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Why Is CFTO News Plagued By So Many Technical Issues?
A few days ago, I was watching CFTO's 6 PM news. They threw to reporter Mike Walker, who tried to intro his story. But the signal went out and his silent image was freeze framed on the screen for about 4 secs., an eternity when it's live. They then tried to go to his pre-recorded story, but it, too, stopped midway through.
With no choice, they were forced to return to the anchors, who apologized for the problem. They returned to the story about 10 minutes later.
On Sunday, the same newscast began with audio issues as Beth Macdonell's live hit right off the top kept dropping out. They did manage to get to her report, but it wasn't a very good beginning to the newscast.
These are ongoing issues.
My questions: what is going on over there? And since I almost never see CTV News Channel or CP24, do these stations also experience the same kinds of problems, coming from the same building? If not, why is the local station experiencing so many technical snafus?
Whatever it is, they just don't seem able to fix it.
- bmaudioworks
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Re: Why Is CFTO News Plagued By So Many Technical Issues?
One possibility is the use of semi-automated production control, such as the "OverDrive" system from Canada's Ross Video... Bell's two TV stations in the Ottawa market, CJOH (CTV) and CHRO (CTV2), have been using OD for years now, esp. with Ross' R&D facilities being in the capital, and when I have seen CJOH's newscasts or CHRO's morning show, glitches seem to be few and far between.
As for the dropouts during live hits, a lot of these feeds nowadays get to the stations using a bonded cellular system like the "Dejero" devices (can be used pretty much anywhere that 4G or 5G mobile service is available) and not so much microwave or sat. But you would think that being part of the Bell empire, CTV would have rock-solid 4G/5G connections just about anywhere in the GTA through Bell's own infrastructure.
Again, it's puzzling that the CTV and CTV2 stations in my neck of the woods don't have nearly as many on-air issues as the Toronto flagship and its "Number One Newscast".
- paterson1
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Re: Why Is CFTO News Plagued By So Many Technical Issues?
Same as CTV Kitchener, they have the odd snafu but nothing on going or the same over and over. And they do have a lot of live drop in's for the 6pm news. 11:30 I don't watch often so that one I am not sure. It is done live as is 6pm.
Watching Global news more than before and I rarely see them with on air errors. Haven't seen many mistakes on their national newscasts, but I don't watch that on a consistent basis. I give the news networks a bit of a pass since they do a lot more live and breaking stories evolve quickly.
I have noticed that NBC news at 6:30 often seems to have the audio out of sync with what you see on the screen. When reporters are doing stand ups, either live or recorded their lips often don't match up with the audio. Some nights it is only slightly off and others it is really noticeable. CNN has the same situation once in a while, but I have noticed it quite often on NBC at 6:30 during parts of their casts, even with live segments with Tom Liamas.
- Scarboroughbluffsradiof99
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Re: Why Is CFTO News Plagued By So Many Technical Issues?
The reason is that bell does'nt cair about broadcasting.
- haydenmatthews14
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Re: Why Is CFTO News Plagued By So Many Technical Issues?
Apparently CTV London had a screw up on Friday’s 11 PM newscast. They started off of the report of Canada’s economy situation. But when they were about to air the local reaction from Londoners. They instead played the story from City Hall. Like we really wanted to see that instead of Canada’s economy? Even Lauren Stallone did even know the problem or didn’t apologize to the viewers about it.