American news channel, Fox News, has certainly given themselves one helluva birthday present.
The famous news channel, that was launched in 1996, celebrated their 17th birthday yesterday on October 7th. And they definitely didn‘t hold back with the celebrations.
The channel has debuted its new, high-tech news deck and it is something out of this world.
Judging by looks alone, the new news deck looks like the inside of a spaceship. But alas, it is simply a 21st century way of researching, processing and reporting the news.
Veteran Fox news anchor, Shepard Smith, unveiled the channel’s impressive new news deck to the world today and explained what all the new gadgets will be used for.
The most striking thing about the Fox news deck is the insanely large, almost odd-looking workstations. These workstations actually look like giant tablets.
They are 55“ touchscreen monitors that are used by the journalists to research and process news from across various platforms. These platforms include social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook – which, nowadays, proves to be a news source of note.
These touchscreen workstations are called BAC‘s (Big Area Touchscreens) and yes, they truly are enormous.
Another impressive feature is the mammoth, 38 foot “˜video wall‘ that collects and shows breaking stories from all across the world. It is controlled by a device similar to a remote that is used to swipe and edit the pictures or videos.
Now let me tell you – this video wall was definitely inspired by the likes of many a sci-fi show.
It took about a month to renovate the news deck and journalists and employees spent weeks training to use the new software that has never before been used in broadcasting.
Senior Exceutive Producer, Kim Rosenberg said: “œWe‘re trying to fuse the ordinary way of doing TV news with this new reality.“
And by “˜new reality‘, ms. Rosenberg means the techno-jungle society currently finds itself in; smartphones, apps and the internet are at the order of the day and thus create a massive impact on the way news is relayed and reported.
One thing is for sure – the journalists and employees working for the Fox News Channel will be having much more fun at work from now on.
Check out the video below of the impressive new news deck and tell us what you think:
