Uploaded July 2015 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
During the spring of 1997, Fox 46 struck a deal to carry University of Arkansas men’s basketball games. The image campaign announcing this acquisition was an attempt to be flashy, filled with rapid-fire edits that occasionally got down to only two frames per clip. Not a bad trick when you’re editing on 3/4″ tape without any non-linear equipment. The briefly-glimpsed Fox 46 Fox stuffed animal was something that station actually had in stock for prize giveaways. I've still got one somewhere.
A NOTE ABOUT VIDEO QUALITY
I began archiving my work-related video years before YouTube existed. It was an age of darkness, an age of limited web storage, an age of... {shudder} ...dial-up connections.
More to the point, my work archive at my site was all dependent on... {shudder some more} ...Adobe Flash. These videos were converted, usually from either the master MII or Beta tapes of from VHS dubs, with a program called Sorenson Squeeze. Sorenson is great for what it does, but with scenes featuring a lot of motion, there's often a lot of pixellation and motion artifacting that's considered unacceptable these days. The Sorenson files were also generated at a very small resolution, and thus the video extracted from them could only be the same resolution. (I no longer work at any of the TV stations for whom I produced these spots, and as such no longer have access to the master tapes.)
I hope you enjoy this little walk down local TV memory lane.
During the spring of 1997, Fox 46 struck a deal to carry University of Arkansas men’s basketball games. The image campaign announcing this acquisition was an attempt to be flashy, filled with rapid-fire edits that occasionally got down to only two frames per clip. Not a bad trick when you’re editing on 3/4″ tape without any non-linear equipment. The briefly-glimpsed Fox 46 Fox stuffed animal was something that station actually had in stock for prize giveaways. I've still got one somewhere.
A NOTE ABOUT VIDEO QUALITY
I began archiving my work-related video years before YouTube existed. It was an age of darkness, an age of limited web storage, an age of... {shudder} ...dial-up connections.
More to the point, my work archive at my site was all dependent on... {shudder some more} ...Adobe Flash. These videos were converted, usually from either the master MII or Beta tapes of from VHS dubs, with a program called Sorenson Squeeze. Sorenson is great for what it does, but with scenes featuring a lot of motion, there's often a lot of pixellation and motion artifacting that's considered unacceptable these days. The Sorenson files were also generated at a very small resolution, and thus the video extracted from them could only be the same resolution. (I no longer work at any of the TV stations for whom I produced these spots, and as such no longer have access to the master tapes.)
I hope you enjoy this little walk down local TV memory lane.
