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"WKBG" on House

R

Rick

Although this is not radio (but TV) related...

I was watching House tonight on FOX, and at the end, Wilson and House were seen in recliners watching a hockey game on TV. Although the jerseys colors didn't match, the graphic on the screen said "Toronto 03, Detroit 02" and the bottom left bug read "WKBG". This of course is WLVI-TV 56's old call sign. I wonder if someone on the staff of the show was from the Boston area and did this on purpose? :) Otherwise, just a coincidence.

Screenshot: http://www.rjcabral.com/wkbg.png
 
Great "catch" Richard. On same topic does anyone have old booth announcer voicerecordings for WKGB and early WLVI?
 
It seems every time Hollywood tries to depict sports, especially telecasts of sports, it gets something wrong. I'm not talking about the uniforms; obviously, they went for the generic look to avoid having to pay the NHL, Red Wings and Maple Leafs for use of the logos. But "LIVE!" in the upper right corner? Scores displayed as "03" and "02"?

I'm guessing that people in Hollywood's creative end just don't watch a lot of sports on TV, or if they do, they don't notice the details and don't care if they get them right when sports telecasts have to be depicted as part of a movie or TV show. Check out the "college football" telecast former President Bush is seen watching in the movie "W" sometime; the graphics aren't bad but the play-by-play is about as convincing as Phil Rizzuto's scripted bit in Meat Loaf's "Paradise By the Dashboard Light." Is there something about the way sports actually look and sound on TV that Hollywood thinks wouldn't look good in the context of a movie or show?
 
I'll hazard a guess that it's mostly for two reasons: cost and legal issues.

First is that it's usually more expensive to "do it right" and rarely is the action on a TV or radio, within the context of a TV show itself, all that central to the plot. In fact, if anything you probably don't want it to be all that noticeable precisely because it's not all that central to the plot.

Second is that the last thing you want, as a show producer, is to accidentally mimic a real TV/radio station/broadcast too closely and invite a copyright infringement lawsuit. An easy way to avoid that is to have lots of little things...like the zeroes before the scores...that clearly would never happen in a real TV/radio broadcast.

As for "Why WKBG?" It could be a nod to WLVI, or it could just be that someone on the production team's initials are K.B.G. Or their child's are. Could be anything, really.
 
Appropo of nothing, I'm reminded of the Kevin Smith flick "Dogma", where towards the end of the movie, the angels are going on a rampage and you see a TV news van amidst all the carnage and it's clearly got call letters that start with a "K" on the side....even though the scene is supposed to be set in New Jersey, and thus should be a "W".

Probably they just borrowed a TV news truck from a local station in Hollywood for the day because it was the cheapest way to get the authentic-looking news truck be in the scene. Not that it really mattered to the scene, but it was a nice touch.

That sort of mistake is rampant in movies.
 
aaronread said:
Appropo of nothing, I'm reminded of the Kevin Smith flick "Dogma", where towards the end of the movie, the angels are going on a rampage and you see a TV news van amidst all the carnage and it's clearly got call letters that start with a "K" on the side....even though the scene is supposed to be set in New Jersey, and thus should be a "W".

Probably they just borrowed a TV news truck from a local station in Hollywood for the day because it was the cheapest way to get the authentic-looking news truck be in the scene. Not that it really mattered to the scene, but it was a nice touch.

That sort of mistake is rampant in movies.
Click to expand...

For some reason, I was going though the lengthy IMDB list of "goofs" in "The Day After Tomorrow" recently. One of the more glaring errors was a scene in which people in New York were watching TV -- but tropo must have been really good that day, because the station they were watching was WTTG in Washington, D.C.! (Other wonderful errors in that movie -- besides the liberties taken with science -- had a Canadian Rogers/AT&T cellphone in use in Tokyo and a plastic shopping bag from a Canadian supermarket chain covering the head of a homeless man in New York City. Yes, much of the movie was filmed in Canada.
 
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