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With April here, it means the annual gathering of broadcasters, manufacturers and producers is about to convene in Las Vegas. |
The NAB Show has grown and evolved with the changing broadcast landscape and now features a melting pot of technology known by the organization as the “M.E.T.” or media, entertainment and technology effect. |
The annual conference is broken down into various communities and conference tracks, including film, advertising, gaming, television, radio, social media, augmented reality, virtual reality and even drones. |
I’ve been attending the conference since I joined NewscastStudio studio and each year I log over 100,000 steps walking the show floor to see the latest product releases and trends across the industry. |
With that in mind, here are five things I’m going to be looking for on the show floor this year as it relates to local news. |
As LED’s become more cost effective, local TV stations are continuing to justify their usage over traditional displays in newsrooms and studios. |
Manufacturers, such as Leyard, Christie and Coleder, continue to innovate with fine pitch options starting at 0.9. Of course, with any display technology, however, comes questions on encoders, scalers and playout, such as how will you control your video wall and ensure it’s not used for just a generic skyline? |
LED’s are also allowing scenic designers to think outside the 16:9 rectangle, creating unique configurations that can even bend and flow throughout the space. |
Weather has always been important for local TV, no doubt, but with the election in the past, many station groups are now focused on enhancing core components of their broadcast. |
From single-box solutions for weather alerts from Vizrt to advanced hand tracking from Baron, manufacturers are aiming to innovate workflows, automating as much as possible while retaining a quality product. |
As well, OTT and multiplatform sharing are becoming one of the biggest drivers for weather, alongside new presentation tools like augmented reality graphics. |
Remember when big market TV stations had helicopters? |
Quickly deployable and with minimal costs, compared to traditional aerial coverage, drones have already become a staple of breaking news and event coverage. Even networks, like MSNBC and CNN, have utilized live drone video outside large events to help show scale. |
This year, many manufacturers are showcasing enhancements targetted specifically at TV news, which has been a secondary user of drones behind hobbyists and filmmakers, such as drones with enhancing onboard lighting and live streaming capabilities. |
For many cycles, companies have focused on the advantages of augmented reality, but it’s always been a question of manpower and resources. |
Through templating and workflows, companies like Vizrt, Brainstorm and Avid are hoping to make augmented reality a standard storytelling tool for broadcasters. |
With the barriers for entry lower than ever before, and some station groups such as Scripps and ABC Owned Television Stations beginning to embrace the technology, I feel like we’ve reached a vital tipping point for adoption. |
The question, as always, is how can it be optimized for smaller creative services departments? |
As more broadcasters focus on IP-based infrastructure, processes continue to evolve and adapt. |
How does the internet of things and the cloud play into vital software and hardware used by broadcasters? We’ve seen graphics creation handled in the cloud, but what about augmented reality? Monitor wall control? Master control? |
Broadcast Pix, for example, is launching at NAB a new “switcher in the cloud” that allows for control-over-IP from tablets and phones. |
These are just a few of the trends and technologies I’ll be focused on at this year’s NAB Show. In a post-election year, the show will also serve as a look behind the health of the industry. |
Look for our continued coverage all month on NewscastStudio, including reports from the show floor, with our coverage supported by Leyard. |
Most men, when going through their fabled mid-life crisis, make flashy purchases that, although they are intended to make the purchaser feel young and spry, often serve to remind the casual onlooker of the man’s age and lost youth. My father was slightly different in his own mid-life crisis. Instead of buying a garish ... |
His favorite aspect of the car (much to my bewilderment) was its manual transmission. He always said that it was a departure from the unnecessary complication of the automatic transmission that had corrupted his driving experience (yeah, I never got that part either). He owned this car for five years until he realized ... |
