Snowed In: Day 1
We’re stuck. The roads are covered in snow and ice and rather than shovel off the driveway and slide our way UPHILL and then DOWNHILL to go anywhere, we’re staying put.
But there’s this great hill on our street that is the perfect spot for sledding. There’s no grass to catch the blades, just a couple of driveways to dodge. Our friend across the street broke her arm last night hitting one of those driveway culverts.
Today there must have been 80 people going down that hill. I was about to setup a camera and laptop for a live UStream broadcast but didn’t feel like hauling it down there and finding a dry spot to put it on.
This video was shot with my Kodak Zi8 camera in 72p 60 fps. To watch in HD, you’ll have to click twice and watch at YouTube.
diving into some research today on the future for the church and Christians in America. Lots of surveys. Lots.
Leno Isn’t the Cool Kid Anymore
Anybody see The Jay Leno Show the other night? Somebody at NBC must really be out to get him.
In either a moment of in-house revenge or simple desperation, producers brought on Jimmy Kimmel for Jay’s “10 for 10″ celebrity question segment. And it was brutal.
TMZ has the video here:
Kimmel’s first punch(line) was a shot at Jay lying to Conan about giving the Tonight Show timeslot to him, and then taking it back. “Yeah, yeah”, Jay says. “That’s funny.” But Kimmel didn’t let up.
It reminded me of a locker room of athletes giving a teammate a hardtime for something clearly out of line. But then the star quarterback is ticked and almost in tears while everybody is, teammates and fans, are pointing and laughing.
Jay Leno isn’t a cool kid anymore.
News Director Stands Up to Lane Kiffin and UT
Last week when Lane Kiffin walked out on UT, the Knoxville media were hungry for an explanation. The trouble was the media had to play by Kiffin’s groundrules.
The Knoxville media assembled in a University of Tennessee conference room. Bud Ford, UT’s associate athletic director is the man in the sweater vest. The man arguing is Bill Shory, news director for WBIR-TV, the NBC affiliate in Knoxville.
Kiffin told the staff he’d like to say something to the fans before hopping a plane for L.A. BUT, he had groundrules.
The conference could not be carried live. There would be no questions. And he would speak for only a minute. Plus, he didn’t want the first part of his comments to be videotaped. TV stations would have to cut their cameras. Radio stations would record it, but no tv.
Shory insists the cameras remain on and rolling through the whole thing. “He’s a public employee and in a public building” he said. But Ford says no and even begins some sort of threat to any station that would air the thing live.
A reporter from another station gets his news director on the phone while the angry mob turns on Shory. “If we don’t agree to this, we don’t get anything!” somebody says. Another tells Shory “We can’t make him be man enough to tell us why he’s leaving.”
“You’ll get zero!” Ford says. 12 angry men and women from the media are all yelling at Shory to give in.
“Do what you want to do” says Ford. “You’ll cut off your nose to spite your face tv”.
Shory did not budge. And Ford promises only 30 seconds from Kiffin.
Did Lane Kiffin really have something more to say? Why would he only say it if tv cameras weren’t rolling? Was he going to pull back a mask and reveal that he’s some sort of alien?
And why in the world did Bud Ford go to bat for him like that? Why did the athletic department stand up for a guy who threw the program under the bus? Surely Kiffin’s agent didn’t think fast enough to add a “no tv cameras for the first 30 seconds of the news conference” clause in his buyout contract. No way Kiffin tied the $800,000 he owes the university to a stipulation of that kind.
Kudos to Bill Shory for standing his ground. Especially when there’s a looming news deadline, the threat of not getting anything on tape, and a room filled with reporters and photographers shouting he should go along with Kiffin’s (and UT’s) demand.
But if Kiffin wanted to say something to somebody, Shory made sure he was going to have to say it to everybody. Radio got the same 30-seconds as tv. If Lane Kiffin really did have something else to say, he never said it. Is that our loss, or his?
Way to go Bill. You stood for something right.
Plus, you’re now the subject of a viral YouTube video.
On A Slow News Day
Boy, this time of year is tough for a newsroom. No news may be good news but not for producers and reporters. There’s barely enough news out there to fill one newscast, let alone 2 1/2 hours.
One thing I do every morning when I first sit down at the computer is to look at the newspapers from around Tennessee and Alabama. Usually there are a few stories among those newspapers that we can localize for a story in Nashville. But not the week between Christmas and New Years Day. Apparently either everyone behaves themselves or there aren’t enough reporters these days to find out what’s going on.
