Jamey Tucker’s BlogSquat

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:

For me, one of the coolest things as a tv news anchor  was when a producer rushed into the studio with fresh wire-copy.  Our teletype machine had warning sounds when there was a weather alert, or news alert. When something big happened on the national or state level, we’d all read the words as they were printed on the paper by The Associated Press.

Now some major newspapers are going to see if they even need the AP.

Next week The Chicago Tribune, LA Times and other news outlets are going to cover the news without using any content from the Associated Press. According to a story by the AP,  180 newspapers have threatened to drop the service.

Cost is obviously the biggest factor. Newspapers have relied on the AP for nearly all of the national and international stories included in each edition. TV stations subscribe too but the dependency on AP content is not what it used to be.

In the last 15 years or so, news departments where I have worked would not report certain national breaking news stories until The Associated Press ran the story. Gradually, instead of tv stations waiting to say “According to the Associated Press”, we started hearing “CNN is reporting….”. With social media and the up-to-the-second live pictures of breaking news, I imagine news departments looking to cut costs are wondering “do we really need the AP?”

The Associated Press has reduced the rates it charges for member newspapers in 2009 and 2010. At the same time, the AP sent warning that it would seek payment from any blogger using its material without permission.

Many working reporters aren’t old enough to remember another wire service that used to be as big, or at least as visible as the AP. UPI (United Press International) has been around 102 years now. It started to hurt when afternoon newspapers began disappearing.

One of the tv stations I worked for (WOWL-TV15) in Florence, Alabama didn’t have an AP ticker but used the less expensive UPI when I anchored there in 1989. But, the station manager banned the news department from using UPI material unless WE confirmed it on our own with local sources.

Had the governor been shot while I was there or any other big breaking news coming out of the capitol, we would have been the last to report it for sure. But he wanted us to focus on local news. Hyper-local news right down to the street crossings.

I believe the tv station dropped UPI in an effort to save money, getting those breaking news story tips instead from CNN.

Will newspapers and tv stations find out they do not need The Associated Press as much as they think they need it? I don’t doubt it.

I did learn of Michael Jackson’s death from AP but probably because I was looking at the AP wire at the time instead of CNN.

Right now I subscribe to the UPI twitter feed for all of its news.  Associated Press offers limited tweets. Plus I get alerts from CNN, ESPN and the local channels right on my iPhone. Who has to wait?

WGCL in Atlanta just announced it will turn over all of its sports reporting and coverage to the hosts and reporters working for a local sports talk radio network.

Here’s the coverage from the Atlanta Business Journal:

“This new relationship will make CBS Atlanta and Sports Radio 790 The Zone Atlanta’s best source for sports information,” said Steve Schwaid, news director of WGCL, in a statement. “It will allow CBS Atlanta to answer our viewers’ tough questions and deliver on our promise of providing the very latest news and information every night.”

What happens to the WGCL sports team? Only two are listed on the station’s website, Gil Tyree anchors weeknights, Mark Harmon on the weekends.  Does the announcement mean they’re gone? Will Harmon and Tyree anchor the 2 minute sports segment from news feeds? Or will the station have a camera set up in the Sports Zone radio booth for those segments?

Good questions.

I don’t buy the statement that the move will “allow CBS Atlanta to answer” viewer’s tough questions and “deliver on our promise of providing the very latest news and information every night.” You don’t make sports coverage better by not covering sports and turning it over to a radio station.

I imagine the station is saving money in this deal. Otherwise, why do it? Local television news used to be about being “essential to the viewers”. TV stations have wanted to brand anything and everything they do (weather, news, sports, traffic, community events, sponsorships, charities) as its own product. At WREG and WHNT, reporters were not simply reporters, they were WREG and WHNT’s reporters. For those 12 years I wasn’t just Jamey Tucker, I was WREG and WHNT’s Jamey Tucker, everywhere I went.

So this move to turn sports coverage over to another brand is contrary to what local stations have always done.

Will it work? Will viewers like the sports talk station handling tv sports duties? Will viewers miss the connection to a WGCL sports anchor or reporter?

I’m guessing other local tv stations are anxious to find out.

When I heard Garth Brooks announced he is out of retirement and preparing for an extended string of shows in Las Vegas it made me flash back to 1990 and my favorite interview of all time.

Ask most reporters in Nashville who their favorite person to interview is and they usually say Garth Brooks (I’ve asked several). He is genuinely one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met, or one of the most genuine nice guys I’ve ever met. Not only nice, but engaging.

I haven’t shaken his hand since interviewing him in 1991, but I’m told that he is the type who never forgets a face and would likely say “Hi Jamey, didn’t we meet years ago?”