Once, in Stuyvesant Plaza, a shopping center where we were eating lunch, I opened the passenger-side door of my mom’s car a bit too rapidly and without really thinking about the distance between her car and the VW. I was about nine-years-old and I had no idea how to deal with putting a dent in the deep blue exterior of... |
He did notice. He was also puzzled by the sudden appearance of the large dent. I was still afraid to tell him that I had made the dent so I pretended not to hear about his discovery until he started wondering who had dinged his car and left no note. I realized that I could not let an anonymous bystander take the fall f... |
Predictably, as the loving and kind father that he has always been, he was more disappointed in my not telling him of the ding in the first place than he was angry about the dent itself. I was also punished for my dishonesty, and although I don’t remember said punishment (likely a grounding of some sort), the event has... |
It is this event, and the resultant lesson that I plan to keep in mind while writing “Fischy Business.” I plan on telling, in the words of the oft-quoted oath used to usher in sworn testimonies in United States courthouses, “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.” Of course, this is an o... |
I plan on focusing on social commentary not centered specifically on any region. One week I could discuss the steady collapse of the European economy while the next I could abhor Fried Food Fridays at the RPCC dining hall (fried broccoli is one of the most disturbing concepts for food that I could ever think of). And o... |
Houston Mitchell is an assistant sports editor, writer of the Dodgers Dugout newsletter and editor of all of the sports newsletters for the Los Angeles Times. Mitchell was born in Redondo Beach and has lived in the Los Angeles area his entire life. He has worked for The Times since 1991 and hopes no one ever figures ou... |
Nu Skin Enterprises (NU) stock is rising after the company reported its 2015 third quarter earnings results yesterday. |
The maker of drill pipe, casing and tubing anticipates the oil and gas industry will recover later this year. |
Northeast Utilities (NYSE: NU), which last week began operating as Eversource Energy, today reported full-year 2014 earnings of $819. |
The Board of Trustees of Northeast Utilities (NYSE: NU), doing business as Eversource Energy, today approved a quarterly dividend of $0. |
Northeast Utilities (NYSE:NU), which operates New England's largest energy delivery company, has announced that effective today, it has become Eversource Energy. |
Northeast Utilities (NYSE: NU), which operates New England's largest energy delivery company, today announced it will begin doing business under the new brand name of Eversource Energy on February 2 nd. |
Northeast Utilities (NYSE: NU) today reported earnings of $234.6 million, or $0. |
As the broad market has been breaking down, these four stocks have taken hits. Technical analysis suggests they're likely to fall further. |
Across the nation, utilities cannot get access to steam coal due to rail bottlenecks. |
Moreover, the average work week fell from 34.6 to 34.5 hours so that the index of aggregate hours worked only rose 0.1%. |
employment and an acceleration of economic growth. They are not showing the recent improvement that other employment data have been reporting Recently, unit labor cost has been rising faster than prices, implying margin pressure and very weak profits. To sustain profits growth, firms have to reestablish stronger produc... |
Average hourly earnings only rose from $23,34 to $23.39 so average hourly earnings continued to slow. The year over year gain is now only 1.7%, a new record low. Moreorer, weekly earnings growth slowed to only 2.2%. The recent improvement in retail sales had been driven largely by a decline in consumer savings and thei... |
No wonder Bernanke is reluctant to end quantitative easing despite political pressure and Taylor rule type indicators suggesting that fed funds should be raised. |
December 28, 2009, 2:52 p.m. |
What a year! 2009 was a pretty crazy swing around the sun filled with all sorts of political, economic and environmental drama. Our country got a new president; the world's markets were down, then up, then down, then who knows what; and at the beginning of the year the green blogosphere got a new member of the family w... |
I'm going to take a few days this week to revisit some of my favorite posts that I wrote in 2009 culled from my 500+ strong archive of posts, lists and long-form articles. |
Though we didn't officially launch until January of this year, we all started writing a couple of months prior to work out the kinks. My first post was published on Nov. 25, 2008, and it was about President Obama (then president-elect) and his gas-guzzling SUV. |
This time last year I wrote about the coal ash spill in Harriman, Tenn. It had just happened and we still weren't sure exactly how big it was. I'm struck by one of the initial comments from Gilbert Francis Jr., a spokesperson for the TVA, who passed off the dangers of the billion gallon spill when he said, "Most of tha... |
