Congress seat holder, George Santos, from New York, recently elected, but I cannot use the phrase “disgraced” because he is still in office despite, lies, upon lies, deception upon deception and phony stories upon phony stories that makes the Brian Williams scandal at NBC News seem like child’s play. I use BriWi because it’s the closet thing I could recall of a major figure in an institutionalized world that did a lot of over embellishing.
The day or two after New Years, Maggie Haberman from The New York Times said some strong words about the local New York market loosing its credibility to CNN. Not too long after, Charlie Sykes from The Bulwark Podcast characterized the failure in “the New York media ecosystem” a phrase that’s kinda like a cliche to Sykes vocab, not to offend him or anything.
Which means jamming to a WCBS Grand theme that I found somewhere that I don’t think was Edd Kalehoff’s site is now banned on my device (unless I resync my iTunes library and ensure my iPad doesn’t attempt to phone home to Apple to update my library’s metadata…
Before PNP was another phrase, it was the name for the theme package for a few of the East Coast CBS O&O stations. It was named from it’s composer, Shelton (better known as Shelly) Palmer whose a “he”! Way before he was futurist, he had composed news music, one of his first clients was WCBS-TV, for the Channel 2 News. WCBS-TV commissioned him to do the work, and it went on their air in March of 1985. Another version of the theme was commissioned and went to air in late 1986 and lasted through May 1989. The versioning with Shelly’s themes were “Phase I” and “Phase II”, etc. (BTW: The original ASCAP title in their catalog indicated as the WCBS-TV 1985 News ID Package
By the time Phase II appeared on Channel 2, the sister CBS O&Os used the theme as well, such as WCIX in Miami (which literally had CBS New York management as they just acquired Miami’s Channel 6) to make a mini-me version of WCBS-TV. I guess the reason why they were literally copying some of the New York format was to get the snowbirds, or permeant snowbirds to watch?
Approximately in 2006, Palmer sold his themes to 615 Music, and Quarter Past Six had been responsible for marketing the themes if stations so choose. PNP actually lasted for many, many years as late as 2012 in the smallest markets using cuts prior to my existence!
Of course, the PNP was one of many the themes that was based of a jingle from WBBM-TV, going as far back as 1975 and had been the de-facto flavor to all the CBS O&Os at the time. WBBM-TV retained that original theme up until late 1986. Over a dozen theme packages the several O&Os acquired up until the 1990s, had been commissioned by them. It is also to say, the CBS stations swayed between the WBBM tune and different themes, and return back. Even WBBM did it too. By 2005, CBS acquired the full rights to The Enforcer by Gari Media, which meant CBS owned or their affiliates could use that package, but it didn’t mean CBS owned the rights to the signature notes.
Now on his website, the samples all this themes are shown, despite Warner Chappell at some point had a page of the Shelly themes. The story goes 615 merged with Non-Stop (that was Warner owned) but became the bigger part of Warner when they acquired Gari Media in 2014, thats when the 3 companies became brands, and their studios would later just be cities of Warner-Chappell’s locations. I am not sure if he bought them back or what. At last check WCPM (vis-a-vis 615 Music would still be the owners.)
What’s interesting is the copyright on Palmer’s site indicates 1970, which he doesn’t look that old. Some creative types think the copyright begins at their birth, and perhaps he was not even legal when WCBS-TV acquired the theme. Who knows.
Thankfully I got a News Music Monday on a Monday. A random Public Service Announcement from your humble minifig newsie, don’t let silly feminists eat you alive. It could cost you your lifespan!
Like 1992, 2020’s Election Day fell on November 3rd.
Channel 2 News in New York would run the twice hourly NewsWatch. I believe it was taped after a newscast (if it was after Noon and 6:00 pm) and newsroom shots were taped, and would run during soaps and gameshows.
During that time, that short-lived animation and theme package only lasted from at least May 1992 to February 1993. The graphics package itself dates as far back as the summer of 1991.
I like it because it looked very modern, mixing the 1980s logo of Channel 2 News with a 90s flair, pushing the competition to get into the more desktop computer graphics, and not the 8 or 16-bit crap the other guys were using.
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.
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…)
Rebuilding Local Media with building bricks and minifigures as the subjects. Also the King of Simulating Live events in Post Production™.
