How the Hard Rock Hotel is promoting the Big Game

When a local reporter gets tapped to cover a professional sports championship, its a plum of an assignment that makes up for all those miserable quarters of high school football in the sleet, or the mind-numbing innings of a pitching dual.

What makes covering the championship of the National Football League unique, is that depending on your lawyers’ interpretation of copyright and trademark laws, these reporters may not be able to specifically name the event they are covering. That’s the case of Mike Ruzzi and Jay Puskar, whose station WICU will broadcast the Pro Football Championship Sunday evening. In a spot promoting their coverage from Indianapolis, the talk is all about the Championship and the Big Game.

In a Chicago Tribune article Wednesday, the paper quotes an NFL spokesman regarding protecting their trademarked phrase “Super Bowl”, “When we become aware of a potential violation, we will be very aggressive, and sending a cease and desist letter would be the first step.”

In a 2008 newsletter to its clients, broadcast law firm Leventhal, Senter & Lerman warned that:

Without express permission from the NFL or the teams, you may not use the following, or related protected
words or logos in marketing or promotions:

• “Super Bowl”
• “Super Sunday”
• The Super Bowl logo
• “NFL”, “AFC”, or “NFC”
• “National Football League”
• “American Football Conference”
• “National Football Conference”
• Any team name (e.g., “Patriots”) or nickname (“Pats”)

The law firm goes on to indicate that stations can’t even give away tickets to the game in a promotion, even if they paid for them; it’s one of the terms and conditions on the ticket itself.

I’m quite sure that the verbal gymnastics Mike and Jay might occasionally enter into won’t diminish the coolness of one of the best assignments of their careers…at the big game in Indianapolis.

First, when is it?
The first nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) will take place on November 9, 2011 at 2 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time).

What’s it for?

From the FCC:

The purpose of the test is to assess the reliability and effectiveness of the EAS as a public alert mechanism. EAS Participants currently participate in state-level monthly tests and local-level weekly tests, but no top-down review of the entire system has ever been undertaken. The Commission, along with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, will use the results of this nationwide test to assess the reliability and effectiveness of the EAS as a public alert mechanism, and will work together with EAS stakeholders to make improvements to the system as appropriate.

According to the NAB, the EAS system has never been tested on a national scale before, and officials want to make a go of it, see what works, what doesn’t, and create a baseline from where they can make improvements.

What else can you tell me?

The test will be conducted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The test will start at approximately 2 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time) and will last approximately 60 seconds.

Then it’s back to Dr. Oz, the soaps, your Law and Order reruns, or your favorite 200 song playlist station.

Links:

• FCC: Emergency Alert System Nationwide Test
• National Alliance of State Broadcasters Association: NASBA Emergency Alert System
• FEMA: Nationwide Test of the Emergency Alert System

Here’s coverage from Sunday:

The stations are planning on stories throughout the week on education issues. That’s the power of media as a force for good, and our community’s future depends on getting our schools right.

Here’s the latest from their Facebook page:

From our Chief Engineer: “WQLN TV will be off the air until at least Monday. Our transmitter’s tube went bad. The tube is the most important and also most expensive part of the transmitter. We had a good run with ours though, as it was the original tube and was about 10 years old. I will keep you all updated on the progress when I know more.” If you have Time Warner or Rogers Cable, you should be getting at least channel 54.1 since that is delivered to them via fiber optic.

I guess no This Old House Hour for us antenna-only folks tonight!

After furious months of design, demolition, construction which included weeks of producing hours of news products literally out of a hallway, the new set and graphics for WJET/WFXP debuted on Thursday.

This is not just a tweak, but a complete overhaul of the multiple newscasts morning, noon and night at the Erie ABC and FOX affiliates. The new music package that accompanies this change is only the second time the music has changed since the launch of Action News over thirty years ago. The graphics for both news and weather are instantly noticeable and a huge improvement for the market. And with the help of a lighting designer that has worked at the network level, the set and its inhabitants are extremely well lit with new Brightline fixtures.

P&T was invited to a sneak preview of the new set last week and was able to take these shots of a dress rehearsal of the WJET Good Morning Erie show with Cassandra Garrison and Tom DiVecchio. Important to making the new shows at the stations work are the efforts of studio camera operators such as Mike Anderson. The new format calls for more camera moves, trucks, dollys and pedestals (see def in comments), along with the typical multiple setups. Everyone on the set was working hard to hit their marks in the new format.

Some changes have come in IDs and positioning, with Action News 24 reworked to Jet 24 Action News. They have added the positioner of Your News Leader, with the weather laying down the gauntlet as Your Weather Authority. The competitive spirit lives in Erie TV!

The big question I asked GM Tim Dunst and ND Lou Baxter was about the road to HD. They reminded me that it has only been two years since their corporate owner dropped millions of dollars to convert their stations to digital broadcasting and that it will take a while to recoup from that major outlay. However, the new set is totally designed for the 16:9 HD format, so they will be ready when the cash comes calling.

I think it’s a huge win for the Erie market. I’m knocked out by the graphics and the huge improvement in lighting. More importantly, its a significant investment in our community by an corporate owner that will enhance viewer experience and just make all the players sharper. That’s a good thing!

However the renovations are not limited to physical props. The station logos and graphics for news and weather are also changing for this second decade of the 21st century. Station management said that the new logos and weather graphics will rollout today, with the set and news package coming sometime next week.

We plan to give you a behind the scenes look at the new digs when they are ready.

Screen grab of erietvnews.com - June 15, 2011

The new website for Lilly’s Broadcasting’s news products at WICU and WSEE is a huge improvement over what they had to date.

The design is clean, media-rich, and should be profitable. What’s interesting is that the on-air promos continue to push the individual domains for the TV stations, wsee.tv and wicu12.com, which then forward to erietvnews.com. I think that’s a good idea, since they have over a decade and a half of branding invested in those domains and rolling out a whole new brand is unnecessary and expensive. And it shows that in spite of much discussion in these parts, Lilly-Erie seems to be committed to keeping the individual news brands separate.

Features of the site are headlines up front, news articles with full-size video complete with ability to link and even embed video onto your own site, as well as share on Facebook or Twitter. There’s also satellite weather and only one ad “above the fold” so that your not wading through so many pop-ups to get to the top news. I like the bio page, with nice new pictures of the news staff and some witty personal stories, as well as the comprehensive directory of the entire company, complete with phone extensions and email links…I appreciate the willingness to be available to the viewers.

They’ve also included a mobile version of the site, which now joins YourErie.com in having separate mobile strategy for a mainstream Erie news outlet. We’ve yet to see any kind of mobile app to come out of GoErie.com/Erie Times-News.

There is still some cleanup to do at erietvnews.com, some design issues including random white space and lines that fall off, along with broken links. However, we are grateful for the investment made in this technology that really enhances viewer’s lives.