The Worst Job Interview Ever

Five years ago this month I totally choked at a job interview and audition. Good thing I can laugh about it now.

I didn’t have a contract at WREG in Memphis, hadn’t sent out any resumes and had no idea what I was going to do next. I wasn’t doing much except complaining.

My cellphone rang one day and the call was from the news director at the tv station I really wanted to work for in Birmingham. Morning anchor job open, come down for interview and audition next weekend.

The next day, a news director friend in Knoxville called with the exact same opening. Fly in next weekend for an interview and audition.

Teases are Important, Even on Facebook

A reporter friend of mine posted a status update on his personal Facebook page the other day, that is sure to have brought people to his local newscasts that night.

Carson Clark is a bureau chief for WHNT-Newschannel 19 in Huntsville, Alabama. He does a fine job from what I’ve seen of his stories online. Carson has been at WHNT for 10 years now and when his status update popped up on my Facebook page the other day, he even had me wanting to tune in from 150 miles away.

Carson’s status for Monday, posted around noon was this: “Carson Clark has said “newschannel 19″ for the last time. Story at 5.”

Makes it sound like he’s leaving the station and maybe he’s gotten a job so big his own station was going to cover it at 5 o’clock.  He wasn’t and it didn’t. But because of that well-written tease, many viewers in the Tennessee Valley tuned in to that 5 o’clock newscast to find out what Carson was talking about.

Carson teased the fact that WHNT is no longer going to use “Newschannel 19” in its reporter sign-offs. Instead of being known as “Newschannel 19”, WHNT is simply “WHNT News 19”.

By the time that 5pm news went on the air, Carson had nearly 40 comments posted to his status. Jada wrote “Are you moving or staying local?”. Kerri wrote “Tell us, we’re dying to know.” At 4:35, Tina wrote “It’s almost 5 can’t wait to see what’s up!”

TV stations would love to have that kind of free publicity. And get this, 14 of the comments were posted via a mobile device so they didn’t visit the station’s website and didn’t get the tease from tv or anywhere else but Carson’s Facebook page.

Nice work Carson.

BTW, Carson has 396 friends, other anchors and reporters at 19 have friends who do not overlap Carson’s. So the net reach to viewers in the Valley could easily be in the thousands.

But of course, using Facebook and Twitter and any other social media application to bring viewers to the actual tv newscast  or any business for that matter, is only as good as……    the tease.

Think you’ve had a bad day?

Flipping the remote tonight I ran across one of my all time favorite tv show episodes. “Barney Buys a Car” from “The Andy Griffith Show”.

Barney takes all of his savings out of the bank and buys a car, then takes everybody for a joy ride. Of course trouble, and hilarity ensues. Years ago I memorized the problems Wally found with his car so I could play a joke on a girlfriend. I still remember the line:

“Well, she’s gonna need: plugs, points, bearings, valves, rings, starter switch, ignition wire, water pump, oil pump, fuel pump, clutch, clutch bearings, clutch plates, brake lining, brake shoes, brake drums, radiator hose and radiator hose cover”.  And I’d give her a good wash too.

classic tv moment. I found it all on YouTube;  watch Don Knotts performance. Brilliant and just as funny today as it was 40 years ago.

DIY Project: Week One

I’m Gonna Miss Ink-Stained Fingers

Never thought I’d be one. Someone who would trade a paper copy of the local newspaper for an online edition. Someone who’d drink their first cup of coffee with a laptop or desktop computer screen in front of them. Someone who’d give up the ability to take a sports section and a business section of the local paper off to the bathroom.

Now…it seems possible.

I got an e-mail yesterday telling me that I have the opportunity to subscribe to online coverage of my Auburn Tigers for $89.00 a year (that’s a savings of about 20 bucks). Perhaps you’ve gotten such an offer from the good folks at ESPN.

Earlier this summer, The Entertainment Sports Network hired away some of the best newspaper football beat reporters in the country. Phillip Marshall, who covered the Auburn Tigers for the Huntsville Times for a very long time, jumped over to the growing staff of ESPN after first takingmuch of his work online for the Times and Al.com.

I followed Phillip’s work through my RSS feed for several months. Apparently, ESPN did too. At the beginning of the summer, it launched AuburnUndercover.com with Phillip as its primary reporter or executive editor.

I’m sure ESPN did the same for every other school. I learned in the newsroom today that ESPN also hired away some of the best newspaper beat reporters in each NFL city to blog daily about their team or division.

I was going to blog about that but then I saw this: a letter from a reader of the Wall Street Journal which said he would no longer receive the newspaper in his driveway the day of publication, because it costs too much to deliver it. Instead, he would be getting full access to the WSJ website.

Now, I’m not ready to make the move away from a paper copy of my morning Tennessean, but I know some who do. My question is have you either stopped a subscription to a newspaper delivery in favor of the free online edition?   And if so…do you miss having the paper in your fingers?

It’s Exactly Like That

Sometimes I hear a song that perfectly explains a point in my life or a feeling or an emotion or a memory. That’s what I found in this video of a performance by Paul Thorn.

Introducing the song he talks about breaking up with someone and how you thought you’d never be able to get along with them. And then later, years later, if you see them in Wal-Mart you’ll duck down on another aisle so you won’t have to talk to them.

Weird Huh?

I’m changing the theme in this here space, preparing for what comes Friday.

