Pretty much all of the ad time in Nightly News is network-filled anyway. There are only one or two 30 second local slots and a 15 second news tease in the entire 30 minute block, so it would be hard to figure out where the feed is coming from.
Come on, it's all part of the same company, and has been for many years. They're getting the network feed via satellite. Don't overthink this.
I doubt they are transmitting the network feed directly for live output that’s likely for regular office TV use. I’d imagine they’d get a high quality or bitrate (I believe the affiliates get a 50 Mbps MPEG-4 Feed via satellite) direct via master control - like how KCET is likely not redistributing the signal that AMC uplinks for BBC World News.
Also, I created a video of the morning ticker aired during local news at the request of a member over at TVNewsTalk comparing the old and new versions of tickers used by Hearst stations. The video has three tickers the top one was launched with the first version of their “diagrid” graphics and was 4:3 safe; the middle one was launched with the second update to the diagrid graphics that mainly took the existing ticker and took advantage of the 16:9 screen space; and the final video is the closings ticker with the headline crawl underneath - and this has remained the same with both looks.
I think they could use the wider screen real estate to have two tiers of closings - one strictly for the major school districts (their 14 counties in the market but they include remaining counties in Maryland and two or three in Pennsylvania (as people commute), Universities, and the local/federal governments; and a second column for the smaller private schools (I think they are called public schools in the U.K. as students pay tuition), the countless daycare centers and businesses. I say this because the school districts, universities and government agencies are likely to affect more people and should be rotated through more quickly than waiting through over 100 other closings. I realize a lot of closings are now are done with robocalls and text messages but many still get it through TV.
They start running the ticker at 4:00 AM and run it through 7:00 AM when the Today Show starts and returns during the local news breaks at :26 and :56 past the hour. The ticker runs during commercial breaks. It doesn’t affect the graphics or picture that much they it pushes the program picture upwards and doesn’t mess with graphics or framing. During commercials the picture is squeezed.
Last edited by Rkolsen on 31 March 2018 6:55am