NBC News, MSNBC, ABC News and others from across the pond

FTVlive feared that with Bianna's addition, they could be refocusing CTM to be like the other morning shows. CBS already made the mistake of making the Evening News be a CTM clone and keep it at Studio 57. There could be an eventual overhaul at CBS News which could separate EN and CTM

CBSN has updated their astons and the onscreen graphics. The look is still flat, using the CBS News font use on the other news programs. The CBSN logo is now in a white box . The LIVE tag very subtle appears about the CBSN logo. Like most channels they tend to overcrowd the type in the box. But overall it looks good.

WATCH NOW: Authorities give an update as police search for a 13-year-old girl who went missing after her parents were found dead in their Wisconsin home https://t.co/w1CeC3ZDH9 pic.twitter.com/BZNCNRMh7s

— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 16, 2018

Here is the previous version.

Vice President Pence announcing the Senate's vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court https://t.co/R3vAPa7GeV pic.twitter.com/5XMXtwrFNW

— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 6, 2018

The new graphics went live on Sunday, though I'd noticed that CBSN had been experimenting with this look on select stories over the last couple of weeks.

It was noticeable that while the service was mainly using the old graphics for day-to-day reporting, they would be faded out and replaced with the new ones (albeit with the old dog/bug) for certain high-profile pieces (hurricanes, the latter stages of the Kavanaugh hearings).

Overall, the new graphics are an improvement, but the new bug does seem to be a bit of a botched effort. It's wider than it needs to be and looks top-heavy as soon as the 'Live' flag is added - which is most of the day.

The look is a sort of odd mashup of the current looks from Fox News and BBC News, which, is a crazy mix. The palette is pure BBC, red, white and grey. The straps design, however, solid colour, white outline, the multi-boxy on-screen furniture, and typeface choice clearly has been influenced by Fox - even if they're much less shouty.

Outside of the graphics, not much has changed. It's the same music, the same break filler, the same newsroom presentation.

It does irritate me slightly that the break-filler just loops the first half of the CBSN theme music, fading out before the more dramatic latter half of the piece kicks-in. This is a shame - because it's a really nice theme.

The new L3s are essentially just an adapted version of the CBS Special Report graphics

Some frankencamera used by ABC News and James Longman covering Prince Harry and Meghan’s trip to Australia. Looks like the camera is a DSLR with an adaptor for an ENG lens. I’m a bit puzzled as to why they chose this setup.

Canon C300 maybe? Little large for a DSLR

It definitely is a C300. Check the side view on here.

https://www.eoshd.com/2012/01/dispelling-the-myths-is-the-canon-c300-worth-15999/

Hardly a Frankencamera - that's a C300 with a lens adaptor to let it use an ENG-style zoom lens (instead of a native EF mount lens) by the look of it.

The C300 and C300 Mk II are both EBU certified (unlike almost all DSLRs) and are workhorses of factual TV production as they give you that nice, large-sensor, shallow DoF and let you use prime lenses. Nothing wrong with using a C300 at all (though that lens on it is a bit of a compromise)

The C300 can generate gorgeous pictures - there's a reason it's used so widely in TV.

Here's how the US networks are covering the midterm elections on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning:

https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/heres-how-tv-news-networks-are-covering-2018-midterm-elections-day/382378

Most of the live network coverage will be in the dead of night for UK viewers (1-4am for NBC and ABC, 2-4am for CBS), but CNN's election night coverage starts at 10pm our time.

If the network pacific coast programmes (usually a mix of live and recorded content) are streaming too, they'll be on from 4/5-7am for anyone up early.

I wonder, does the horizonal scale decrease if the word count is higher (squashing the words up) or do they now choose appropriate phrasing to fit the strap?

It's very American to squash it up but arguably better editorially (than shortening a headline to fit the space).

Odd that the CBS eye logo appears to be 4:3 safe, but the strap itself isn't - so you have a slightly unbalanced feel with a lot of empty space on the right of frame, but not on the left.

Not terrible - and it's a clean and simple lower third.

Do US stations still assume that any SD legacy feeds on cable will be a permanent 4:3 centre-cut (I know 16:9 SD wasn't really a thing in the US) rather than 16:9 letterbox or AFD-driven dynamic conversion (ISTR that AFDs didn't really happen fully in the US either)

As far as legacy feeds no. However my CBS O&O and I think others still feed their news center cut to the cable and satellite headend even though graphics aren’t. I think my station also does it for the rest of the programming.

There are 16:9 feeds letterboxed in a 4:3 frame. You can use the zoom feature and it will fill the screen. However some of the diginets like MeTV are now transmitting 16:9 and so the station does as well with no intervention or zooming needed. MeTV airs a lot of archived shows filmed on actual tape and because of the aspect ratio they can fill more of the screen almost 14:9.

There are instances of AFD. They seem to be used during commercials mainly.

And the CBS image posted above it doesn’t matter how it’s placed. It’s an online stream.

Edit : Jusf checked my CBS Owned station is how presenting letterboxed 4:3. It must be a recent change as I checked last week.