PBS Newshour gets "airy" new look

The NewsHour's new set design may have benefits not visible to viewers, but it does in fact look "light" and "airy" as the hed on this story---on the site of the designers who apparently did the work---tells us (‘PBS NewsHour’ gets airy new look). Why would a supposedly serious news program want a set that looks like a subdued version of the one on SportsCenter?

...the set makes heavy use of acrylic and aluminum for its mostly freestanding scenic elements. Those elements, which are specially coated to prevent reflections from lights and teleprompters, make heavy use of the PBS “face” logo overlaid and cropped in a variety of ways in blue, red and yellow. Around the anchor desk, a band of panels show subtle animated graphics. The entire set, meanwhile, is wrapped in a bright white cyclorama that contributes to the light, airy feel.

The most annoying touch of the new design: "a band of panels show subtle animated graphics." They are overlapping crawls that are "subtle" in the sense that they aren't meant to convey information; they are just slow-moving, blurry crawls.

“It was our goal to have the design reflect many of the values intrinsic to the Newshour’s journalism,” said Eric Siegel, who led the redesign efforts. The values encompassed words such as “transparent,” “open,” “bright,” “clean” and “uncluttered,” Siegel said in an email interview with NewscastStudio ("creative newscast inspiration").

But the not-so-subtle crawls are in reality just visual clutter that only a trendy set "designer" can appreciate.