Official: Fox6 news goes HD on Saturday

[mrschimpf]

FYI - @ FOX 6 we have no intention of bombarding our audience w/ the letters 'HD'.....we will promote the fact that we are HD - you may hear 'HD' in the open of the newscast and see spots telling our viewers that we've made the switch.  But as far as I am concerned, those folks who have HD know it and those who don't have HD do not need to be told at the end of every story in a newscast that they aren't seeing something we are offering - let's face it, many people are happy w/ the their converter box and HD sets aren't cheap (though prices have definitely come done of late).  I could go on here, but I'll leave it at that.

My sense is that the term 'HD' has become a misunderstood phrase for viewers as it has become a marketing technique for several stations around the country.  The broadcasting industry is very competitive and stations are trying just about anything to separate themselves from each other.  The intense competition is one of the things that I love about my job....the downside is some times some of us can go too far (and I'm sure there are few out there that may feel we've oversold something in the past).

Anyway, pls be forgiving for the first night if things aren't 100% perfect.  But I can tell you that I have never been more proud of my staff - from Engineers to Photographers across the board - these guys have really worked hard....there is a real sense of pride at this television station and I hope you get a sense of that as we move into the HD world!

Chuck

Chuck,

I didn't honestly expect you to respond to this point, but I'm glad you took time out of your day to respond to my concerns. I always appreciate it when it a good company assumes the best out of their customers (or here, viewers) and treats them well instead as if they need to be reminded of every innovation that is put in front of them non-stop, and I'm glad to hear that you respect us and will judiciously promote the conversion rather than abuse it at the expense of regular viewers who will appreciate the new technology but are there more for the stories and the people.

I understand that you have to promote it, but to hear that you will do it in the way you have in the past makes me feel a little better about this conversion. I remember the awesome job that the station did eleven years ago with the launch of the "Newscenter" set and look, and how even though those who were there then spruced things up it was still the same newscast I watched everyday, just with a new look and nice new logo.

I can't wait to check it out on Saturday and I highly doubt I'll be disappointed in any way. Thank you for keeping us all appraised on the launch of HD, and I'm glad that you're so open about answering most everything we want to know . Lots of luck and fingers crossed!

[EmuZombie]

Just saw a commercial for channel 6's weather coverage right before King of the Hill at 6pm today.  It was in HD.  Looks great.

[SRW1000]

I thought the debut was pretty good.  It seems that they have an impressive number of HD field cameras, in contrast to WTMJ.  The studio shots do look a bit soft, though.

Scott

[duncantuna]

Chuck - Looked good tonight .. but one thing that didn't look good was the odd lower title-bar.  It's gigantic.   That lower bar should be cut in half in horizontal size.

It's especially goofy looking when there are bars left and right .. with that enormous lower title bar, the people inside the box are dwarfed in a blue cage.

[WITI6fan]

Chuck - Looked good tonight .. but one thing that didn't look good was the odd lower title-bar.  It's gigantic.   That lower bar should be cut in half in horizontal size.

It's especially goofy looking when there are bars left and right .. with that enormous lower title bar, the people inside the box are dwarfed in a blue cage.

Continuing on graphics suggestions, the bug needs something done to it. Maybe something like WLS does with moving text, colors, and an extended static part of the Lower-Third.

I might just whip up something in Photoshop tomorrow to help illustrate my idea.

[Bebop]

I thought the debut was pretty good.  It seems that they have an impressive number of HD field cameras, in contrast to WTMJ.  The studio shots do look a bit soft, though.

Scott

If you have a 1080P set, any 720P programming will look a little soft. The sub-channel didn't help either.

[brewtownska]

I thought the debut was pretty good.  It seems that they have an impressive number of HD field cameras, in contrast to WTMJ.  The studio shots do look a bit soft, though.

Scott

I agree with Scott, the studio shots were soft.  I thought the anchors didn't "pop" enough because of the dark blury background.  When going from the preproduced screens (or anything with the bright blue side-bars) to the live anchor shots, the anchor shots seemed much darker.

