Oregon Media Insiders

I haven't heard that, but the idea of a 24-hour channel wouldn't surprise me. If KPTV chooses to do this, I would think it would be on one of their digital channels. As there is already about nine hours of "news' programming daily on KPTV, I assume much of it would be repeated on any "news" channel (not sure if "Better" would be part of it) and that some of these shows would be aired more than once to help fill 24 hours. The cynic in me wants to name it the "3M (Murder, Meth, and Mayhem) Channel.

This is my first post - I only discovered this site today, and have been going back though previous entries and comments. A very interesting site - nice to meet y'all (native southwest Virginian transplanted to western Oregon seven years ago).

Billy Burgess
Independence, OR

I hope they do this expanded News operation. KPTV could vault to #1 if they do.

The ABC network decided on the 720p not KATU. KATU then had to make the decision whether to just keep things consistent across the board or constantly change resolution between programming. 720p is preferred over 1080i for sports and action programming anyway.

with what is on tv, ntsc is good enuf. grainy pix mask poor writing and weak concepts

Not KATU decision. Years & years ago it was ABC's call, as it was for FOX as well. If it's well executed, there's not too much a difference in formats by the time it hits your screen at home. (As evidenced by your belief that KPTV was 1080i)

SCJ

KGW has had the same problems as well as KATU.

720 is much better for sports and action scenes, it's not the 720/1080 issue that you're bitching about, it's the (p) vs the (i).

KATU could be broadcasting in 2000 (p) Hi-Def and it wiuldn't make a bit of difference. Fisher stations are the death of commercial broadcasting. the sharper the picture, the more apparent their bad journalism becomes.

Sorry, Steph. I swear we know your name!

For what it's worth, Steph now joins Joe Donlan, Tracey Barry, Laurel Porter and Matt Zafino in the misspelled anchor hall of fame.

Jeff @ KGW Graphics

That wasn't a typo. Someone in KGW's gfx dept. actually didn't know how to spell Steph's name and he/she was too lazy to pick-up a station phone directory to figure it out. Do you think it's cute to admit you've done the same thing to several other anchors? Are you guys THAT lazy over there or just stupid?

Since we're human, we all make them, but no, misspelling the name of someone you know isn't a typo. It's not necessarily stupidity, but rather, something momentary, a mental error. It's a thinko. I make thinko's all the time.

Typos bug me. I'm a former UO J-School grad, and I guess I just expect a little more professionalism from my TV news. I'm sure you're all professionals, but when stupid spelling mistakes are made it doesn't do much for your credibility.

I'm sure you're under tight deadlines and pressure, but man, would it kill someone to proof read once in a while?

"Pick up" isn't hyphenated, and proofread is one word.

and that's not all. Unless "Typo" somehow renounced his /her degree, one can't be a "former" grad. student, yes, but a grad is a grad. that's the trouble with picking someone's nits. you can get bit. --no longer quick brown fox

Sure, criticize me. I don't care beyond this response. As for relinquishing my degree, no thanks. I spent a lot of money on that. :)

Here are my thoughts on this.

I do have a journalism degree, but I'm not paid to put graphics up for a million folks to read every night on the news. If I was, you can bet I'd spend a little extra time making it look like the news organization I represent knows how to spell their own anchor's names or local town names correctly. Thankfully, I have a job that earns me more, with considerably less stress than my friends who ended up in broadcasting or working in news.

I'm not concerned what you all think of my grammatical errors on a casually submitted blog post. If all I have to endure is a few nit picky comments from people who, I'm quite sure never make spelling or grammatical mistakes, then by all means, fire away.

At least my errors only color your views of me, not my employer. If you wanted to, maybe you can reserve some blame for the University of Oregon J-school too.

I am a fan of KGW, in fact I rarely watch any other station. In my book, they are the best in town, which is why it is surprising when I see obvious miss-spellings (can someone tell me if I spelled that wrong? ;-)

Cheers and stay cool.

Are you claiming to never make mistakes in the job you're paid to do? Even dumb ones?

Are you claiming that making mistakes is acceptable and that being a human being allows one to perform subpar work. Are we to believe that anything goes in your esteemed opinion?

Since you asked, it's "misspelling". There's no hyphen and only two S's.

Miss Spellings does not have a - between the two words
Her full name is Tori Spelling and she's hotttttt in my book. But then I'm an old geezer and easily pleased.

spelling flames rarely work out. Plus also? Boring.

-----
Lynn Siprelle * Fairy Blogmother

i dated a miss spelling once. horrible grammarian but man could she type.

Pick-Up is hyphenated in Mississippi.

"Former" grad? You're not a graduate now? What happened?

u r funny. only tee vee workers would think that iz funny.

99% of the media is crap anyway, CNN and foxnews are a joke and the local media is even worse.

"What is your level of Blazermania now, and what will it be at the end of the season?"
Zero now. Zero at mid-season. Zero at end of season.

