Loyal and even casual viewers of WTVG-TV, Channel 13, may not have seen any significant changes recently in the station’s newscasts.
But they’ve no doubt noticed those times when a camera is frozen in position, or the wrong pairing of video and story, or fluctuating audio levels that are either too high or too low, and rarely just right.
These glitches and goofs are not the result of a TV dial in need of adjustment, but the inevitable bumps and bruises that arise when a TV station implements wholesale automation to its newscasts.
Since the station went automated via the Ross OverDrive System on Oct. 1, and with it changes to much of the behind-the-scenes human component to the station’s newscast, the production of approximately 35 hours of live newscasts every week has been tricky and occasionally precarious, “like changing a 747’s engines while the plane is 35,000 feet in the air,” said WTVG Vice President and General Manager Chris Fedele. “That's really what they are doing.”
And, yes, viewers have noticed glitches, particularly during the first two weeks of the new system, he said, when the station would field several calls each day from viewers wondering and concerned about the myriad on-air mistakes.
Fedele said he would explain to the callers what was happening at WTVG — that it was the growing pains of a new system and not careless blunders.
“The viewers were very forgiving,” he said, “at least the viewers I've talked to.”
This implementation also follows a year of planning and weeks of job training, and includes hundreds of thousands of dollars spent by WTVG’s owner, Gray Television, Inc., on the OverDrive System and the construction of a new master control room to house it, as well as 4K cameras and more.
The changes — a greater reliance on automation over the human component — will eventually make things easier, Fedele said, especially should the station transition to a mandatory 4K signal, an increasingly popular resolution standard for TVs and their content that is significantly greater than high definition.
With the likely elimination of six positions because of the automation process — already three employees have either been laid off with severance packages or took buyouts — WTVG will fill six jobs in its digital and marketing team or elsewhere.
The remaining newscast directors and producers manage the on-air product from a recently constructed master control room, a high-tech bunker of monitors, lit-up buttons, and levers that demands comparisons to the bridge of the USS Enterprise, even as they learn the new hardware and software.
The latter trial-by-fire process includes writing code to produce each newscast — essentially a script that controls every camera angle, audio and video file played, graphic element shown, and even the lights in the studio.
“This has been an adjustment for everyone,” said Lee Conklin, the station’s evening co-anchor, who has experienced some of the audio and video issues during live newscasts. “We understood that there will be a few bumps in the road before you get to the smooth part of things. ... But we hope people are patient as we make the adjustments and move on.
“I think without question things are getting better.”
In fact, many of those transitional issues have already been resolved, station management says, as the production crew gets more familiar with the software and equipment.
“It’s been a bit of a learning curve,” said Jason Klocko, WTVG's director of technology and chief engineer, “but it’s going well. If you look at where we were and at where we are, it’s improved.”
WTVG’s move to automation isn't the station following an industry trend, he said, so much as it is adopting the inevitable. ABC’s World News went to an automated control room followed by World News Tonight with David Muir.
WNWO-TV, Channel 24, was the first station in the market to go fully automated, though its newscasts are now run from a hub in South Bend, Ind., with a minimum of local on-air personnel. WTOL-TV, Channel 11, and WUPW-TV, Channel 36, which share a newsroom and staff, are not automated and in fact are the last local stations with camera operators.
WTVG automated its cameras in the mid-1980s.
“I’m surprised,” Klocko said, “we held out as long as we did.”
First Published October 23, 2018, 5:22 p.m.
