Just in time for February Sweeps, we have revamped our full closing credits, normally 40 pages of our full and mostly part time staff. This is a test, we may tweak this when we feel it’s needed. The music is the Morning Theme of Propulsion V2 from 615 Music. This was KHOU11’s early morning news theme upon the 2011 rebrand and to the Gannett/Tegna takeover in October 2014. It has a very classic 615 sound to it! It matches our branding of bubbling minifigures and hard news (the “Primary Theme” in Propulsion V2)
Tag Archives: BCOP-TV
A Copenhagen Thanksgiving Parade (Full 1080p HD Master)
This was from the last Thanksgiving Parade aired on BCOP-TV. The stream and replay was at a lower resolution. This is at camera capture quality.
Masculinity in Crisis? The Promo of a Story that Never Aired
In case you didn’t miss it, a promo aired during A Copenhagen Thanksgiving Parade of the Masculinity in Crisis story; but was aborted in the last minute. We had a package ready to air on Thanksgiving, but the management ordered us to cancel the production, however on the Creative Services side, we had already made 3 different promos with different ends in the last tag (such as “Thursday at Ten”, “Tomorrow at Ten” and “Tonight at Ten” – for whatever reason the sketch voice over said “11”.)
We also had layoffs the day after Thanksgiving, 6 on the TV side, and 2 on the radio. It’s suspect there was a miscomm between traffic and news for line up of commercial and promotional playouts during the Parade.
The traffic department is a unit that is half sales/half tech, they are responsible for positioning ads and commercials at the right time in advance. They also log these airings to properly bill to the customers who are placing ads on BCOP-TV’s air. Since there was little ads during that holiday, apparently the traffic department was not aware the promo aired, or the promo wasn’t properly logged, or someone from news didn’t inform traffic that this sweeps story was gutted.
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A Copenhagen Thanksgiving Parade
ICYMI: this is my 2nd parade I produced in a row for BCOP-TV. The production took nearly 4 to 5 days, nearly 2 to 3 hours of raw media, about a couple hours to ingest, and I exported the video in real time. The secret to that will be in a future post.
My child puts their lego toys in a perfect row and slowly moves them and shoots them on a camera. Stereotypical mother that doesn’t get their kids’ autism – thankfully my mother isn’t one of ’em.
Regardless, all of this is extremely taxing which I am taking part of this week off, because all of this “live” production actually requires an editing application especially if you want effects and banners. No hobbyist has a Chyron Duet, a Grass Valley switcher and an audio board just laying around in their basement. I used Avid, you could use Premiere, Edius (for PC) or Apple’s FCPX (quality maybe less than say the other three.)
If you have 43 minutes (the actual running time without commercials or promos) enjoy it.
BCOP 6 News Promo – Cassidy Hutchinson Testifies (June ’22)
It was one my best promos I produced despite voice over mismatches. The testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson from the January 6th Committee hearings, was very “alarming” (was the editorial phrase 6 used) and the best use of making quick 15 second cuts. Notice the flash cut. We also added text with the “[POTUS Trump] lunged” to the steering wheel to get emphasis out.
The graphic is a PNG image, and we are doing what was typical for the early 10s, where you have the “4:3 safe zone” for standard def TV screens. The reasoning why we reintroduced this even though the station is fully 16:9? One word: Instagram. The way people are consuming media, we are certainly not going to do 45° rectangle of a resolution and if the 16:9 crop happens on Instagram, you still get the station’s logo and time for the tease.
Editing is not just cutting stuff up, it’s also an editorial decision too.
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David Ortiz Lego Statue Unveiling, Fenway Park (BCOP-TV, 2016)
Since Papi has been inducted in Cooperstown today lets go back 6 years when yours truly rolled some video from the unveiling of the Lego form…
Life after Ctown (BCOP Is no longer)
On May 4th marked my last day with BCOP-TV and BCOP Newsradio effective immediately. I left in decent terms. The TV station wanted me to work too many hours (and I have personal issues with my family in the real-world.) Secondly, the radio station wanted me to do tag-partner hours, me doing even hours and another anchor for the other hour, and go back and forth to morning drive at 5:00 am. That means I would start at 8:00pm, 10:00pm, midnight, 2:00 am and 4:00 am from Monday night into Saturday morning. I couldn’t do it along with offers for morning drive traffic or midday drive traffic.
Copenhagen is not Denmark in my part of the micro world. It’s actually a capital of Minibrick State, the least populated in the world, at least as my last research. The daytime population pre COVID was 60,000, and it used to be almost 70,000 before the Blizzard of 2015 in late January into February took down the state House, and a State House Tower that used to hold up to 10,000 state employees. It’s a mix of Albany meets Hartford.
