WRAL-TV To Broadcast Live Using Google Glass – Capitol Broadcasting Company

The station known across the local television industry as an innovator will broadcast live using Google Glass. WRAL-TV will use the experimental technology for a half hour during its morning news February 11-14, showing viewers a unique perspective both on TV and on wral.com.

Google Glass is a wearable, voice-controlled computer with an optical head-mounted display and built in video camera. Glass delivers an augmented reality image to the wearer. It can search the internet, answer dictated questions, take pictures, and record video.

Studio crew chief Stuart Todd, news producer Kianey Carter (@KianeyCarter) and traffic anchor Brian Shrader (@wraltraffic) will each wear Google Glass on subsequent days as a way to give viewers a never before viewpoint of the news.

“We’ve chosen four different people to wear them, so viewers can get a different perspective each day and a real sense of what it’s like behind the scenes during a live newscast,” says WRAL News Director Rick Gall. “Viewers often ask what happens in the studio during commercial breaks. Now, they’ll know.”

Each day 6:30-7:00 a.m., WRAL.com will live stream the output from Glass showing continuous behind the scenes footage even during the commercials.

“We don’t know if any other local station has attempted to broadcast Google Glass live in the studio during a newscast,” says Steven D. Hammel, WRAL-TV Vice President & General Manager. “There are some challenges because the technology is so new. We’ll see how it goes and what other ways we might be able to use it in the future.”

The station began experimenting with Google Glass just last week, as staff engineers worked to make live broadcasting possible with the device.

WRAL Director of Engineering and Operations Pete Sockett says, “Engineers love this kind of challenge! This is experimental technology. We wanted to see if we could make it work for live television.”