Tag Archives: Boston

The AutoCam Invasion in Boston, early 1990s

The recession of the 1980s into the early 90s pushed media companies to economize. The Massachusetts economy had it worse than some other places. AutoCam was made by TSM at the time. The  pedestal had this sculpture look. There was Radamec, and Vinten. All three are supported by Vinten as they bought TSM and merged with Radamec a few years later.

 WBZ-TV 1991

WBZ channel 4 was one of the first of the market to get AutoCam. They used standard ENG cameras to shoot.

WCVB-TV 1993/94

When the new set for the 90s came along in 1993, they were the next station. They had the black colored pedestals. Chronicle taught New Englanders this new technology in the behind the scenes of NewsCenter 5 in 1994

on the 25th anniversary special of the station, they had shot taped interviews, notably one from a competing station. That scene showed the AutoCam but not the boxy looking Ikgami, they switched to ENG cameras too. Ironically these bots are controlled via  hard wired connections to a computer. The camera is fed as a pass through for a touch panel monitor to trigger automated shots. The computer is the brain, and the “brain” controls the motors. The bots are dumb. Why I say this? When WCVB switched to HD, they kept ol peds, but put full HD cameras and new computer, but all the intelligence was fully backwards compatible. some stations like CBS’ Sacramento station still had these ol devices as late as 2018… but modern controllers and HD cams.

WHDH-TV 1991

it was likely that WHDH Channel 7 was the first to go to one person robotics. The station was loosing a lot of money because of the said recession and to pay off the once principal owner Bob Kraft… ironically the following year after the sale of WHDH properties, did Kraft buy the New England Patriots… you wonder if there’s a correlation.

but whoever was managing the station kept the station low fi. Sets were modified off the shelf furniture… maybe the newsroom for Live at Five was the best. But the cameras that tied into the  TSM AutoCam was the RCA-TK46. They were high tech for the time…in the early 1980s. These used tubes to capture pictures in studio. When a tube would go on the fritz, the picture would look blurry. These weren’t  as efficient like the TK-47 even those were used up till the mid 1990s. Supposedly these cameras had been purported in comments on other socials to not last for long.

But the stations blue on white branding was perfect to throw on the TK46 camera’s blue on white color scheme.

The average height of a robotic pedestal at full stow is 60″ most studios often have the cameras low for that “10 pound” factor. But the Tk46 against the AutoCam made the setup even monstrous  as the station allowed the press to come in April 1993 to announce the sale to Sunbeam Broadcasting

Both Channels 5 and 7 had one or two in their newsroom as a secondary set. WCVB and WHDH today have moved onto the Vinten’s Fusion which combines the brains of Vinten and Radamec’s approaches to automatic movement. WBZ did go to the next generation AutoCam under Vinten; the SP-2000 X-Y but CBS standardized with the 5th grade science project known as CamBot aprox in 2016.

WLVI didn’t go robotic and their manual pedestals were really outdated. WFXT went with Fox’s preferred Radamec pedestals when they did news again in 1996. However in March of 1992, the  launch of New England Cable News, they were on AutoCam from the start. The 1989 vintage continued to be in use at NECN until 2010, when they went to SP 2000 and then went to Fusion just as NBCU took managerial control. In 2020, the Fusion pedestals didn’t move to Needham, but maybe got repurposed at 30 Rock…

 

WBTS/NBC 10 Boston at Midday (1st 11:00 am Newscast) – 2021

Captured ~ July 27th, 2021. This aired after the moved to noon to 11am to line up with sister NBC O&Os that opt to a 11am newscast. “Look S”, the corporate graphics package is used, except for the weather. Tim Kelley was on remote, and I am suspecting the only reason why they were still on “Look N” for the weather was perhaps a technical issue with updating the graphics or they needed to be trained on. Look S weather graphics appeared by the time of the Closing Ceremonies in Japan a few days from this recording.

