• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

WEBN Fireworks

T

The One

Guest
WEBN should really get a new TV partner for next year's Riverfest Fireworks! WLWT did a horrible job!! Camera positions were terrible. The Sky 5 shots kept getting fuzzy (and you would see the foot rail of the chopper). The anchors (2 fat chicks with bad wardrobe) can't ad-lib...guess they always need a prompter!
The WLWT graphics were annoying...and even worse the irritating flip from the 5 logo to the WEBN logo (very bad!!!).

And most of all...no High Def. C'mon, this is only the most important event in Cincinnati media, and we have the bushleague technical pool of WLWT, with the incredibly poor planned broadcast of Riverfest.

At least 9 and 12 did excellent work on the fireworks of past years.

No wonder, no one watches Channel 5 news! It looks like college TV!!

The music soundtrack...mediocre this year. It's been much better in past years. Rozzi's always does a great job and very creative this year.
 
interesting take on the channel 5 broadcast; i'll have to look at a dvr.
i thought the soundtrack this year was actually pretty interesting, and a departure from some of recent years. the thematic nature, reflecting webn's 40 years i thought was really well handled with lots of archive audio including what i think was michael xanada (jelly pudding) and the historical and pop culture sound bites also made for a more interesting presentation; really different for a fireworks show.
the mix of 'won't get fooled again' was something keith moon may have even liked.
i don't know, with all the different types of music that they try to work into that thing, it's impossible to please everyone, but i thought this years worked very well with the fireworks. kudos to rozzi's and webn.
 
If I have to put up with the channel 5 crap next yr I may as well not watch it at all for the crappy job thry did. I may ass well just go down and watch it live and in person next year.
 
I would have to agree that the WLWT telecast was, in a word, horrific! The long camera angle over top of a building that blocked a good deal of the firewroks display was my personal fave. I, too, couldn't get enough of the fuzz/foot rail from the helicopter shot. Luckily, I didn't tune in for any of the commentary outside of the fireworks, so I got that goin' for me.
 
I was there at the fireworks and didn't record the TV coverage, so I can't comment directly on it. But I've been to many shows and then seen the TV coverage later, so here are my two cents.

About the fireworks display itself: there is no greater enemy of a TV camera operator than fireworks. Nobody knows exactly where in the darkness the shell will explode. Unlike most live TV shows, this one has no rehearsal or run-through, so everything other than the stuff coming from the bridges ... about 80% of the show ... is total guesswork.

Also, going from darkness to super-brightness is an extreme jolt to a TV camera and almost impossible to make look good, even if it were possible to do a proper focus. Which it's not, because nobody knows in advance how far away a shell will be when it explodes. All of this totally random guesswork is happening hundreds of times per minute.

Okay. Now that I've said all that, I'm sure that when I get around to seeing the replay of Channel 5's show I'll probably agree that the coverage was superbad. Channels 19, 9 and 12 (in that order) have covered the fireworks, and all of these stations took several years to even start getting things right, for all the reasons above. It's just damn hard, and like anything, it takes awhile to get good at it. We just went from Channel 12's umpteenth year to Channel 5's first. We'll have to suffer through their learning curve from year to year, like we did with the other stations.

I will offer no defense of the ad-lib abilities of the anchors. Most local TV news people are completely helpless without a teleprompter, and are just painful to watch.
 
I only watched the first ten minutes or so of the TV coverage, after that I just started doing other things but was listening to the music.

I think the music was great, classic rock and not really too many songs, nice longer segments, but I'm sure younger people might be disappointed.

Having been down there at ground zero a handful of times, theres just nothing like being there live. You can only expect so much excitement from the TV set. Almost went but the thought of being stuck in traffic for a couple hours afterwards didn't sound very appealing.

Overall, we're lucky they still offer the show.
 
And they screwed up the finale!!!! The wholes Sopranos tribute!!! THEY TALKED OVER THE SILENCE..

College TV too good of a criticism. I say 10 year olds playing tv in the back yard could do better
 
I'll grant them a little leeway on the learning curve. But come on (ala Tom Gamble)!

Was Bill Butler and Corporex in charge? The constant switching back to the view from Devou Park, with the Corporex Towers in Covington square in the middle of the shot (as if to say you wouldn't have to put up with this if you rented an office in this bulding) was beyond irritating.

I, too, thought the music was good, better than what I recall last year's to be.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom