The video can be seen here:

Towards the end of the video, you will notice the camera zooming onto the wall, and several frames can capture a red marking on the wall (above), which appears to be a middle finger. The YouTube user responded back “I just noticed that,” and that he wasn’t aware of the marking. Click here to see the still frame. WARNING: CONTAINS STRONG GRAPHICS.

We haven’t heard of any complaints with the FCC or WNBC and we have contacted the station to make sure they are aware of the situation. The set maybe unfinished but from my experience, a marking like this is not allowed in any set or office of mine; finished or not.

Back in April, he was let go from WNBC after being there since the Mets won the World Series, 1986.

He revealed that he hasn’t watch Sue and Chuck on “News 4 New York” since he left. “The last six months were not fun,” Berman said.

He added, “They got rid of the studio and started doing the news in a closet.” Of course, he referred the station’s studio move from Studio 6B to Studio 7E (which 7E used to be a conference room). Studio 6B is now used for “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.”

Berman added that he is not done with broadcasting yet. He still sees local sports will have a role in the community.

As a News 4 “junkie” for the past twelve something years, I have noticed there has been a difference between the anchors and reporters in the last year. You can tell they are more tense and feared to get that purple envelope. WNBC’s former set in Studio 6B was one of the best sets I’ve seen on television. With its rear projector producing a CG animation of the New York City skyline with the cars, water, and lights, animating and moving; it added that this set was well planned out. I don’t know how much it cost, but I estimated 3 million dollars were invested to this set; including its projectors.

Weekend sports anchor Bruce Beck replaced Len Berman. I won’t complain Beck is a bad sports anchor, in fact he is my second favorite, but I will always miss Len and his “Spanning the World” segments.

I’ve been telling you since April and now its approaching fast. The new “content center” for WNBC’s News 4 New York is here. First it was the new NBC New York.com website, now the new studio and newsroom, and next stop will be the 24 hour newschannel which is expected to take the Weather Plus channel sometime by the end of the month. NBC announced earlier this year that it will close the Weather Plus unit by the end of December. This means that WNBC will now move the news operations from the historic studio 6B, where once Johnny Carson hosted the Tonight Show, to a place where it “used to be a conference room,” according to Janice Huff on air, that is known as Studio 7E.

There several cons and pros with this move. First is the graphics, which appears to be great. There is even a new music package, which seems to be okay but not as good as the previous one. A big problem I noticed that is going to bother me is that… there is NO GREEN SCREEN FOR THE WEATHER! Instead, a 103′ inch plasma screen is used. I sent a feedback to WNBC saying that a green screen should be used for the weather. I understand it is “faster” to put it on a plasma because of their , but not using a chroma key for the weather can be rather difficult for the users to see. And you will notice that the $3 million projectors are no longer behind Sue and Chuck projecting the animated city skyline, but instead the new newsroom replaces it.

The opening though made me laugh. The new announcer is the same announcer who did the WCBS-TV announcements saying “Now from Studio 46″ in the openings in 2007, this time its “Live from Studio 7E” for WNBC. The announcer is no longer at WCBS-TV.

Overall this $15 million dollar project seems to be working well, and then again this is only the beginning. At WRAJ Internet Radio and Vidgle, we are in the similar process to bring a news and content division by 2010 for Long Island, gathering news and information from Long Island media. A set is already in the works, though most of it will be chroma key because of the small space we have. Beginning in 2009, Vidgle will be covering more video reports, expanding the AZ Tech Talk and Cruzin’ Hollywood franchise, which will also expand to WRAJ’s on-demand unit, the WRAJ Internet Radio Podcast. Of course, thats the upcoming stuff coming to Jenthony beginning in January 2009 as WRAJ’s website gets a makeover.

As reported on my blog in the past, WNBC will be changing to “NBC New York” instead of “NBC 4 New York” back in April (which will take effect sometime next month). And in the past summer, as a graphic revamp on NBC O&O stations, KNTV was the one station that had a branding changing. Originally called “Bay Area’s NBC 11″ or just plain “NBC 11″ is now called “NBC Bay Area.” And now another station will be following this. The flagship station for NBC on the west coast, KNBC. KNBC will also work along with WNBC with its new website portal, NBCNewYork.com and NBCLosAngeles.com expected to launch later this month into November. It is unsure if they will leave the IBS (Internet Broadcasting System) network, their current hosting provider which is involved with news organization websites.

