Inspired by the success of the Today Show’s street-level studios in New York, Chicago TV stations have started migrating to similar “fish bowl” setups, wherein audiences can watch a newscast “live,” through large windows peering into the show as it’s broadcast. At their best, such setups not only serve as great promotional vehicles for the newscasts, but also influence their content by offering live public engagement when it’s desirable. At their worst, in this post-television society we increasingly inhabit, they come to resemble vitrines in a museum, living displays of a medium that once really mattered. Like it or not, tourists are the best audiences for the fish bowls, whether out-of-towners or suburbanites on city jaunts, rather than harried and often-jaded downtown workers. ABC Channel 7, with its North State Street location across the street from the iconic Chicago Theater, combines a visitor-friendly setting with all the magic of live television, attracting a regular crop of onlookers and other excitable folks, like the crew of Chicago Fire “fans,” with their magic-markered signs, we saw on a recent evening. Heck, one guy got so excited by this joint not long ago that he drove his car right through the window and into the studio, which is why the permanent guardposts are now in place.