TBT: Meeting Emily Rooney (First ever meeting a local TV reporter) in 2016

Revised in September 2022 for clarity purposes

Given the news that Beat The Press being canceled by Boston’s Channel 2 a couple weeks ago today, and I miss my own deadline for writing this letter on my site. Not knowing her affiliation with the station, I didn’t want to risk sending an email and have it be bounced by their postmaster in their messaging system (if she had been let go, most local media freeze email and logins solely to the station’s legal folks.) Regardless with the cancellation of BTP, and her leaving Greater Boston in 2014, she was quasi-retired, so I assume she’s off their books.

I only met Emily once in my lifetime, but I felt like I have known her for years. I had watched BTP off and on probably since its inception (I think it was really 1999 to this year.) That time I did meet her was in 2016 at the First in the Nation Primary in New Hampshire. I had lived in this market my entire life, and have walked around many of the local media talent in their live shots.

Before meeting her…

I never did hi-mom shot at all. One time circa 2010, there was a WHDH ENG crew was at my local high school and I had walked the drivers side while I took pictures of the crew, but never met them in person or introduced myself. I’ve been known to take pictures of people shooting video in live shots or things of that nature. In 2012, I did have an encounter with Dick Brennan from WNYW as they were based out of Saint A’s college in Manchester with the Fox News crew, as I snapped their vehicle. ENG field people rarely get appreciated. That was the reason. Before the mid teens, when MySpace was the only popular social media platform of it’s time, Facebook was barely existent to public-figures; and Twitter was really new, and Instagram wasn’t existent yet. I think it was with Instagram with selfies and selfies with local public figures is where I think I felt most comfortable.

Back to ’16…

a picture of a multi story hotel off Merrimack St in Manchester, NH now branded as DoubleTree by Hilton
Taken prior to the pandemic; nearly 5 months after meeting her, I would frequent this area weekly for several years of which that moment in February wouldn’t be forgotten for me. This is roughly a few hundred feet from sight; where my normal walking route would be in Downtown ManchVegas

Many of the local press converged at the Center of New Hampshire expo center, which at the time was part of the Raddison chain. Outside of First of the Nation, the first floor is an open lobby, but it’s all split apart when the primary time comes along. WGBH (FM and TV along with PBS IIRC) was camped out, adjacent to Merrimack Street (I’ll get to that later see the facility on the right side.) The setup was on camera and producers were sharing tables and the small studio was on the lobby side. The set looked a lot like what was later used at the Boston Public Library; I could be mistaken. They literally brought studio grade equipment to Manchester and the magic of modern day newsgathering, you can bring a studio via broadband computer network and most of the heavy lifting is done back in Brighton, roughly 50 miles south.

I looked like a lowlife guy, because I and my mother had came into the building from a cold day outside about 5 minutes before. I had frequented Manchester and didn’t think differently, and didn’t think I was an outsider. Despite the minifigures, I did manage to do two packages for a reporter that tagged along with me. So I did feel (in my objective opinion) felt I was part of the press.

I know from an acquaintance Emily is short, just over 5′ (yes TV does add height!) in fact in less than a minute, I didn’t need do a stakeout, because she walked by. I asked if it was her, she confirmed, and asked could I get a selfie. She was reluctant at first, but I was able to get a snap, said she didn’t think she looked alright, and despite the reluctance, she was better dressed than your’s truly. I did say I was a fan of her show and watched for many, many years, since again she really was doing BTP  completely at that point. I kept myself short and sweet.  It was interesting why she was there early in the week, when media affairs is a fraction the overall coverage; but it happened….

I write this because ironically nearly five months after I met her, I would on every Wednesday before the pandemic, I would cross the other side of Merrimack Street, on an alley way, that would be two blocks down from where WGBH was setup on that eve of the Primary Election in 2016. On those Wednesdays, I would have my own throwback, being nearly a 500′ of line of sight of where I met her back in 2016. In fact without going into my personal life, it came unexpectedly.  There was never a day that went by for a number of years where I couldn’t forget that moment in my life.

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