WKYC News & Notes: 7/10/14

By Frank Macek

It's time for another "behind the scenes" look at what's happening inside the WKYC Digital Broadcast Center. It's been far too long since we had our last update, so let's get you caught up on something currently happening.

July is already upon us and we are getting ready for another season of Cleveland Browns football that kicks off on your official television home of Cleveland Browns. We'll kick off our fall coverage on Thursday, July 24, with our "Browns Training Camp" special at 7 p.m. with WKYC's Jim Donovan and radio voice of the Cleveland Browns who will be live in Berea for this year's training camp.

Then we turn the page to August and preseason football action. Once again this year, Channel 3 will air all four of the Cleveland Browns preseason games. Our first game is Saturday, August 9th, at 7:30 p.m. at the Detroit Lions live from Ford Field. August 18th's game against Washington is an ESPN produced game, but will also be carried by WKYC. The last two preseason games will be at the newly renovated FirstEnergy Stadium on Saturday, August 23rd, against the St. Louis Rams and on Thursday, August 28th, against the Chicago Bears at 8 p.m. WKYC's "Pregame Huddle" will air prior to the start of the games with Jim Donovan and veteran commentator Solomon Wilcots in the booth this year. Once again this year, our coverage will be produced by Jeff Yakawiak and director Allen Wohl.

Then starting with the regular season, WKYC will bring you expanded coverage with "Browns Pregame Huddle" every Sunday morning at 11:30 a.m. and "Browns Tonight" following Channel 3 News at 11 p.m. on Sunday nights.

David Hrvatin

Channel 3 News welcomes some new faces to the staff including former Kent State University's TV-2 Executive Producer, Director of Design & Promotions, David Hrvatin, who just recently graduated from KSU and is now a social media evening content producer for WKYC.

John Fanady has joined our engineering team. He has over 25 years of experience ranging from remote sports and production, to systems installation and repair. He'll be busy working with our team of engineers to keep us at the forefront of new technology.

And, we mentioned earlier on the Director's Cut Blog that Wale' Aliyu is joining WKYC as a multimedia journalist. He comes to us from Dayton and will begin in August.

Congratulations are also in store for long time engineer John Kubankin on his recent retirement from the WKYC family. John has also been highly involved in the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET), Local Chapter 42.

Sony ELC Automation System

Probably the biggest news we have to report is a major change coming to the Channel 3 control room as it has been announced that Gannett Broadcasting is installing the Sony ELC control room automation system that will go on-line at WKYC early next year.

This system is currently being installed company wide in stages at all our television broadcast facilities. This will include a complete rebuild of our main control room with a new switcher and computers that will basically allow our Directors to run entire newscasts and productions as a solo operation. The computers will control the video production switcher and audio that will follow video and graphics. We'll have more on this later in the 2014.

That's it for now. Enjoy summer before it's gone!

Follow Frank Macek on Twitter @frankmacekwkyc