town (my own ex-employer very much among them) are just as bad at times.

Oh, and the "No Inner City Service" closing was still running at last check. I didn't know Trailways had service from Genesee Street to Avenue D...

 

[Mr. Kite!]

This comment is about the local news scene in general, not WHEC specific.
I can't believe people complain about misspellings, expired info, etc. I agree that at one point in time things like accuracy, clarity were important, but not anymore. I'm sure the viewers would expect it or at least appreciate it, but that's too bad, really. Nobody who can affect it cares anymore, or they're too dumb to know the difference. Not the management, not the clueless decision makers, and not the people who have to carry out those orders. You've got the grossly incompetent/ignorant people who work cheap, or the experienced/qualified who are bitter because they get taken advantage of and taken for granted and are pissed off stressed out and couldn't care less. So don't bother complaining about stuff like accuracy anymore. This the new standard. Get used to it.

BTW only 60 days and change until the analog shutoff. Hopefully we won't have to worry about the HD/SD dual signal stuff after that.

 

[fybush]

So don't bother complaining about stuff like accuracy anymore. This the new standard. Get used to it.

Never. I still take pride in doing things the right way in my own work, and I know there are plenty of my fellow newspeople - not just at 280 State Street but at every newsroom in town, 191 East Ave. very much included, who continue to feel that way, too.

Even in a world in which budget cuts and cheaped-out product become "the new standard," viewers and listeners still have more choices than just 8 vs. 10 vs. 13. They can also choose to just turn the thing off and either get their local news elsewhere or go without, and that's a threat every station owner needs to be very much aware of. The smart ones still get it. The less smart ones won't have much value left to their products a few years down the road.

BTW only 60 days and change until the analog shutoff. Hopefully we won't have to worry about the HD/SD dual signal stuff after that.

As long as there's still 4:3 SD source material, and there's plenty of it, this will continue to be a problem. Indeed, it will become a bigger one in many cases when OTA 4:3 SD analog goes away, since there will still be lots of viewers - probably a majority, at least in this market - still watching 4:3 SD analog via cable. That needs to be downconverted somehow, and there are a lot more ways to get that wrong than there are to get that right.

(Indeed, a certain local TV outlet that just pulled the plug on its dedicated 4:3 SD channel a few days ago has been wrestling, often rather unsuccessfully, with that very set of issues.)

This will get worse before it gets better.

 

[BobRoss]

If I were designing a school-closing system for a TV station, I'd include a "kill by" field. If the event being cancelled is supposed to start at 4, there's no reason to keep that closing running as on-screen clutter at 5 or 6 or 7

Actually, any current, modern system does have a "kill by" field. The problem is, most newsroom staffers, who are already overworked -- and taking closings calls only makes it worse -- don't bother to fill it in. This is especially likely on days when there's a major storm and you're taking non-stop phone calls (while trying to keep an ear on the scanners, produce a show, write a package or any combination of the above). Granted, even when you're in a hurry, it should only take an extra 2 seconds to fill that in. In a perfect world, there would be someone who can be dedicated just to taking and inputting closings, but local TV news can't even afford to keep reporters and photogs as 2 separate jobs anymore.

Some systems have "default" kill times -- for example, it can be programmed so anything entered before 9am (presumably school closings) is deleted at 10am... and anything entered after that point (ie. early dismissals, afterschool cancellations) could be auto-deleted at 4pm. In this case, you'd have to be sure major all-day events have a manual kill time entered so they aren't purged in the auto-delete process. Again, why stations don't use this, is beyond me.

Could closings be automated? Yes. You can set up websites or touch-tone phone systems to take closings, assuming you can get every single school district to play along and follow your procedures for entering their own closings. And of course, it would have to be set to prevent people from pranking the system with bogus closings.

Non-related side note -- just me, or is this board a lot slower since they revamped radio-info.com? I started off typing my post on the board, but it eventually got to a point where I was typing, and the letters appeared several seconds later. Frustrating... I finished typing this post in Notepad and then pasted the text in. I feel like it's 1995 and I'm using an offline mail reader so I don't have to use valuable dial-up minutes!! ;-) But even the news pages seem to have a "delayed reaction" when you click on headlines... never had that problem on the "old" site.

 

[w9wi]

Could closings be automated? Yes. You can set up websites or touch-tone phone systems to take closings, assuming you can get every single school district to play along and follow your procedures for entering their own closings. And of course, it would have to be set to prevent people from pranking the system with bogus closings.