*How hard is it to figure out or understand that Duck fans -- all Oregonians, really -- want to see their own succeed? Harrington's family lives here, and they're calling him "pathetic" on the air. Critiquing his performance is one thing, but these were personal digs.*

We'd all love to see Joey succeed, the problem is that he's just not an NFL QB. He benefited greatly from the players around him at Oregon but Kellen and Dixon were better QB's.

All of that may be true, but my beef wasn't about the fact they were ripping Joey as a player (and Kellen too, for that matter), it was the fact they were ripping Ducks fans for still rooting for Joey to do well. (And that they got personal in their critiques of these players.) Again, why wouldn't Duck fans root for pro players who came out of the UO program? It's an inane topic for discussion, topped only by asking listeners to predict what their level of "Blazermania" will be at the end of the NBA season. My underlying question remains valid -- are these two the best Portland radio can do for a morning sports talk show? Is Portland that unattractive as a sports media market for people with genuine talent? Judging by what's on the air at both The Game and The Fan, one would have to conclude yes.

This brings up an interesting point. For those up above discussing why some stations are running 720p and 1080i, yet another factor is bandwidth. The current spectrum allows for 6Mhz of bandwidth for each station. With current compression standards, that allows for 2 HD channels, or 5 SD channels per station. Some stations in the US would run multiple subchannels during the day then shut those off at night and run 1 full HD channel with HD video and 5.1 audio during primetime programming. OPB is running at the maximum right now with their main HD channel and then the other subchannels operating a much lower bitrate to maintain their bandwith. I guess that's ok since no one needs to watch the Oregon Legislature in HD. It's one of the reasons some folks with DirecTV switched to cable for HD because of the compression and the lack of sharpness in the picture.

Along these same lines, I've heard that the only provider that does NOT compress HD is Verizon FiOs (possibly because of the bandwidth fiber affords?). I've heard that both Comcast and DirecTV compress. I asked a Comcast customer service rep about it, and he said he didn't know.

I heard Verizon doesn't recompress a signal before sending it out like Comcast and DirecTV does. A signal would only be compressed on Verizon if that is how the broadcaster sent it to them.

You, sir are correct.

SCJ

How misled people are. So the holy grail in HD is uncompressed 4:4:4. That equals approx 1.5GB/sec datarate. Professional broadcast formats (the most common at least) are HDCAM SR at 880mb/sec and HDCAM at 145mb/sec. Not sure what networks originate from, but regardless of format, native HD is compressed down to a trickle of its former self through tape format, to satellite distribution to affiliates (to fit into the 6mb/sec bandwidth alloted to each channel) and etc. Locals compress further for over the air, especially for sub channels as discussed. Satellite providers also re-compress provided signals into mpeg4, their quality certainly isn't any better than single channel broadcast signals. And therefore FiOS also isn't any better since they get their signal from the same source as the satellite guys (fiber'd from each station). Now, true fiber carries something like 10gb/sec so that could handle multiple streams of uncompressed HD... ain't ever gonna happen.

You are correct that there is a whole bunch of bandwidth paring going on between origination and affiliate delivery but please do not be deceptive. There are additional compression, rate-shaping, and other bandwidth reduction techniques applied to Comcast and satellite providers signals that are NOT employed by FiOS.

SCJ

Misled here. The point I was making, although maybe poorly, is that FiOS couldn't be any better than the signal provided to them from the locals. And what the locals provide is what they are provided from network feeds and etc. which is already heavily compressed. FiOS may not recompress signals like satellite, but at least in theory a FiOs provided HD channel couldn't be any better than a full bandwidth over-the-air rabbit ears HD channel. The perception that fiberoptic is a better technology (which I won't argue) might lead some to think the picture looks better by default. It would be an interesting test to put a FiOS picture side-by-side to a full bandwidth OTA rabbit ears picture and see what there is to see in difference...I would bet none.

With as much disinformation tossed around it's important to get it right for those readers not technically inclined.

Yeah, it would be interesting to do an A/B with OTA and FiOS. I think you're right, even if the FiOS signal is pulled clean upstream from what goes out to the transmitter (i.e., not compromised with the bandwidth used by the weather programming subchannel) you'd be hard pressed to see the difference.

What is clear is that in many ways HD's best days are already behind us in, so far as we end-users receiving a relatively unmassaged, unmolested signal.

SCJ

so, ur telling us ch 12 is streaming news 24/7. This is real news.

That would be sad. I love the idea of a local morning sports show, and I have to think it can work. But being local alone is not enough of a differentiator. One only has to look as far as The Fan's afternoon show for proof of this. You have to know your audience, and you have give them the content they want. You have to entertain them...give them a reason to listen...make them think if they don't listen, they're really going to miss something. The current MSP does none of that. I know we only have one professional sports team, but if you throw the Ducks, Beavers and even Seahawks (and, by extension, the rest of the NFL) into the mix, there should be no shortage of compelling content. And while we aren't a major media market, can't we attract better talent? Portland TV news seems to have no trouble attracting quality on-air people -- aren't there quality sports talk show hosts clamoring to come to Portland? From a listener's perspective, the only logical conclusion would have to be no.