As I said since April, expect many changes for its changing world to improve their multiple platforms, including digital tv, and internet.

During a news segment on WABC, WNBC, and WCBS, they report of what is Katie Holme’s Broadway debut. But a group was there that might be familiar to our photo gallery users. The newscasts mentioned about the Scientology protests behind police baricades while wearing their “anonymous” masks. Unfortunately, neither station has uploaded the video on their website. This is one of the reasons why I want to get my DVR setup (without Cablevision’s charge).

Wonder if Fred was there?

Here is what was displayed on WNBC’s website:

Here is how WBAB layed it out:

Well obvisouly WBAB needs to hire a graphic artist for their website or stack up on stock photos and graphics. My site has tons and tons of stock graphics and images, we don’t even need to Google our graphics, or even take graphics from local TV stations; and we even have a few graphic designers.

As an observer of WNBC News 4 New York for the past many years, I noticed something different about the teaser that was aired. After my observation of watching the clip online several times, it seems like it is not Simmon’s fault; it feels and looks like they were unaware that they are live. One hint during the teaser, Chuck Scarborough, the co-anchor of Simmons for the past 28 years, was not looking at the camera; something that Scarborough will never do during a live teaser. If in that case, the director in the studio did not tell Simmons and Scarborough that they are live; the audio and video was perfectly done just like the other live teasers at 10:30pm. But it is what Simmons said that outraged the audience. My prediction is that there was a similar situation just like in the O’Reilly video posted on Monday that might have been going on in Studio 6B; an argument between the anchor and the director. On the 11 o’clock newscast, she apologized to the audience.
It is expected that Simmons will not be on the air tomorrow during the 5 o’clock and 11 o’clock newscast if the situation is not resolved.

In my views, Simmons seems like she won’t be fired; Simmons and Scarborough is the anchor team that represents New York news. Simmons joined WNBC back in 1980 with Scarborough.

Because videos and links contains strong language, links were not posted. Left image: snapshot of the May 12 live teaser, Right image: Sue Simmons in February 2007.

The coverage of Super Tuesday on WNBC’s DT 4.4 feed was done so well, that no other station in New York didn’t do with their digital subchannel. There was some few kinks, especially when the news feed simulcasted on the WNBC feed which had the NBC network program at the time, but overall I think it was great. It was a production that actually allows the audience to see how a local station, like WNBC, obtains the latest poll results when the camera is not on.

The best part was its interaction to viewers with its webchat and live stream on the station’s site. I was logged in as anthonyz if you were chatting away in the chatroom. Reporters that were assigned to attend the candidate parties/headquarters were actually in the chat, such as Jay DeDapper at the Hillary Clinton headquarters. The anchors were also on, including Lynda Baquero, Brian Williams, Ann Curry, Tom Brokaw, David Ushery, Sue Simmons and sadly Chuck was having a hard time to login on his computer at the anchor desk. Moderating and answering questions was Perri Peltz and Michael Gargiulo; and tech reporter Sree Sreenivasan were watching the blogs and also chatting on the live chat.

The internet and young citizens are playing a big role for this election. So from time to time, WNBC invited college students of different ages and races to visit the studio and asked about their views and opinions about the election and what type of media they use. This actually was an important part because more young voters are voting for this election because of the internet.
I like to say that it was a combination of “local television” and “cable television” as it contained the feeling of a cable news channel but instead it concentrated the local area. I hope WNBC will do a similar program like this in the future for the November election day coverage.
Image Above: Snapshot of WNBC’s chatpage at around 10:30.

“”I am very grateful to the officers and detectives of the NYPD, the paramedics and medical personnel at St. Vincent’s, and most of all the good Samaritans who came to my aid following the assault on me Monday night. I feel very fortunate to have sustained only bruises and cuts and not more serious injuries. I look forward to getting back to work on the Presidential campaign for News Channel 4 — although the camera may not be ready for me as quickly as I would like.”

There is no word when he’ll be back on the newscast.