For those familiar with Twitter, this theme interface will make perfect sense. The theme is designed to work with mobile phones and texting so an author, or multiple authors can update the blog from a cellphone.

updated: that didn’t last long. I hated that theme. this one isn’t Twitterific but it’ll do.

Specifically, this twitter-like design is meant to be used with the new iPhone. I got an e-mail yesterday telling me that the local Apple store in Nashville will be open at 8am Friday morning to begin selling the new iPhone.

Now I don’t know if I’m going to be standing in line Friday morning or not. As anxious as I am to get an iPhone, I’ve learned it can behoove one to wait a few days until the dust settles after a debut.

My old contract with Sprint has expired and I’m free to move about the cellphone world. But another day or week won’t hurt me. I still have a 662 area code and would like to get that changed as quickly as possible.

So, in the event a new iPhone is in my immediate future, I thought I’d go ahead and switch this interface.

Like anybody cares.

New Investigative Reporter Has Impressive Debut

Had a few minutes to surf the internet tonight and came upon a mention in Memphis Media-Verse about an investigative series by the new investigative reporter at Newschannel 3.

Keli Rabon was chosen some time ago to fill the big shoes of Andy Wise. I’m not sure when Keli came on board or how many stories she’s put on the air at 3, but I’m impressed.

Now a lot of times, sweeps months cause tv station news departments to make fools of themselves. They run out tired over-done “investigative reports” hoping if they promote it enough and if they jump up and down and talk louder, viewers might actually come back to the tv sets and watch. You know the kinds of stories I’m talking about: checking to see how clean or dirty hotel sheets are, pay an ex-con to break into a house on live tv and put a stopwatch on him, launch an investigation into dirty computer keyboards, or follow a panhandler to see if they go to a $150,000 home.

But Rabon’s first series piece (as far as I know) was a new idea, a real investigation, and something that could affect every homeowner. The premise is this: crooks stealing homes by filing a new deed with the county. I have never heard of this scam, but according to Rabon the FBI actually sent out a warning earlier this year.

Not only was the reporting solid but she held her cool when a voice on the other-side of a front door told her he’d start shooting in ten seconds if she was still there. In Memphis, that is no idle threat. And she seemed to laugh out loud while holding a wireless lav mic to her cellphone to hear the man inside the house repeatedly call her a b**** and a w*****.

According to the NC3 website, she isn’t anywhere near a newbie when it comes to investigative reporting. She’s won a Murrow (don’t think AW has one of those but I may be wrong) and a list of policy-changing stories under her belt.

And she isn’t as in-our-face as some other investigative reporters. She doesn’t seem angry or in some type of steroid-induced rage as some other investigators appear on camera. She seems…well, pretty normal.

I hope she’s careful. Memphis thugs and cons are a lot different,  I would assume, than the ones in Pascagoula.

She may very well make viewers of 3 forget Andy.

A Name from the Past

When you’ve been in the tv business as long as I have, you work with hundreds of people. I was thinking about some of the folks I’ve worked with in Florence, Anniston, Huntsville and Memphis. Some moved on to big time network gigs. Some got out of the business all together. Some are working where they worked 15 years ago.

One name that didn’t come to mind was mentioned by Joe Larkins this morning. “Do you remember Giovanna Drpic?” he asked.

I do remember Giovanna. We met first when she was working at WHNT in Huntsville and I was at WREG. We were both covering an incident involving a Greyhound bus in the days or weeks following 9/11. We talked on the scene about her applying for a job in Memphis.

She got the job and worked at 3 for a year or two before moving on to Orlando. I found out tonight she is working in New York at WWOR.

Now, here is what happens when you leave medium market tv for the big time. I’m not sure if the first photo comes from WREG or Orlando,but the second photo is from Giovanna’s bio from NY.

By the way, Giovanna, if you happen to find this post through Google: Congratulations on the big market gig. You look fantastic.

Why I Stopped Laughing at George Carlin

I remember the first time I heard him. Not the 7 words you can’t say on tv, an album called “Toledo Windowbox”, named after a flower pot growing pot. I was 17 I guess. Thought it was pretty funny to hear somebody cuss a lot.

Oh, I thought George Carlin could be funny. But too often I found his routines to peak the profanity meter. I can laugh at comedians who use 4-letter words, but Carlin used them so much it became less funny and more boring. Some routines seemed to include sentences with more profane words than not. So, sometime after I bought that first album, I became a former-fan.

And he hated Christians. Hated them. And God. Jesus Christ. Clergy. And the Bible. He thought it all a load of crap. or “Bull****” as the following clip shows. Sure, he had that right and he had the right to say whatever he wanted to say about people of faith. We deserve some of his criticism. But his tirades directed against God was way too much for me to hear.

George Carlin was an evangelist for atheism. He didn’t just make jokes about Christians (we’re an easy and often deserving target) He seemed to want to convert as many people as he could. I mean, some of his routines about religion weren’t that funny and sounded quite like a sermon. here’s one from you tube, and check out some of the comments from his fans from the youtube clip:

he converted me to atheism and im so glad im not just another one of them controlled religious people. just a waste of time and money. and where does it all go? to priests that rape little boys. f*** em. RIP george, im gonna start worshipping him lol

But I’m not going to criticize George Carlin. I’m not going to praise him either. I regret that his anti-religion, anti-Christian, anti-God rants kept me from enjoying his routines. I hate that he apparently never “got” the whole Gospel thing. I hate that he apparently rejected any belief in God. And I hate that he used his celebrity platform to lead others to reject God.

He had quite a talent.