But I used to be from the big city of Metro Miniland, a city of 4 million and a county population of 6, Miniland County is like NYC, without 25 former New York State Towns and 4 NYS Counties (the boroughs.) Before 2015, I settled for many years in side town of Elizabeth, (exits 17 to 21 on 493) a tiny city of 40,000 minifigures. But I had an alternative relationship where I married a fellow person and then relocated to Copenhagen moonlighting as an Information Services technical support specialist for the MIS government. I had then freelanced for BCOP-TV to get my feet wet of experiencing doing actual recordings of news that I had never done (I had relied on imagination and broken cameras.) I never made the full move to newsgathering till this winter. I still did the IT/IS sidejob (even in the real world while being chronically unemployed since I had been 21 due to neglect of the developmentally delayed system.)
But my relationship with Melanie had ended a month before the pandemic. A year before I tried to create a poor-mans Game Creek Video business, and COVID just made it get creamed. The divorce process took a long time, and then she had a severe illness. She then committed suicide on June 30th. Her infamy was likely inadvertent because she touted how she was the 9th generation of the settlers of a Connectclick capital city. As a result, both Northern and Southern Brick England markets were fighting for SNG time because the story caught the attention downstream on the Long Island River
So my media business ended, and I thought I’d stick with Six, but my emotions are running high. My home is a suburb near a big city in the minifig world. I am a Minilandian (not a Minilander like you see at a Legoland park.)
I am hoping in the coming months from the content creator/minifig news gathering side, I’ll come up with some consultation projects since Miniland has 3 Flagship O&Os and is the fourth largest DMA in the Minifig world, and is home to the first fully HD TV studio in the Minifig world. Just like spending a week in Manhattan, is fine, but living there is another thing. That’s like Miniland.
There will always be a spot in my heart for Ctown, the only Capital without a State House thanks to Mother Nature.
What Not to Tweet
“I hope I get COVID19 and die”
@MinifigNewsguy on Twitter early March 2020
Most real-world stations wouldn’t fire someone like this. But this is how I got to Digital 1 News in between BCOP-TV. But the Channel 6 News management really, has high standards, and what many in the real-world industry would consider to be just a one-off crazy tweet, they consider to be insulting. As a result I had been immediately dismissed from the station in the midst of COVID19.
What I think got the management freaking out, was earlier in March, 2 BCOP-TV staff, an ENG photog and a reporter had been threatened by a minifigure who claimed to have COVID and then threatened to spread it to them because they felt they were being harassed by the reporters. This meant two reporters would be out of commission for at least 10 days leaving an already tight newsroom to be shorter staffed.
In a 2018 rebuild to the newsroom (that was already 2 years old from construction) they made the newsroom basically for anyone in studio to work in the building, and anyone whose out on the field to work solely out in the field so during COVID it wasn’t that much different, making the station spared from further logistical disasters. Also the station had moved to IP (the Internet Protocol) for live shots, using an in house 4G network around the Capital region so for anyone with a Sophos VPN client, they could dial-into the building and act as if they were at the station with full resources on a regular computer (because all the heavy lifting was done on the station’s servers.)
But as a result I had to eat my tweet and the station didn’t hire me back behind the scenes until earlier in 2021. But as of today, I am leaving the station on mutual terms. More on this tomorrow.
The Best Production of 2021 – Thanksgiving in The Spirit of Copenhagen (BCOP-TV)
Can we submit Thanksgiving in The Spirit of Copenhagen for the Miniland Regional Emmys?
For many years, I had this thing where as far back as a six year old where I was known for “arranging [my] toys in a particular order” and the inference is that the toys wouldn’t move. But what if it’s all you and you’re the only one that wants to move all your stuffed animals? (inside autistic joke here)
Anyways I had produced 2 attempts in 2015 and 2017 but it wasn’t until 2021, I finally got it. The video is a bit rough (due to deadlines, the media in my Avid editing system was getting overwhelmed) and I was working many hours on the week of Thanksgiving to get it out. I was also up till 2:00 am Thanksgiving morning to master it to share. Some packages didn’t roll and Santa was M.I.A. Resulting in our enterprise reporter and traffic reporter (who was grounded due to the clouds) to adlib and stretch throughout the event. Some commercials didn’t air and PSAs didn’t roll.
Ironically given the quirks and miscues editing it, this actually looked like a live event production. Clearly my most favorite work of art, simulating live shots in post. While the minifigs can blame the OverDrive install to not work, it was the nicest thing I had ever did in a long time.
I finally got my childhood dream to come true, to actually do some own parade and actually shoot and edit and make this my best thing I have done on my Avid editing system to date.
FYI the run time is 50 minutes if you even have the time to watch it. 🙂
#WBW: Spring 2016 – Spoofing Tegna’s This is Home Campaign
Local News Shouldn’t have to be presented in nine different color coded graphics
In the minifig world, a competing station would follow a Tegna* format, with the gawd awful Gari Media’s This is Home campaign and theme package. At 6 News, we being the ball-buster news operation, went to Twitter and did a series of 9 posts giving another nudge to Tegna and This is Home. We went to the jugular. We did 14 full sized images to Tweet out just because it turns us on to see teenagers coming up with a stupid corporate branding…
*Tegna became a company from the Gannett spinoff in 2015, but it predated 2 years prior, and Gannett bought two chains of groups during the lifecycle of TIH.
