I set my DVR last night to record all four hours of the Today show this morning — just wondering why in the world we need four freakin’ hours of this? — because I knew that today was the day that NBC News was scheduled to debut their new newsroom at Rockefeller Center.
I am such a bizarre, freakish geek; I find so many things fascinating that others couldn’t possibly care less about. I love television network idents and graphics (although I have to say that the US has lackluster examples of this :30 artform). And I really enjoy good set design, whether it be for a sitcom or series, or a news and information show. Today I marvelled at NBC’s new high-ceilinged newsroom, with the shiny modern look of a boutique hotel. I find myself most interested in display technologies, and their new set features some extra-large displays in the form of virtual walls. I also noticed that on the Today set there is some kind of display “seamlessly” inserted in the window behind the anchors, showing a different angle of the live view to eliminate the possibility of a pedestrian flipping the bird during a live show right there in the middle of the two-shot (this doesn’t stop people from finding the high-mounted camera and standing on tip-toe to wave into it). It is slightly out of place, a pixelated image in the middle of a broad window, but what fascinates me is how that display is managing to be floating there with no bezel or edge around it, it blends in almost perfectly with what is around it.
The new NBC News studio has a little lounge area for more intimate interviews, backlit panels that can change color, and a strange platform that can be lifted — so they say – up to 52 feet. I am not sure that the studio is that high, but that’s what they say. There’s a camera on a crane, and what looks like a thirty-foot high window looking out at Rockefeller Plaza — although I can’t tell if it is a real window or another large display of some sort. [Now that I’ve had a better look at it, it isn’t a window. How do I know? Because the first time I saw it it was displaying a view of Rockefeller Plaza; but this evening the view from the window is the Empire State Building. I doubt that they picked up the building and rotated it… it is a huge video wall designed to look like a window. And it does. Well done!]
The new facility, with 8,500 square feet of studio space, will serve as a conduit of information, video and graphics for all of NBC News.
In addition to the 280 HDTV monitors and six HDTV projectors, MSNBC’s main anchor platform is motorized on a 50-foot-long track to move throughout the studio; a platform in the center of 3A can be raised up to 52 feet for effects and events; and one wall houses 36 monitors and can be used in a variety of ways for production purposes.
Studio 3A also includes a 31-foot-long catwalk above the main anchor platform for additional options for stand-ups, and offers 61 seats for the newsgathering staffs of the NBC News Desks, NBC News Channel, NBC Satellite Operations and the MSNBC.com East Coast Cover Team.
More here. If you care. This is one of the strange things I choose to be fascinated about. Get used to it.