I know of at least two commercially available systems that do this. Our station (in Nashville) uses one from a company called Newsroom Solutions -- I know Avid Technology sells one as well. There is a password system to make pranking more difficult. (I suppose that depends on the school systems keeping their passwords secure, but to date that hasn't been a problem) We send out instructions every fall. Participation seems to be near total.

It works very well. The only real problem we have is with people not making up their minds what they want the graphics to look like.....

The systems do not support separate reset times for each closing. At least the NSI system does support different reset times for each category of closing, as Bob suggests.

Non-related side note -- just me, or is this board a lot slower since they revamped radio-info.com? I started off typing my post on the board, but it eventually got to a point where I was typing, and the letters appeared several seconds later. Frustrating... I finished typing this post in Notepad and then pasted the text in. I feel like it's 1995 and I'm using an offline mail reader so I don't have to use valuable dial-up minutes!! ;-) But even the news pages seem to have a "delayed reaction" when you click on headlines... never had that problem on the "old" site.

Haven't noticed that here, but I'm on dialup so the slow network connection could be masking a slow webserver.

But I can't imagine how the site could be causing your typing to be slowed - as the typing all happens locally on your computer. Once the box you type in is ready on the screen, it doesn't interact further with the site until you click "Post". Unless something is running a script that's slowing down your browser itself? (that's not happening here, but I'm using Firefox)

 

[cnymike]

A password won't stop the pranksters. The only way to stop them would be to call the organization that registered and confirm it. Also, any name changes, would have to be approved. 8)

 

[w9wi]

A password won't stop the pranksters. The only way to stop them would be to call the organization that registered and confirm it.

That quite simply is not going to happen. Not enough staff.

 

[azumanga]

A password won't stop the pranksters. The only way to stop them would be to call the organization that registered and confirm it.

That quite simply is not going to happen. Not enough staff.

In other words, there's a good chance that, during bad weather, viewers would find out of "Bring Em' Young Daycare", "Tutone, Inc." ("call Jenny at 867-5309"), and "1337 5p34k Linguistic Services" have branches in the Rochester area.

 

[BobRoss]

Not necessarily. If the system is set up so "new accounts" must be authorized by the station before they can air, there should be little to no risk for problems. As long as the person responsible for approving the new accounts has SOME common sense, they should be able to approve legit requests and deny pranksters without having to call every single place to verify.

In my opinion, if there's an influx of new requests on the day of a major weather event, and the staff is too busy to verify anything -- I'd rule on the side of caution and let those new requests sit in a queue for another not-so-busy day. Sure, it's a disappointment for legitimate businesses trying to report closings, but let's face it -- winter's not a surprise. Happens around the same general timeframe every year. When businesses lack the organization to request closing passwords in advance, waiting until day-of, they deserve to have their requests sidelined for a day or two. In the case of News 14 Carolina, the attempt to please people and attract viewers by "including everyone, no questions asked," was a bad idea.

In my further opinion though, closing and delay listings should be limited BACK to just school districts and major government organizations only. It irritates me to see dance studios, karate schools, and other businesses appearing on closings lists. It's a shameless attempt to get free publicity. Sadly, the stations look bad to these clusters of people if they try to say no, but they also look bad when a 300+ item closing list takes 20 minutes to cycle through on the air.

A friend once told me Albany had a great system to handle all this. Instead of having schools and businesses call every single station in town, there's one "central clearinghouse" for all closings. Schools and government get on the list for free, but businesses have to pay to get their closings listed. Those fees cover the costs of taking the listings and distributing them out to all the media. I'm not sure if this is still how things are done, or who is/was in charge of it, but it sure sounds like a simple, effective way to handle things. Charging businesses theoretically keeps the list to a reasonable size (by outpricing the smaller businesses that don't really impact anyone), and newsrooms don't have to sacrifice their own manpower to handle closings calls, verifications, letter mailings, etc.

 

[fybush]

In my opinion, if there's an influx of new requests on the day of a major weather event, and the staff is too busy to verify anything -- I'd rule on the side of caution and let those new requests sit in a queue for another not-so-busy day.

Amen to that one. My recollection from my R News days was that we reached out to the school districts ahead of time - everyone else had to call and set something up before a storm, or they didn't get on.

