Jamey Tucker’s BlogSquat

I don’t know, maybe that Horn Lake, Mississippi woman doesn’t really exist. Maybe she’s still on the Gulf Coast. I didn’t see any newscasts today to see if she was interviewed or even mentioned but I do know at least one station tried to find her after reading about the news reports on this blog.

But they couldn’t find her.

Maybe she’s ‘originally’ from Horn Lake and lives somewhere else now. But why would anyone tell a reporter they’re from Horn Lake, Mississippi if they don’t live there???

At least one station made calls and tried to find her. Maybe she’ll turn up.

In the meantime, I’ll be away for awhile. Don’t know if I’ll be able to blog but I will if I can. Maybe something about Ft. Myer’s tv stations. WINK?

Maybe my absence will generate a return of the angry anonymous commenter (s). They’ve been strangely silent since my post about making their own tv station look bad by the angry and profane comments.

Enjoy the week.

I’ll bet this woman’s house will be surrounded by the media when she gets home.

Karen Eaker of Horn Lake was vacationing on the gulf coast today when she witnessed a shark attack a teenage boy from Lebanon, TN as he fished in waist deep water.

Eaker says Craig Adam Hutto’s brother probably saved his life. The shark “would have dragged him away” she says. “His brother literally was beating the shark on the snout.”

Her quote (sure to be a soundbyte soon) was included in news stories about the shark attack in 316 newspaper reports around the world. In “The Scotsman News” she was described as being on “holiday”.

In the China Post it looked like this:

鲨鱼”会扯拽他,”Eaker 说Karen, 42, 谁假期从Horn 湖, 密西西比。 “他的兄弟逐字地摔打鲨鱼在口鼻部。”

Wow, a local tie-in to an international story. And it’s about an animal too!
Who’ll be the lucky reporter to try this story tomorrow?

jt

We’ve been waiting on these two rulings from the Supreme Court, wondering how they would treat the documents in the Kentucky courthouse and the monument in Texas.

Watching some of the national coverage today I felt that the news readers didn’t have a clue about what these decisions were based on. One anchor/host on FOX actually said “so the ones in Kentucky are prohibited because they’re in the courthouse while the one in Texas is okay because it’s outside”.

I’ll be shooting a story tomorrow for the ACTS Network churches on the court’s rulings along with interviews for another project. I’m also meeting with someone to discuss helping me sell a project to area businesses.

I’ve got a lot of loose ends to tie up before our trip to the beach (no, we’re not going to the shark-infested waters of Destin or Ft. Walton). Tomorrow will be busy. I’m getting things ready for a trade show in Gatlinburg which is the week we get back from Florida. I’ve bought a trade show booth and designed some posters. I’ll have them printed tomorrow too.

Now that I’m working for myself I’ve learned it’s a lot of work to go on a vacation. Before I just watched the clock and counted down the hours. Now I have to get projects finished and other things done before I can leave.

If you haven’t seen it, there’s a cool new game on comedycentral.com in which you try to be the first news crew on the scene of a crime.

You’re racing another live truck. It’s pretty lame actually but sort of fun too. We’ve all been there haven’t we? Now if they could just change the audio from music to the voice of an assignment editor or producer screaming “5 MINUTES TO AIR!!!!”

link

jt

Thanks to Darrell Phillips, we’ve learned of a Nashville tv station moving to use vjs to gather its news.

No, not vjs like Martha Quinn and JJ Jackson from the early 80s. These vjs are one-man bands. Reporters and photographers all rolled up in one body.

It’s been tried before. The ABC affiliate in Huntsville experimented with one-man bands back in the 90s but reporters complained, didn’t do what they were asked to do, and the project died.

I don’t think that will happen this time. Today we have very small 3-chip cameras that take excellent video. I have a couple of them. In fact, when I was reporting in Memphis we used one of my cameras for a couple of special reports (the ghost stories). I also shot video with one of my cameras for another news story.

Comments left on Darrell’s blog indicate many people don’t think it’ll work in Memphis because of the same reason it didn’t work in Huntsville. “That would never work at the Memphis stations. The reporters would all leave.” says Mike Hollihan.

That may be true. They’ll be updating resumes and tapes so fast and furious the edit bays will be filled on the weekends. But that may not stop the tv stations this time. If some threaten to leave, managers may call their bluff. There are too many 20-something reporters out there who’d gladly take their place at half their salary to work in a top 40 market.