That was the only negative though.  All-in-all, a great presentation.  I had been watching channel 4 news only because they were HD.  Your presentation was hands down MUCH better than their's, so I will immediately switch to Fox 6 for my evening news!

[jeffski]

It's nice to FINALLY have another HD local news alternative. My only beef with 6 news is their constant use on reporting of the little 'cutaways' that they use very very frequently. What I mean by cutaways is say they have a reporter outside on a street shot. The reporter says a few lines then they show closeups of say a car going by but it's a closeup of one of it's tires and they make sure it's annoyingly loud enough to hear. Watch and see how many times they use this annoying(at least to me) feature just on one short report of 1 minute or so. Maybe I'm nitpicking but at least when they have a live reporter they obviously can't sneak in these little 'street sounds' or whatever and it's now in hd.
 Just my 2 cents.

[Tom Snyder]

Overall, it's pretty good. I agree that the there's too much wasted space on the bottom of two shots, butI don't know how yo avoid that as long as both headshots need to fit inside the 4:3 width.

One thing I don't like is how sounds that accompany the flashy little segment setup graphics (The Big Story, Contact 6, Weather, etc.) end so abruptly.

Otherwise, great job.

[Steve Mann]

Nice work and congrats to Fox6. I'm normally a WISN12 news guy, but I'll be watching Fox6 now. I tried TMJ4 but couldn't stomach it. HD is what it's all about, but you still have to have some quality go go along with it.

I agree with the others.. studio shots a bit soft and the framing needs tweaked a bit. Maybe you should do like FOX NEWS did and frame everything for 16:9. Then let 'em letterbox it on the non-HD TVs.

[BK7725]

As everyone else said, the studio shots were a little soft and the dark blue background behind the reporters seems "too dark" for the new color scheme of light blue and yellow. Maybe that could be replaced like the skyline pic on your website?

Liked the actual HD field reporting... compared to TMJ4 that was excellent!

Opening was different than other Milwaukee stations and was cool and unique.

Loved the graphics, very bright, but have to agree with everyone else on the screens with two of them and the rest is graphics. TMJ4 did that to begin with and changed it shortafter.

Also... the first station with 100% HD weather! (TMJ4 just has HD radar, using their previous weather graphics from pre-switch, just widescreen, yuck. They say that they've been working on "weather computers" so hopefully that means HD graphics). Way to beat the overdone weather station on that one! +1 for FOX6!

Something had to be donw with that logo though. It needs some actions like someone said above. Can't wait to see the news ticker monday morning!

Overall, good first newscasts! I enjoyed watching them!

[tencom]

The anchors faces did not look natural in HD probably  because, of low bit rates  used by TV6, caused by the added sub-channel. Even at the full ATSC bandwidth of 19.2 megabits per second, can't convey, the full detail of human faces that the full pixel rate can handle and human faces at times tends to appear smudgy at least to me. A problem that Blu-Ray, for the most part solved by using a higher bit rate sometimes over 35 megabits per second and using  more efficient Codecs such as MPEG 4 H264 then MPEG- 2 H263 that ATSC uses.

[WITI6fan]

I might just whip up something in Photoshop tomorrow to help illustrate my idea.

And here they are!



Kinda got the ideas from both WBBM's graphics and WLS' graphics. The time/temp bug might not work depending on how the ticker is laid out though...

[Nels Harvey]

I'm happy to see the progress on Fox Six.  I did find myself blinking to try to clear up the video on studio shots, but the segments were sharp.  I felt the studio cameras weren't focused, or something.  Could the studio cameras be 16/9 SD?

[WITI6fan]

I'm happy to see the progress on Fox Six.  I did find myself blinking to try to clear up the video on studio shots, but the segments were sharp.  I felt the studio cameras weren't focused, or something.  Could the studio cameras be 16/9 SD?

They were replaced a few months ago, so I doubt it. However, if you look closely, the cameras they're using in the studio actually look like some of the "Pro-sumer" HD cameras available. If that's what they're using, the lower quality can probably be attributed to that...