In my further opinion though, closing and delay listings should be limited BACK to just school districts and major government organizations only. It irritates me to see dance studios, karate schools, and other businesses appearing on closings lists. It's a shameless attempt to get free publicity. Sadly, the stations look bad to these clusters of people if they try to say no, but they also look bad when a 300+ item closing list takes 20 minutes to cycle through on the air.

Amen, again. There's no reason the dance studios and karate schools and such can't tell parents, "We close when School District X closes."

A friend once told me Albany had a great system to handle all this. Instead of having schools and businesses call every single station in town, there's one "central clearinghouse" for all closings. Schools and government get on the list for free, but businesses have to pay to get their closings listed. Those fees cover the costs of taking the listings and distributing them out to all the media. I'm not sure if this is still how things are done, or who is/was in charge of it, but it sure sounds like a simple, effective way to handle things. Charging businesses theoretically keeps the list to a reasonable size (by outpricing the smaller businesses that don't really impact anyone), and newsrooms don't have to sacrifice their own manpower to handle closings calls, verifications, letter mailings, etc.

We did this in Boston at WBZ - the public schools and major (read: Catholic) private schools got on the air free. They had one number to call (NOT the main newsroom number) and a code to give us. Businesses who called got routed to a salesperson who was called in specifically for storm sales duty. It was a nice revenue generator, or so I was told...

 

[w9wi]

Not necessarily. If the system is set up so "new accounts" must be authorized by the station before they can air, there should be little to no risk for problems. As long as the person responsible for approving the new accounts has SOME common sense, they should be able to approve legit requests and deny pranksters without having to call every single place to verify.

Absolutely. In fact, both of the packages I'm familiar with have no mechanism for parties outside the building to add themselves to the database. Only station personnel can add a new entity to the list. It is as Bob says up to common sense for the personnel to verify those who request addition!

Yes, organizations do call during a weather event. If someone who knows how to verify and add organizations is there and has time to do it (not likely!) they'll be added. Luckily I work evening shift so they can't dump the task on me!

We've observed the same issue with the oversized database. One thing we did was to use a two-line display. The upper line is only public school districts. (which account for the vast majority of students) The lower line crawls everything.

I suppose the next rational step would be to put smaller and/or non-school organizations on our website (where there's plenty of space) and require that you have some minimum number of people affected for your closing to get on TV.

 

[BobRoss]

I suppose the next rational step would be to put smaller and/or non-school organizations on our website (where there's plenty of space) and require that you have some minimum number of people affected for your closing to get on TV.

I agree with all of the above, but I'm not so sure it's completely practical.

Yes, closing systems should have an option to list certain closings online, but keep them off the air. Some systems probably can do this already, but surprisingly, I haven't seen it on any system I've used. From a programming standpoint, it should be pretty easy to add a "Publish to Web Only" checkbox.

Putting a limit on how many people are affected... great idea on paper. But in reality, when you ask people, they know a small number will get them nowhere. Everyone will say "100 people" or something larger, knowing there's no way you're actually going to demand proof. But I'm not saying everyone just gets on; instead of asking how many people are affected, the calltaker should be able to use their judgment as to who's big enough to get on-air and who's worthy of being listed online only. Or better yet, Fybush's method from WBZ -- just put schools only on-air, and everyone else is a web-exclusive.

 

[w9wi]

Yes, closing systems should have an option to list certain closings online, but keep them off the air. Some systems probably can do this already, but surprisingly, I haven't seen it on any system I've used. From a programming standpoint, it should be pretty easy to add a "Publish to Web Only" checkbox.

Arguably the Newsroom Solutions system we're using offers that ability. If you put entities that you don't want going to air in their own category, you can program the on-air transmission to ignore that category altogether.

Putting a limit on how many people are affected... great idea on paper. But in reality, when you ask people, they know a small number will get them nowhere. Everyone will say "100 people" or something larger, knowing there's no way you're actually going to demand proof. But I'm not saying everyone just gets on; instead of asking how many people are affected, the calltaker should be able to use their judgment as to who's big enough to get on-air and who's worthy of being listed online only. Or better yet, Fybush's method from WBZ -- just put schools only on-air, and everyone else is a web-exclusive.

There's certainly something to be said for that. It does beg the question of how do you distinguish between a large private institution deserving of being on the air (down here, Vanderbilt or Belmont Universities) and a much smaller private institution with only a dozen or two students.