Case in point: the headline in both the Gallatin and Hendersonville local editions of The Tennessean is a story about 156 jobs being lost in Portland due to a plant closing. We talked about that story in the morning meeting yesterday. I made calls on it, and was almost ready to drive to northern Sumner County when I looked back through our archives to see some of the other plants that have closed there in the last 2 years.
That’s when I saw this same plant closing story from one of our newscasts in July.
If you are going to do something bad out there, you’d better not do it between Christmas and New Years Day. Because nothing else is happening, you’ll be the lead story for days.
I remember back in 1994 I was in Huntsville at WHNT-TV19. We’d had a press release come across the assignment desk the week or two before Christmas about a bullet that could penetrate the armored vests worn by police officers. “The Black Rhino” was developed by a company there and, if I’m remembering correctly, they had a news conference to make the announcement.
I do remember accurately that at the time, we didn’t cover it. There wasn’t any news coverage of the initial “Black Rhino” announcement from any of the local tv stations, WAAY, WAFF or WHNT. That press release passed through our file and meetings without much discussion, probably because we had so many other ‘real news’ stories to tackle.
During the week of December 25-31st though, the story gained legs. The Huntsville Times printed something and boom, “Black Rhino” got picked up by The Associated Press, Newsweek, and then the major network newsrooms. It was the lead story at least one night that week on CBS, ABC and NBC (again, as memory serves). And we looked around the newsroom at each other and asked, “how’d we miss this?”.
“The Black Rhino” story actually wasn’t that big of a deal at all. The developer was beating his chest rather than telling the whole truth. He didn’t have ATF approval, and hadn’t given anyone a sample or proven this magic bullet did what he claimed.
According to the New York Times, Dr. Martin Fackler, a longtime Army surgeon criticized the media for giving attention to the bullet in the first place. “I find it almost amusing the news media would be so gullible to print what they did”, he said.
These Are Better Days
For the first time in at least 5 years, we made it through another year without major drama (job loss, move, illness, etc).
Here is, in 3 parts, the year in review for The Tuckers.
Facebook Hackers Adds Comments to Posts
We’ve all gotten those Facebook messages we think are from friends. “Is this you?” or “You weere caught on our secret cmera!”
By now most of us know these are from hackers, gaining access to our Facebook accounts and then our passwords and finally our computer.
Many Facebook users have figured this out and delete those messages rather than click on them.
But now, those hackers are trying to add some credibility to their creepy messages.
I got one the other day from a high school friend that read “You weere caughht on our secreet cameraa!” and included a shortened link to a site.
But below that message were comments from some of my other friends. Drew wrote “Have a HAPPY Thannksgiving see you soon” and a day later Donald posted the comment “Thanks , and may you have a great Thnksgiving day!”
I’ll admit the comments below the post made me look twice and even think briefly that it might really be a link that other friends found useful.
But it isn’t. Hackers are able to get your Facebook information because just one of your friends clicked on a similar link. So now, they’ve figured that adding fictional comments to their fictional posts might encourage you to click on the link. Don’t fall for it. Generic messages of “is this you on a hiiden camera” are from hackers. Always from hackers.
No matter who you think may have commented on it.
Life Comes at You Fast
Whenever I watch my kids participate in a play or musicial or anything else really, I feel like I’m in one of those insurance commercials. You know, the “life comes at you fast” ads.
I picked up a new video camera a few months back. It’s a Kodak Zi8 which shoots high definition and fits in your shirt pocket. The advantage of having a video capable of capturing such high quality within reach at all times far outweighs the disadvantages that a pocket-sized camcorder brings with it.
Plus, this one has an audio-input so I can connect a wireless or wired microphone for interviews.
One of the neat features of this and some of other flip-style cameras is that you can hook it up to your computer and in a few minutes( seriously, 13 for this one) you can upload it to YouTube.
Sunday night, Delaney was part of the “He Has Been Good” musical at our church, FBC Hendersonville, TN. It’s an annual production just before Thanksgiving where the children’s choir sings and we collect new toys to give to kids whose parent’s aren’t able to give this year.
I’ve uploaded the performance of the song her group danced to.
Once the video starts playing, you can click the HD button on the lower right (the red one) to watch in High Definition.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Don’t Give Up on Television Yet!
The Nielsen ratings are in and guess what: People are watching television more, not less.
4 hours and 49 minutes a day we watch the boob tube and that’s more than any other year since 1991-92.
This is good news for broadcasters who’ve watched, or at least have been told that they’re watching the audience move from tv to the pc.
Of course there are some notes: the amount of tv watched is affected by the number of tvs in a house and people are using DVRs more than we used VCRs. Still, tv station owners and employees can some optimism in this report.
Here’s the report:
