nick.makansi's blog

sets/studios of local stations

 the Sets/studios of thelocal news stations

 WRAL: For WRAL's set, they decided that instead of some wicked cool backdrop, that they would put their working newsroom in the background. Which can make some odd moments if somebody walks the wrong way into the shot. The anchor desk is a basic anchor desk, screens in the table, nothing much. For the standup set, WRAL has a small desk w/ a computer on it, in front of the person (although you dont see this in the camera shot) and a plasma w/ HD graphics behind the person. One nice touch I like is the glass WRAL.NEWS on top of the plasma. Wicked awesome. For the traffic and weather, those are both done on a chroma-screen (google it if you dont know it) and the weather desk has a computer screen to the side and in front of the weather anchor. That's basiclly it for WRAL, and while it looks really big, its really not that big.

 WTVD: Something to me seems kinda cheesy to me about WTVD's set. For the anchor desk, a blue ABC11 logo-ish thing is behind it. Most of the weather and standups are done on a (what seems like) a virtual set w/ a  greenscreen behind them. In the Raleigh Eyewitness news center, it basiclly has the same theme except for just having Raleigh plastered everywhere. They also use some of the glass theme (sorry guys- WRAL does it better). 

 WNCN- I really havent seen that much of NBC17 but what I have seen of it... it looks pretty bland, just the regular...

NEWS14: News14's anchor desk is similar to WRAL's in the way that the background is a working(?) newsroom. The only difference is that you can hardly notice anybody moving about in the News14 newsroom (surprise?). The Politics set is basiclly the same as an interview set, except w/ the added bounus of POLITICAL CONNECTIONS written all over it. The weather desk that they "show" just b4 diving into the radar has virtual set written all over it (notice when they fade to the greenscreen- the weather guy doesn't even have to move- it just fades right in? what it is is the SAME camera angle just a new background on the chroma screen. News14 doesn't have much else, they report mostly from the field in one-man bands. 

 DISCLAMER: no promotion/advertising is meant to be conveyed through this blog posting.  All opinions are those of Nick Makansi and do not contain any bias toward any station.