Tag Archives: Channel 2 News

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WCBS-TV – Channel 2 News at 6:00 – 1987

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In 1987 – five years before – WCBS-TV was looking like a standard big market newscast for it’s time. Captured the week after Black Monday’s stock market crash; this is when kids the “local news” was on for either an hour or two hours (for the five o’clock news.) In 1988, Channel 2 was the first New York station to roll back the network newscast to start at 6:30, WABC-TV second and WNBC-TV was the last by 1991 (and this apparently hurt their ratings.)

Anyways I was 7 months old and kinda interesting that parts of the New York Stock Exchange looked  pretty much the same for nearly a decade before flat panel monitors were installed and the logo changed in the year 2000.  Channel 2 News went through a bunch of changes as the 80s came to a close.

at the end, Bree Walker teases the 11:00 news, in a newsroom that predated the multi fake monitor setup; and the theme heard was the infamous Palmer News Package.

Airchecks, Uncategorized

WCBS-TV – Channel 2 News at 11:00 – 1992 Newscast (also a focus on the Chyron of the time)

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Did you know that 2020 has the same date pattern as 1992? So exactly 28 years ago last Thursday, November 26th, this newscast from WCBS-TV in New York aired.

https://youtu.be/np-aL3mhwME?t=209

I always was a sucker for the WCBS 1992 look. In fact while it was nixed in the beginning of February 1993, the theme dates only as far back as May of 1992.

It is believed that WCBS-TV also was the first New York City TV station to install a Chyron iNFiNiT! Character Generator, that dates as far back as the summer of 1991; nixing the 6+ years of using the Chyron IV on Channel 2 News. What’s so “infinite” you ask? It’s very apparent WCBS-TV designed the bugs and banners with the in-system graphics creator. Fine for 1991/92, but it doesn’t give you enough graphics power. As the 90s went on; you’ll see a lot of graphics you could design on a Mac or Windows. This new Chyron came out after the 1989 NAB show; and had a lot of elements of a PC. In fact it was one Chyron’s first CGs that could hook up in an IP network, handle more modern day graphics pushing them out from TFTP. In the case of Channel 2, the iNFiNiT! was used as late as 2007 (all those blue colored graphics, was really done on this same graphics engine.

I thought their use of the iNFiNiT! was really ahead of it’s time. Mix the 7 year old Channel “2 News” logo , it joined the 1990s with a lot of modern look if you asked me.

Competing stations however used that same ol 8 bit Chyron IV up till early 1993 or in the case of WABC-TV well into the mid 1990s, around the time Disney came a-knockin.

But on the other hand, Chyron would stop the live of the infitite engine in 2006, but stations like WMAQ in Chicago was still putting up name bars as late as 2012! How did that not pass the NBC brass for upgrades? (Actually the iNFiNiT! could to 16:9 but it wouldn’t be digital HD…)