I was vj’ing Fan Fair working for WJSU-TV40 in the spring of 1991.  I talked my news director into letting me go with the promise that I could send back stories each day to run in the newscasts, plus I would write and edit a 30 minute special on country music that the station could sell and place advertising.

Garth Brooks was a tough interview to get. Everybody wanted him after his “No Fences” album hit #3 on the pop chart (unheard of back then Taylor Swift).  In addition to shooting, writing and editing a story every day and then feeding it to Anniston from WTVF, I started positioning myself to be somewhere around Garth’s publicist.

“Be at his booth tomorrow morning at 5″ she said. “He’s doing ‘Good Morning America’, maybe I can let you ask him a few questions.

I stumbled in, lugging my tripod, gigantic camera and portapack (an enormous contraption that held the ceiling tile sized videotape and connected to the camera using something we called an umbilical cord). Garth was sitting in his autograph signing booth, wide-eyed in a cowboy hat like he’d just slept the best 8 hours of his life.

The “Good Morning America” producer immediately started shouting at me to get out and not come back. The network morning shows, if you are not aware, are very protective of their guests. “We have an exclusive with Garth” she said, and “You cannot interview him today.” I tried to explain that the interview I wanted would not air for a few weeks and even then, would air only in the 172nd market in the country, but she didn’t care. Garth looked at me like “sorry dude, wish I could”.

I didn’t leave but hung around hoping for an opportunity.  Willard Scott was interviewing Vince Gill and Patti Loveless who would also sing their hit “When I Call Your Name” in the booth next to Garth’s so I figured at least it’ll be a good show.

Garth’s interview with Charlie Gibson by satellite was about to start. The lights came up, a photographer framed the shot, Garth started to answer Charlie’s first question and….everybody stopped. New York lost the satellite connection. I could see Charlie on a little tv monitor apologize for the technical problem and everybody, including the rude little producer woman, started scrambling.

In a few minutes it was discovered the problem was in a cable running out of the camera. It couldn’t be fixed in time. GMA’s big get, was gone. My camera became important.

The nasty producer demanded I let the photographer use my camera so ABC could try the interview again in the next hour.  “NO”, I’m not doing that. Since I can’t interview him, I’m leaving” I told her. The photographer was nicer, explaining if I let him use my camera it would bail him out of dealing with that horrible woman. “Only if I can interview Garth and you shoot it”. She relented and during the hour-long wait, I not only got my interview with Garth, I had a photographer shoot it for me.

It was the best interview I’ve ever had. Garth was completely engaging, answering each question with interest. I had heard him tell a story about one of his first concerts that coincidentally came in Anniston and asked if he would explain “The Anniston Nine”. His story is still the longest on camera interview answer with no video I’ve ever put on tv.

Afterwords, Garth introduced me to his mom and dad who watching their suddenly famous son. Later that day after he performed in a downpour at the Fan Fair stage, Garth saw me backstage, called me over and introduced me to his wife Sandy, and then asked someone to take a picture of us. I’ve got it around here somewhere.

I’ve interviewed my share of celebrities and it’s not always good. I know many reporters who refuse to interview or even meet their favorite artist for fear it will destroy what they think of that person. Famous people get asked the same questions over and over again by different reporters in different cities. They can have a bad day. They can just be tired or uninterested. The reporter can be a jerk.

But I’ve never heard a bad story from anyone about interviewing Garth Brooks.

He’s my favorite interview. Do you have one?

Garth Brooks is still the coolest guy I’ve ever interviewed. A lot

Behind the story: the SEC reversed a decision to ban Twitter and Facebook from inside stadiums during games. There was no news release but the conference released the information in a tweet. I didn’t have anyone to interview on camera; Vanderbilt’s SID wasn’t familiar enough with the policy change to talk about it. Other than trying to get man on the street reactions (nobody hates those more than me), there was no one to interview.

Ran across this item tonight on Probably Bad News.
yup.

this apparently has been making the rounds for quite a while. Check the date: April 2, 1998.

or is that 4:02  in the am/pm and 98 degrees?

Sad to hear of John Hughes passing on Thursday. I would hazard a guess that I’ve watched more of his movies than any one else on the face of the earth. Growing up in the 80’s you couldn’t miss his movies.

“Pretty in Pink”, “The Breakfast Club”, “Vacation”, “Planes Trains and Automobiles”, “Uncle Buck”, “Home Alone”, “Sixteen Candles”, “Mr. Mom” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”.

Has there ever been a Hollywood writer/director who’s delivered that many iconic movies in such a short period of time? John Hughes entertained and maybe influenced as many people teenagers in the 1980s as anyone else.