The other story I wrote a year ago today (more or less, Dec. 28 was a Sunday last year) was about a report the Natural Resources Defense Council released showing the massive energy load generated by video game consoles. |
In January I had a lot of fun live blogging the inauguration of President Obama from the comfort of my couch. Ontario, Canada cut its use of coal of 32 percent in just three years and met its 10-year goal of adding renewable energy to the grid in just one year. |
If you are a Mainer like myself, you can swing by your local library and borrow a Kill-a-Watt energy monitor. Englishman Thomas Thwaites set off on a mission to build a toaster from scratch, starting with processing iron ore in his mother's microwave. |
Captain Planet came to MNN in February. Greenies got a bad rap when eco-jerk Stephen Fowler hit ABC's Wife Swap. |
Willie Smits is regrowing the rain forest, and Saul Griffith wants to power the world with kites. |
Sheep + LEDs + Art will ALWAYS equal awesome. |
Right-wing bloggers got all upset over a ban on phosphate dish soap and some called for blood. Seriously. |
In March, I shared some of the amazing images from Earth Hour. I crack myself up entirely too easily. |
And right before April Fool's rolled around (I'll cover that quarter tomorrow), I said something that would disqualify me from seeking public office in West Virginia when I said that mountains should not be trumped by jobs. |
I'll have more of my favorites from the spring tomorrow. Enjoy your day! |
San Diegans experienced strong winds Friday -- from the East County all the way to the coast -- that, in some cases, were strong enough to topple trees. |
The National Weather Service (NWS) issued a wind advisory for coastal towns like Carlsbad and Encinitas where winds were expected to pick up after 6 a.m. and continue until 6 p.m. The advisory also impacted communities like National City and Chula Vista. |
Drivers were warned to be careful along Interstate 8, where there's concern about trees impacted by San Diego's recent winter storms toppling. |
In San Diego's mountain passes, winds were expected to be 20 to 40 mph with gusts reaching speeds of up to 70 mph, NBC 7's Whitney Southwick said. |
"It's going to be a very windy day and not a warm one," he added. |
The NWS also issued a high wind warning, effective until 1 p.m. Saturday, for San Diego County’s valleys and mountains. This warning impacts East County communities like Pine Valley, Julian, El Cajon, La Mesa and Santee, as well as Poway, San Marcos and Escondido. Gusts could reach up to 65 mph today in those areas, th... |
Parts of San Diego County, including East County, are under a high wind warning through 1 p.m. Saturday. NBC 7's Elena Gomez reports. |
Soon enough, as gusts swept in, trees began to fall across the county. |
In Balboa Park -- the 2700 block of Park Boulevard, near the carousel and the San Diego Zoo -- a large tree fell Friday morning, crushing several cars. No one was hurt. |
At around 11 a.m., the wind also caused a tree to topple at 2400 Northside Drive near the Costco store in Mission Valley. That tree fell into the middle of the road and blocked traffic. Fortunately, no one was hurt in that incident either. |
Shortly after that, a resident in Scripps Ranch told NBC 7 a huge tree fell behind her home amid strong winds. |
In South Park, in front of a home at 2800 Date Street, another large tree fell around 12:45 p.m., leaving a huge mess behind for that homeowner. |
In El Cajon, a tree fell just before noon at 1033 N. Mollison Ave. In that incident, no vehicles were damaged and no one was hurt, officials said. |
Meanwhile, San Diego Gas & Electric confirmed several unplanned power outages Friday afternoon. One outage impacted 1,600 customers in the University Heights area; another 3,200 customers in the Mission Hills and North Park area also lost power. NBC 7 is trying to determine if those outages were caused by the windy wea... |
Along San Diego's coastline, strong winds and high surf rolled in. |
A high surf advisory is also in effect at local beaches until at least 7 p.m. Friday. The NWS said this will create strong rip currents, big waves and dangerous swimming conditions at San Diego’s beaches, and possible erosion. |
The big waves shut down access to Ocean Beach Pier Friday. |
Check the NBC 7 forecast here. |
Amid strong winds, a high surf advisory was also issued Friday for San Diego's beaches. NBC 7's Liberty Zabala reports. |
Tyler, the Creator: At least as scary in black contacts as Wes Borland. |
Pop music is getting scarier. |
Sure, it’s still mostly a bubble-gum fantasia of cars, dancing and parties at the end of the world. |
