Couple of things tonight: my new general manager Mike Sechrist has hopped aboard the blog train. He lists 8 blogs from WKRN folks but forgot one, Todd Dunne’s blog is the first I saw from WKRN folks. Nonetheless, I’m excited to see Mike’s first entry.
My station blog is now up at www.faithandethics.com. I wanted “Nashville Believes” but this blog name will work fine. It’ll be a place for me to post about the stories I cover and be a place viewers can discuss them.
I met celebrity #2 today since being in Nashville. The first was country music singer and entertainer Brad Warren of “The Warren Brothers”. Today I met Robert Hegyes, the guy who played “Epstein” in “Welcome Back Kotter”. Nice guy, he’s directing a comedy showcase that features clean comedians.
Okay, I admit I hoped to meet or see Alan Jackson or Martina McBride but gawkers can’t be choosers.
Jamey Tucker 
Jamey, the reason Todd was not on the list is that he created that blog without any help from the station. He is a great blogger and has always been a must read for me.
I have a good friend who used to live in Nashville (went to Belmont and Vandy religion school) who told me that he was going to see a show somewhere (TPAC, Frist Center, etc), and was walking up to the venue and saw none other than Brad Paisley casually standing on the sidewalk, waiting for someone. I asked him if he said anything, and his reponse was something like, “No…That wouldn’t be very Nashville of me.” I laughed and asked him if there was some sort of class to take when you move to town, which included a “Celebrity Encounters 101” module.
I’m sure you’ll bump into some before too long. Of course, having press credentials can’t hurt your cause, I guess. : ) Every time I come to Nashvegas, I’m definitely looking for a chance “star”-sighting!
I’ve asked how folks in Nashville react when they see a celebrity and I’m told you’re not supposed to say anything, just treat ’em like their regular folks.
Friends say they see Vince Gill and Amy Grant at Target. I’ll try to “act natural”.
Jamey,
FYI–the link to your GM’s blog needs fixing. I think there’s just a (dot) missing in the hyperlink between WWW and WKRNGM.
Sounds like a very open, candid blog from the top. Do you know if any GM’s in Memphis are so open-minded and up with the times to have a similar forum? My cousin is a photog on Union Ave but that’s about the extent of my connection to the ‘scoop’ of the news biz here.
Eric,
No, Mike is the first and only gm that I know of who’s in the blogshere. Peggy Phillip, the news director at WMC has a blog but as for GMs, there are none.
I don’t know if they are in touch enough to start a blog. Once, when the station I used to work for was knocked off the air, the gm asked a director “can’t we roll a crawl explaining to people that we’re working on the problem?” Nah…Mike is far ahead of those guys.
Jamey….
Treat them just like we would did when us Memphis camera jockeys would bump into Carl Perkins, Billy Joel or Ringo Star wandering Beale St. Besides, given Amy’s particular music pedigree, she may become a valuable source for you there!
Good Luck!
KPLC (Lake Charles)’s GM has a blog… he got into some major hot water on it because of his view of airing “Book of Daniel.”
http://kplcgenmgr.blogspot.com/