It’s interesting because my wife’s favorite movie is “Pretty in Pink” while one of mine, and certainly my favorite Hughes film is “Some Kind of Wonderful”. It’s interesting because these two movies are basically from the same script.

The way I’ve heard the story, John Hughes’ script for  “Pretty in Pink” ended with with the girl (Molly Ringwald) choosing the the un-popular boy, Ducky played by Jon Cryer. But, Hollywood didn’t like it. The producers wanted the typical Hollywood ending where Andie Walsh gets the popular boy (Andrew McCarthy).

“Pretty in Pink” went to the screen that way despite Hughes’ disapproval.  A year later, when Hughes had made enough money to produce himself, he dusted off “Pretty in Pink” switched the genders and brought us “Some Kind of Wonderful”.

Here’s a clip from that movie: the smoking scene where Keith Nelson (Eric Stoltz) gets a kissing lesson from Watts, played by Mary Stuart Masterson.  She’s really in love with him, but is helping him get ready for a date with Amanda. Enjoy.

Careful what you write out there in blogger-world. The Associated Press is watching…and waiting.

The AP has felt cheated from the first time the first blogger took something out of a newspaper and put it in quotation marks on their blog or website. They’ve taken it on the chin for long enough, now they want you to pay up.

Here’s the dealio: cut, copy and paste anything from an Associated Press article online or in print and bloggers will be found and charged.

The rates are as follows: 5 words to 25 words for $12.50 26-50 words, $17.50, and more than 250 words will cost you $100.00. The AP will use software that will identify where AP content is showing up on the internet and send the author a bill.

First off: I can’t blame the Associated Press folks a bit for being angry. A simple Google search for one of today’s big AP stories: “Jackson Estate Confronts Fake Merchandise Dealers” finds 3,476 news articles. Some of those are obviously on news sites which pay for AP content, but it’s pretty safe to say that some of those articles are from blogs and other sites that are just grabbing quotes and other information from the story and re-printing them, so to speak, on their own sites.

We do not want a world without The Associated Press. I don’t. I don’t want our news to come from people like Perez Hilton who are looking only for eyeballs rather than honest truth-telling reporting. But if the AP doesn’t survive, and doesn’t thrive in this economy, there will be a lot more journalists creating their own web news content for profit. Then, we won’t know who to believe.

But is the Associated Press on to something by charging by the copied and pasted word? Will it stop people like me (yes I’ve done it) from posting an opinion on a story and including part of of the story itself?

Oh, and by the way, if I get billed for anything in this post, would someone loan me a few bucks.

image courtesy of Edans through Creative Commons license

How much information do you really want about a news story? In the case of Steve Mcnair, who was found shot to death with a 20 year old woman in a condominium in downtown Nashville Saturday, people seem to want to know every detail.

But how far will the media go covering the personal activities of the city’s biggest stars? And when does that information go from being relevant to the murder to being National Enquirer type gossip?

There are already lots of stories circulating that Mcnair had several girlfriends around town, that he paid their apartment or condo rent, bought them cars, breast enhancement surgeries and other things. People who frequent area nightclubs say they saw him frequently with different women. They were also not surprised to see pictures of Mcnair and Kazemi on vacation and said it’d be more surprising if more pictures of Mcnair with other girls did not surface.

So with all of that stuff in Mcnair’s closet, how much will the news media report?

I think it’s tricky.

Talking to people in our newsroom, this is the biggest news story (non-weather related) that has hit this town in a decade. And in a city that doesn’t get star-struck by celebrities very often, Mcnair’s following is unusually enamored by the man who led the Titans to the Super Bowl.

How much the news media reports about Mcnair’s private life may depend on how much people want to hear.

In the first 48 hours nearly all of the coverage (besides the police investigation)  was about Mcnair’s legacy and the fans mourning his death.  Yesterday was the first time I heard someone say they didn’t have as much respect for Mcnair now that they learn he was cheating on his wife and children.

But newsrooms are going to make some decisions in the next few days. What to report and what not to report. And it’s not going to be easy. Do you report scandalous details about Mcnair’s life that do not necessarily pertain to the murder investigation? Girlfriends, the company he kept, places he stayed. And do viewers and newspaper readers even want that much information if it tears down their hero?

“Why is everybody dying” is the question that keeps showing up on twitter. Of course, they don’t mean “everybody”, as in literally everybody. At least I don’t think so.

But we’ve heard of Ed McMahon. We’ve looked at Farrah Fawcett’s smile. We’ve tried to moonwalk to Michael Jackson’s music. And we’ve all been tempted to purchase something Billy Mays has hawked.

Suddenly, there are an awful lot of people we are familiar with, no longer in our lives.

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