I work for KATU and we do the same thing. We just say "here's .... " and not "here's ABC's..." We have every right to do that and so do other affiliates. That's how it works at every station.

KPTV recently changed it's intro to reporters who are not employees. You have picked up on that. It used to be KPTV's Mark Johnson, now they say, For KPTV here's Mark Johnson. I for one, appreciate the subtle change and was something I had been calling for. I agree with KATU in that they are paying CNN and FOX thousands of dollars a month for reports so there's no reason they can't say the reporters are doing the report for KPTV. In many cases, stations also request certain stories to be moved so in those cases too, it's not for everyone.

You must not be watching your own station very closely, let alone the other ones. Many times I have heard Natali Marmion, Carl Click, Debora Knapp and others intro a package by saying "Here is ABC's John Jones." The other stations, except for KPTV, often follow the same format when doing an intro of a package by one of their network's reporters.

But even "here's ..." is preferable to that "For KPTV, here is.." business. Why is KPTV trying to create the impression that the package was created just for them when it is available to, and being used by, many Fox affiliates? What they are doing now is slightly less misleading than what they were doing a couple of years ago, when they would intro a network package with "Here is KPTV's John Jones." But not much.

It may be how it works (and always has) but that doesn't make it right. When you say "KPTV's..." or "For KPTV..." the idea is obviously to insinuate (falsely) that the reporter works for the station, otherwise no one would do it. Same thing goes for tossing to a generic live shot and doing a lead in that makes it look like a custom live shot. Same thing goes for manipulating the ratings numbers in promos to make it look like you have the highest rated newscasts. News orgs shouldn't be in the business of intentionally trying to deceive the audience.

Affiliates pay for the use of the reporters. It's no secret. In fact, KPTV specifically says the person is reporting "For KPTV" because they thought it sounded misleading to say, "KPTV's John Smith."
By the way, have you watched KGW? Have you noticed that every single reporter far and wide, CNN, NBC, etc., is "News Channel 8's"? Or were you too busy trying to criticize KPTV?

Actually,my favorite approach to this is by the world's greatest newsman -- Tim Riley on the Rick Emerson show.
For those of you who don't listen to his wonderful newscasts, he intros his network-fed sound clips with..."as Madonna told me this morning, she is ready to try something new" (to audio)

There is so much make-beleive in broadcasting (make-up,hair pieces, elevated chairs, reporter-written-questions-for-anchors, etc.) that it seems refreshing to poke fun with an extreme illusion.

for bonus points: radio ratings -- I saw KXL didn't make the top ten. Anyone have that broken down by day parts????

So you are saying that the reporters do not work for "KPTV" or other stations?

KPTV is using a service provided by the network with which they are affiliated. They are using a service just like the rest of us use services provided by the electric company, the water bureau, the Postal Service, etc., and it is basically dishonest of KPTV to try to create the impression that the network reporter's package was done exclusively for them. Does KPTV sign the paychecks of the network reporters whose packages they use? I doubt it. If they're not trying to create a false impression, then why else would they word the package intros the way they do?

Yeah, someone has a lot of debt to pay!

I am surprised that no one has commented about the new KGW Olympic promos. Everytime they come on in our house, everyone starts laughing at them. Even the kids! Talk about taking yourself too seroiusly...

Me thinks no 1 cares about olympics since commies are host and footage is 12 hours old news.

People obviously care about this year's Olympics. The numbers are huge. What a silly thing to say.

Numbers aren't as big as they're expecting. Love to just skim over the results during the morning when the events are actually being played. Thank God for the basketball/soccer channels and for TiVo!

but Portland's olympic ratings have been huge (as they usually are) I've seen 40-plus ratings and 55-60 shares in some dayparts. How big do you want them rifleman?

Just shows the gap widening between the have's and the have-not's. Tape-delaying is not for the young folk of today anymore.

The twenty-somethings who stay up all night just to say they saw silly olympic coverage "live" are the same twenty-somethings who fail to perform at their jobs the following day because they are sleep deprived, by their own poor choices. The American productivity level slips again thanks to absurd sporting events.

I'll just TiVo what I want to watch, fast forward through the commercials, and then delete it. Saves me a ton of time from watching crap that is at least 12-15 hours old in "Prime Time".

The fog and wind blowing... what B-rated movie producer approved this schtick. The promos are a joke. If I had not known the anchors, or the logo, or the channel I was tuned into, I would have assumed the promos were for KPTV. How can anyone take KGW news seriously now?

"J" school or acting school. I love the smoke! The "Z" maan looks to be in his element - DRAMA -

In answer to your rhetorical question: no one has taken KGW seriously ever since PM Magazine went off the air.