Darrell also mentions that KRON in San Francisco has announced it would employ vjs to gather their news. WKRN in Nashville will start using them July 17th.

Don’t think every station manager in the country will be watching what happens in those shops. They’ll look at these newsrooms like any other business looks at innovative changes in their industries. If it works, you can bet other stations will follow their lead.

The fact is, story count is a very important factor in newsrooms. Especially now that some stations have 7 hours of news time to fill every day. WKRN will go from 13 traditional news crews to 30. That’s 30 crews combing the streets to pick up every piece of information worth passing on to viewers in Nashville.

I don’t expect this to be the last we hear of vjs. With a growing number of people armed with high quality digital cameras, I expect to see more stories that are introduced with “this video was captured by a viewer in Lakeland”.

And as Terry Heaton has written several times this year, the next period in local tv news is going to filled with drastic changes. Heaton wrote early this year that the stations will lay off reporters and begin buying video from local video journalists.

I think this is the future of local tv. It may take a couple of years to get here, but clearly it’s headed in that direction. And if reporters don’t like it, they’ll be like me. Out on their own or looking for a job doing something else.

jt

Don’t know why it’s there. All that empty space up above.

Just showed up tonight and it won’t go away.

We’re concentrating on the house this week. Picked out light fixtures today, the painter is finished with coat 1 and they swept up the sawdust and junk off the floors.

They should be getting ready for the driveway tomorrow or maybe the cabinets will go in next. I’m not sure. But when we come back from vacation our house should be very close to being finished.

My office is downstairs. I’ll have a studio upstairs with a chroma-key screen and another computer. The kids are starting to get excited about it too. We’ve been in this small rental house for one year. This time last year we didn’t know what we’d be doing or where we’d be living. The new house will finally bring back some stability.

I did meet with another church yesterday for a project we’ll begin shooting next month. Today I learned of a conference in Gatlingburg the week we get back from vacation. I’m trying to make it work so I can go.

It’ll be one week at the beach and a half-week in the mountains.

Not much else to blog about. We finishe watching “To Kill a Mockingbird” tonight. Every time I hear Reverend Sykes deliver that line “Mary Louise, stand up. You’re father’s passing”, I get a little choked up. I don’t know why that line didn’t make A.F.I’s list of 100 memorable quotes.

Tonight when I tucked my little girl into bed, after her prayers I asked her if she liked the movie. She smiled and said “Oh…I loved it”.

It makes me feel good to introduce them to something I know they’ll remember for a long time.

Since my projects are all finished for the month, I’ve got a bit more time to blog. Good thing. My TV-Daddy blog is up and running and the folks with Media Village are starting to promote it.

I’ve found that in the past few days I don’t watch a lot of tv that my kids don’t watch. Cameron and I miss some of the shows the rest of America watches because our kids are usually in the room. That leaves us out of the “Desperate Housewives” and “The O.C.” viewing numbers.

I started to figure most people wouldn’t care to read about family friendly tv and have tried to blog on TV-Daddy about other shows. Tonight, the publisher and editor of Media Village told me to stop and just concentrate on family friendly tv.

There’s not much of that out there anymore unless you count TV Land and HGTV. It’s funny how times have changed. When I was a kid and cable came around, the thinking was that people who got cable wanted to watch shows the networks couldn’t put on the air. Nowadays, if you want to watch shows your whole family can watch, you depend on cable or video rentals.

Tonight, we rented “To Kill a Mockingbird” which my kids had never seen.
It was one of the best “tv nights” we’ve ever had.

jt

Here’s some news that will get our attention. I’ve missed this on the local stations but maybe they had it. I didn’t see much this evening.

“New Data Confirms Strong Earthquake Risk to Central U.S.”

In a nutshell, scientists say strain is building on the New Madrid Fault, contrary to what a 1990s study claimed. The odds of another 8.0 earthquake (same as the 1812 that made the Mississippi River flow backward) in the next 50 years are between 7 and 10 percent.

They also say a 6 magnitude quake has a 90% chance of hitting in the next 50 years.

Peggy shared an inter-office memo today about Carrie McClure’s departure from AN5.

I’m sad to see her go. Carrie is, in my opinion, the best female anchor working in Memphis. Always poised, always personable, she’s been a joy to watch on the morning show these past several years.

Denver’s getting a terrific anchor. Memphis is losing one of it’s best.

jt