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Television Weekly
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| New Facility Will
Serve Media Giant's WGN, CLTV, Chicago Tribune and Internet
Properties |
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Chicago is a city that's often been defined by
its weather. Now the city's distinctive weather combined with
its being the home to a cable network, a TV station and a
newspaper owned by the same media company have made it a logical
spot for a unique state-of-the-art weather center.
Tribune Broadcasting's WB affiliate WGN-TV will soon host
a new weather facility in its former newsroom for WGN, sister
regional cable network CLTV and sister newspaper the Chicago
Tribune and their Web operations. Construction of the new
facility should begin in mid-February, with testing slated
for May and live on-air use for June.
The facility is noteworthy because there aren't many markets
where one company owns so many different types of news organizations.
The new weather center will provide the meteorologists the
latest in weather tools, maps and charts. It will also serve
as a central hub for the weather operations of the different
news outlets, almost like a centralcasting experiment but
within the same market. "We do a lot of meteorological work
across Chicago's Tribune entities," said Tom Skilling, WGN's
lead weathercaster. "We hope to consolidate under one roof,
share data and reduce the need to replicate weather across
our stations and news outlets."
While the new weather center will consolidate weather coverage,
no positions will be cut, said John Vitanovec, VP and general
manager for WGN. In fact, WGN plans to add a meteorologist/weather
reporter in the late spring and CLTV intends to increase its
weather coverage, he said.
The center will allow the two TV outlets to collaborate and
share weather data more easily, WGN News Director Greg Caputo
said. "One thing we could do if we had a breaking weather
situation and needed to alert our viewers but wanted to provide
more information to some viewers, we could continue that coverage
on CLTV," he said.
The weather center will serve as both the studio and the offices
for the weather staff. Since the chromakey will be located
in the same area as the offices, precious seconds can be saved
when WGN or CLTV need to go live with breaking weather news,
Mr. Vitanovec said.
Graphics and forecasting tools will be improved. The center
will use Weather Producer, the latest weather system from
weather data provider WSI, which includes new atmospheric
and modeling tools. "We are taking our computer graphics to
the next level with numerical modeling of atmosphere to show
the atmosphere evolving into the future," said Mr. Skilling.
The center will house a new "mesoscale,"
or medium scale," computer model to delineate weather differences
across the Chicago area. "It fleshes out details of weather
patterns for the area," he said. The WSI system also allows
for weather crawls and warnings on screen.
In addition, the weathercasters will have access to proprietary
climate analysis tools, drawing on historical data that WGN
and CLTV have amassed. That data can be put to use in the
broadcasts to provide more historical context for current
weather. As a result of having the new tools, WGN will produce
more half-hour weather programs, such as the special it aired
in late December on the history of winter weather.
The staff that produces the Chicago Tribune's weather page
is currently located on a different floor and will relocate
to the new venue when it's completed. The CLTV staff will
then move from their building into the WGN one.
The new facility makes sense for Tribune Broadcasting because
of the strength of Tom Skilling as a weather franchise, said
Jim Lichtenstein, a newsroom consultant who worked in local
TV news in Chicago for 23 years
"WGN's big push is for weather and this guy is thought of
maybe as the person in the country for weather. He's huge
in Chicago," he said.
The weather center could also serve as a model for other markets
even if there isn't common ownership across different media
entities. If strong ties exist between regional cable networks,
local TV stations and local newspapers, for instance, they
could conceivably form a partnership to provide joint weather
coverage, said Mr. Lichtenstein.
Sinclair Broadcasting has begun centralcasting weather at many
of its TV stations. The stations receive centralized weather
coverage from Sinclair's News Central facility in Hunt Valley,
Md. |
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