But over the past few years, the ghouls have been shuffling in from the graveyard. |
Drawing inspiration from horror movies, popular artists looking for a provocative angle have begun likening themselves to monsters and posing as fiends in videos. |
Kanye West, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Jay-Z, Tyler, the Creator, Nicki Minaj and others have claimed for themselves the superhuman power of the uncanny and the seductive glamour of freakishness — and, in some cases, the glamour of evil, too. |
This is not new, of course. It’s a return from the crypt of a very old showbiz strategy. Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne knew that audiences love a good scare, and that it’s often more fun and perversely gratifying to root for the bad guy than the white hat. |
Metal bands have always borrowed blood-soaked imagery from slasher flicks. The “Thriller” video cast Michael Jackson as a dancing werewolf — and while the campy Vincent Price voiceover and Broadway-inspired choreography made the clip something less than terrifying, there was good reason to suspect that the star really ... |
Lady Gaga has consistently used the figure of the monster to stand in for her own peculiarity. Her "Bad Romance" video contains enough fake blood for a Sam Peckinpah movie; she appeared on the cover of her latest album as a gruesome hybrid of woman and motorcycle, and her live appearances can be (fake) gory messes. She... |
That may sound too cheerful for a thriller. But Gaga also reserves the power to shock. At the 2009 European VMAs, she ended her performance smeared in red paint and hanging from a noose. This was sheer horror-inspired spectacle, and it was affecting. |
The noose makes its return in Tyler, the Creator's celebrated clip for "Yonkers," which won the young rapper a Video Music Award for Best New Artist. Tyler, who calls himself a goblin, eats a giant bug, addresses the camera with black contact lenses and a nosebleed, and concludes the clip by hanging himself. Odd Future... |
Despite this, Tyler and Odd Future reject any association with horrorcore, a mid-'90s hip-hop style popularized by Gravediggaz and brought to the attention of suburban America by the Insane Clown Posse. Tyler's main objection to horrorcore seems to be that it is too cartoonish to be effective — its scares seem too date... |
Yet as infamous as Odd Future has become over the past year, nothing Tyler has done hits with the same repulsive force of the video for “Monster,” the posse cut at the hellish center of Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.” West’s “Fantasy” album is Gothic, garish and shadowed at all turns by demons, and th... |
West, a voracious consumer of popular culture, includes references to “American Psycho,” the more conventional slasher “Saw” and the allegedly haunted painting “The Hands Resist Him” in the “Monster” clip. |
But what really bothered network censors were the many dead-looking models, one beheaded, scattered around the set. Were West, Jay-Z, and Nicki Minaj taking necrophiliac pleasure from these scantily dressed corpses? Were they inviting the viewer to share in this ghoulish pleasure? |
The outcry against the “Monster” clip was loud enough that West issued a disclaimer: This was just an art piece like any other, he said, and ought to be judged as such. Tyler, too, began “Radicals,” a song on his “Goblin” album, by insisting that song lyrics were a form of fiction; Lady Gaga has issued similar reminder... |
Pop stars are held to a higher standard of morality than novelists or filmmakers, and that’s got to be annoying for those pushing the envelope. But perhaps they shouldn’t be too quick to rationalize away their transgressions. As singers and rappers are rediscovering, they’ve got the capacity to disturb that Hollywood h... |
Earthquakes Earthquakes occurring away from tectonic plate boundaries can be triggered by the rise and fall of hot material through the Earth's mantle, according to a new study. |
The findings reported in the journal Nature are based on surveys of an earthquake-prone region of the western United States called the intermountain seismic belt, and may also help explain intraplate earthquakes in other locations, including Australia. |
"We found that the location of intraplate seismicity in the western United States appears to be predominately controlled by deep mantle convection processes, pushing and pulling from underneath the plate," says the study's lead author, Professor Thorsten Becker of the University of Southern California. |
Earthquakes occur along tectonic plate boundaries as the plates move past each other, or at geologic hotspots such as Hawaii, where plates move across deep mantle plumes. |
Plate movement is powered by the rise and fall of hot and cold mantle material over geologic timescales of millions of years. |
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