WXIA Switches to The Tower

[bill730]

As expected, WXIA switched to The Tower today at 6 pm. As of right now, they are only using one cut and it's really serious sounding. They even opened sports at 6 pm with the serious version and Fred Kalil kind of made fun of it saying, "man, that music is so serious!" The full version is on www.615music.com and has some interesting cuts, so I hope they add some others.

I am also sad to say that there are still no real opens. I intend to politely e-mail the news director and ask why. It seems like an unfinished piece of work having such a nice set and graphics, but no real open to accompany them!

[tvboy]

I like the new music. Yeah, it's serious, but the NBC emphasis sounds good. They should emphasize NBC since that music is so noticeable.

The lack of opens on all newscasts puzzle me. Hell, the networks still have opens. But you rarely find opens at all in local TV news.

Remember when the "thing" to do was to have the news open at the end of the first block? That was stupid to me. An intro is an intro, and it belongs at the front of the newscast.

Particularly for stations trying to establish an identity, it should be crucial to have the name of your anchors at the top of the show. Hell I would flood with newscast with bumps telling people who they are watching. Imprinting the names of anchors and anchor teams should be very important.

But for some reason, it's just not.

[atlnewsfan03]

It took 11Alive 6 months to switch from "Alive" to "The Tower".

We'd really like to see the opening in the form of graphics already. I'm beginning to think that 11Alive has become fond of the current opening... the camera panning around the set.

We're seeing the opening on the pre-recorded "Weekend In Depth" show, which can be seen on Sunday mornings. We're still waiting for them to debut on the live broadcasts.

[roland]

I like the tower