Fox News debuts bizarre, giant tablets in its outrageous new newsroom


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Fox News debuts bizarre, giant tablets in its outrageous new newsroom

 

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Fox News has just unveiled a breathtakingly ridiculous newsroom, complete with novelty-sized Windows-based touchscreens, a Twitter wall, and a wannabe Minority Report style display, which it hopes will connect it with generations of viewers who use smartphones and apps.

 

In a video that could be mistaken for a College Humor or Saturday Night Live parody, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith walks viewers through the network's new setup, which includes workstations with 55-inch touchscreen monitors. In the video, journalists swipe through pages and apps, presumably collecting information for live reporting. "We call these BATs," Smith notes. "Big area touchscreens."

 

 

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Smith later demonstrates a gigantic 38-foot long video wall with a device "never been used in broadcast television before." It's a remote control that allows Smith to shuffle a giant image carousel. "For instance, I can take this lady who's been evacuating from a hurricane zone and move it over here," Smith says.

 

Fox says the new "news deck" is designed to appeal to viewers who are "non linear" ? those who sift through news all day on their phones and computers. "Just like you, we get our news from multiple platforms," Smith says. "And this is the place where viewers can watch us sort it all out as it happens." In other words, Fox's new newsroom will serve as a fact-checking machine for Twitter's firehose.

 

Of course, despite its insistence that its new news room represents a cutting-edge way of gathering and reporting news, Fox isn't the first to use Twitter and other social channels to guide and fill its unremitting news cycle. Smith says his team has spent "weeks" training to use its new software ? but we'll have to wait and see if Fox has managed to algorithmically translate its "fair and balanced" reporting.

 

Source: The Verge

Link: Shepard Smith Tours the Revolutionary Fox News Deck - video on foxnews.com

 

What the... I'd feel rather silly operating a 55" Windows 8-based touchscreen on TV, that's for sure.

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Love the ugly landline next to the 55-inch touchscreen :P

 

I think CNN still has them beat with for the newsroom overkill award with their hologram technology.

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I really thought this was a joke or something that Fox and the Onion worked to put together. I truly cant believe this is really real! It is just incredibly dumb looking.  :no:

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"The software part of it is the thing that's going to make it different, it's the thing that's going to make us fast, it's the thing that's going to make everything happen in an instant"

 

Sums up the power of Windows 8 perfectly.

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Love the ugly landline next to the 55-inch touchscreen :p

 

My question is... where can I get one of those old 6408D+'s in white?  My BMW showroom has an old definity system and they would love to have those in white... especially on the wall mounted phones.

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What about those folks at the giant monitors?  Would their eyes be affected by being so close?  And watching them waving their arms around the screen might be a bit humorous.

 

Major information overload too.  :wacko:

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Love the ugly landline next to the 55-inch touchscreen :p

 

I think CNN still has them beat with for the newsroom overkill award with their hologram technology.

 

no, FOX News uses hologram studios also...... so not really beat on useless tech

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you know what's really sad about this though...... FOX News uses more Microsoft tech and services then MSNBC did when MS had a stake in them.... and just a couple years ago FOX news was all pro apple on stage

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So, instead of having presenters trying to tell someone off-camera what to show, they can control what's being shown themselves.  I could dig that, but then having the half dozen people behind the presenter using those same touchscreens as large monitors just looks dumb.

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Hey man I want that setup tho for my office. I got a lot of cat videos network operations  to watch

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Definitely could use that in my desk, get 3 of those in vertical. I can recline my chair all the way back and still get work done!

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I bet Microsoft is very happy that Fox News is using giant Windows 8 touchscreens!

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I agree it looks weird at first glance, but I also think its just plain neat.  The tech geek in me would love to be sitting there working on those screen completely with touch.

 

At that size, touch controls should very enjoyable.  As long as they create the apps to manage all of their news sources, I could see it being very useful for quickly sifting through information as it happens and then picking out the most relevant stuff.  It makes perfect sense to lean on Windows 8 to provide the front end for this since the metro side is clearly superior on touch. 

 

Its funny that they try to coin complex sounding terms for what is simply a Win 8 Start Screen that has been customized with the apps they want to use.

 

It would be interesting to find out if they built custom Win 8 apps to manage all of the information and push it to other screens, etc.  I also wonder if they are running 8.1 yet on those.  I can't tell from the views of the systems.

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I think Microsoft made a deal with fox otherwise I don't think they would show shepard Smith doing the side swipes and all that. 

 

You all better hope 8.1 doesn't sell out now because of this :laugh:

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