North American Affiliates News Set Debuts (All Local Channels)

[Mouseboy33]

WDKY - Fox - Lexington Kentucky

Warehouse looking set. Not too bad.A bit dark IMO. The virtual windows help out alot.

[Medianext.MX]

WDKY - Fox - Lexington Kentucky

Warehouse looking set. Not too bad.A bit dark IMO. The virtual windows help out alot.

Yep, a bit warehouse and dark, but IMHO the best implementation of the Nexstar in-house sets so far. These Nexstar sets, designed by an Arkansas contractor called Lance Schroeder, were initially very ugly and busy, with the most controversial element being their desk, whose design reminded of Doctor Who's dalek, therefore being called by TVNewsTalk users as the Dalek Desk. Here's how it looks at one of their flagship stations, KARK-4 in Little Rock:



However, after they designed a set for WISH-TV (still used even if they sold it to DuJuan McCoy due to the Tribune merger, great move by Nexstar), the in-house designs began to significantly improve, and this particular set design was even syndicated to other Nexstar stations, like WOOD, WIVB, WHTM and even KARK sister KLRT:



They began to tinker a bit for other designs, like WATE in Knoxville, WKRG in Mobile, and WIAT in Birmingham:





Eventually, their set-in-a-box designs have evolved in the right direction, with better use of videowalls and much more open spaces, playing with small set footprints, and, in some cases, going for the heritage of the DMAs Nexstar has presence:







Another factor in this improvement is that Nexstar has contracted FX Design Group to do the sets for their larger-market stations, like WFLA, KRON, WREG, WGN, KHON and KOIN... These sets also follow the asymetrical codes used by Nexstar sets, but the designs are polished and developed specially for each market (no Gray or Quincy set-in-a-box).

[Mouseboy33]

KXAS Dallas - NBC O&O launched their new set. It was designed by Jack Morton Worldwide. So you know its gonna be good. This set feels really nice and has leaned in the massive video walls that the network news division is using for NBC Nightly News.
https://www.newscaststudio.com/2022/02/1...-set-2022/




The best thing is that it looks good on air as well. THe light is quite good. Especially when used again the video walls. I love the camera blocking. Its similar to the wide shots used by Nightly News instead of the annoying recent use of hard, locked down OTS shots. KXAS actually uses tracking shots and camera pans.
[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRpz6sJjjWQ&t=166s[/media]
Dallas has awful spring tornado season so this weather center will get a work out. its interesting to see how this will be using during the many tornado outbreaks that occur. Love the huge videowall in the weather center. They seem to use the video wall for most things. Seems like the Green screen will be used during severe weather when 2 or meteorologists are needed on air.

[CNA]

Unlike local news in the UK, American news stations seem to take a sensationalist approach to the news. The music doesn't help either. Good thing then, that their sets tend to be rather muted in design.

[Mouseboy33]

Unlike local news in the UK, American news stations seem to take a sensationalist approach to the news. The music doesn't help either. Good thing then, that their sets tend to be rather muted in design.

That may have been true in the 90s. Not all stations are like that anymore. But i guess if you only see a few egregious examples from years ago, you would assume that is still the case by and large. They are certainly slicker productions of course. But then UK doesn't really have local news does it. Because it failed again....so there's bound to be a slight difference in the two I would imagine.

[mark]

I like the new KXAS set a lot - everything fits together really nicely.

The past couple of NBC O&O set upgrades have been really bright and fresh. Hopefully WNBC in New York will get that treatment sooner or later - theirs feels dark, with too much wood.

[London Lite]

I like the new KXAS set a lot - everything fits together really nicely.

The past couple of NBC O&O set upgrades have been really bright and fresh. Hopefully WNBC in New York will get that treatment sooner or later - theirs feels dark, with too much wood.

The most recent change to WNBC was changing the desk for a transparent one last year.