Rockford

WTVO in Rockford, Ill., just completed the seventh season of its high school quiz show, Bergstrom Stateline Quiz Bowl. The station has aired 230 episodes so far. “It has been just hugely successful,” says David Rydell, chairman of the Bergstrom Manufacturing company, the show’s title sponsor.

TV stations that used Magis Media’s election mapping software say a new version that tracks COVID vaccine data is much like the election display — easy to use and visually dynamic for better storytelling.

New jobs posted to TVNewsCheck’s Media Job Center include an opening for a vice president-general manager for Nexstar and a senior IT systems engineer at NBCU-owned WCAU-WWSI.

“You will hear directly from the members of the 13 WREX staff about their personal and professional experiences in 2020,” says a description of the podcast on the station’s website.

TV stations are finding that new election software from Magis Media can be the differentiator for their station on election night. Ease of use, real-time mapping and a visually pleasing display all lead to better storytelling, they say.

Brendan Keefe, chief investigative reporter at WXIA, Tegna’s NBC affiliate in Atlanta, has pretty much been a one-man-band since he was hired as a news photographer in 1991.  Today, Keefe is the leader of the investigative team at WXIA, and the corporate trainer for all 60 Tegna stations.

Diginet channels like Cozi, Antenna TV and BUZZR can’t rely on big budgets to market their channels and programming, so they must get inventive to attract attention. Some attempts to attract viewers to classic TV shows really stink. You could even call it Smell-a-Vision.

WREX, the NBC-CW affiliate in Rockford, Ill., produced a series of news reports, Lives on the Line, to bring awareness about Scott’s Law, or the Mover Over Law, which requires a driver to slow down and move over when approaching any emergency vehicle along the side of the road that displays flashing emergency lights.

The Bergstrom Stateline Quiz Bowl started 5 years ago on WTVO/WQRF.  Since then, more than 1500 students representing more than 50 high school have participated.  “Aside from local news, you don’t see a lot of TV stations producing 40 straight weeks of a locally-originated show like this,” said Kelly Lattimer, WTVO/WQRF’s general manager.

An old-fashioned brains vs. brains quiz show, one high school against another in a fast-paced test of student knowledge is entering into its fifth season on WTVO and WQRF in Rockford, Ill. “It proves that people will still tune in to watch locally originated programming that offers value to the viewer and business owner,” said Kelly Lattimer, WQRF’s general manager.