H-D T-V spells bad news for A-N-C-H-O-R-S

I've been chatting with some folks recently about HDTV and how soon local news in the Bluff City might be converting. Yah, the stations are broadcasting some programs in High Def but as I understand it, we shouldn't expect to see local news in HD just yet. Those who have HDTV already tell me the difference is incredible. Those who have seen network news anchors in High Def say it's more than a little surprising. Apparently viewers are able to see every pore and poorly done make-up job that's out there. It's apparently redefining what kind of make-up is used and how it's applied. Back in the day, I used to apply some pancake to cover my beard and on the advice of a consultant put some light colored stuff called "erase" around my eyes. I was told I had deep set eyes and this would bring them out. I never noticed any difference.
But some are now suggesting that anchors get a good look at themselves on camera in the studio before they go on the air. Quickly slapping on some makeup apparently won't cut it on HDTV. It's a bigger deal in the studio than in the field where the lighting is usually neither as good nor intense and news people aren't on camera as long. Knowing the vanity of some on camera folks, a pimple or a hangover might end up being a reason to call in sick.
When arrives locally, viewers will find that news people have flaws afterall. Who knows, maybe more on-air people will be slathering on "Preparation H" around their eyes to shrink the bags or using teeth-whiteners to make those pearly whites really glow.
But, I think we're still a few years away from worrying about that.

Non-competes: You either love em or hate em.

(If you see extraneous symbols in this posting, please let me know. Thanks in advance)

I see in Shoptalk www.tvspy.com that an anchor in Rochester, NY is going to court to challenge her non-compete clause with her former employer. In a story in the Rochester City News, the former reporter who is a native of the city, wants to stay in the area to work. Her non-compete doesn't allow her to work in the market for a specific period of time. Legislation has been introduced in the state to make such non-compete clauses illegal. So far, four other states; Arizona, Illinois, Maine, and Massachusetts, have taken such efforts. It seems to me that a measure was proposed in Tennessee and in North Carolinaa few years ago, but both were basically shot down.
In some cases, non-competes have been waived. Such was the case here in the Bluff City when a couple of folks were let go from one station in recent years. They hired on at the competition not long after.
However, if the anchor or reporter decides to NOT work anymore at a particular station, that station tends to enforce the non-compete. If another station really wanted somebody, they'd pay off the non-compete. I think we've come close to seeing that a couple of times in the Bluff City, but it's never happened. If you qualify as talent, most stations require you to sign a contract which includes a non-compete clause. In some cases, producers and videographers in Memphis have been required to sign non-competes. You don't sign, they don't hire. In my limited experience, non-competes are generally not negotiable. Some attorneys will tell you the non-compete can't be enforced. But those who would challenge it are generally jobless with no way of paying the legal bills and I think it's safe to say the station involved would love to make an example of someone as a warning to otherswho would dare to challenge them. Stations also tend to have deeper pockets and are ready and willing to throw a pack of attorneys on the case.
Hey, if you sign it, you should honor it unless it goes overboard and some of them do.
Both sides can present good arguments. The station will argue that they have invested a lot of money in a person in the way of promotion and salary. They say they don’t want to do that if that person can waltz across town to the competition. They also contend they didn’t force anyone to sign a contract with a non-compete clause. The talent on the other hand will argue that they should be free to shop their skills around and that not being able to do so stifles competition in the labor market. But I will have to say the most interesting argument against the non-compete comes from union lobbyist Tom Carpenter of New York who was quoted in the Rochester City News as saying, "It really does compress wages in the industry. With a non-compete clause, reporters and anchors can't really negotiate to find out what the market will bear for their services." Carpenter, director of legislative affairs for the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists by the way is a primary person behind the pending legislation.
It will be interesting to see what happens to this case in New York. Will It have a ripple effect this far south? I'd really be surprised if it does. I expect to see non-competes enforced for a long time in this neck of the woods.

Hey, s**t happens and I think we've become desensitized!

I got a call this week from a former co-worker residing in Nashville where he works as a religion reporter for the ABC affiliate. He asked me what I thought about saying the S-word on a piece he was planning to air as early as Sunday night at 10pm. I laughed at first and then he told me the context of how it would be used and why it was being used. It's a great story. Apparently he and the ND and GM at the station had a spirited debate about this and he's moving forward with the story. The word WILL be bleeped, especially in light of the fact that the FCC now says "the word s**t will be reason for a crackdown. Jamey tells me he also got a call from the Howard Stern radio show about the story and that he was interviewed for a segment that I assume will be aired Friday morning. If you listen to Stern and hear the interview, please tell me how it went.
I don't want to steal any of his thunder on this thought provoking story. I hope it is posted on the WKRN website after it airs. If you want to read about the discussion, go to his blog at www.faithandethics.com or that of his GM at www.wkrngm.com/ .
Along those lines, I will admit it. I have a dirty mouth. Perhaps it was so many years in the newsroom where people used to smoke and swear almost as often as they took a breath. Yah, the smoking went by the wayside, but generally speaking, the language around a newsroom is not something to be proud of. And it's not just a guy thing either. I know of a few females around the newsrooms who could make a sailor blush with their language. I once asked one woman if she ate with that mouth. It was pretty bad. Down on the river, we had one person in the newsroom no one ever wanted to be caught swearing around. Her name is Ms. Rachel. She's a kind and sweet hearted woman and it took a lot of effort on her part just to say "oh poop!" I admit I let a few things slip around her but generally it was like saying a dirty word in front of your mom. You just didn't do it.
But it's not just around newsrooms that the language is bad. You hear it on music videos, you hear it on adult programming, you hear it at ballgames. I once had to ask a college student sitting next to me at a football game to please watch his mouth. I thought he was going to give me some lip about it, but he apologized and said he would.
Maybe the language thing is just part of our culture. It seems we don't care about the other person we may be offending or maybe we think its impressive. It's not. I once got caught uttering a few dirty words in front of my grade school basketball coach, Mr. Sullivan. He told me a person who has to resort to swearing in conversation doesn't have much of a vocabulary.
You know, he's right.

Black History Month revisited

A while back I posted about Black History Month and whether it was really needed. I appreciate the folks who responded as they offered some interesting observations. I also posted about how I wished someone would do something different than listing the same old, same old on the obvious black leaders we all know about. Well, somebody has and I've been meaning to post on it. If you watch Spike TV, you will see vignettes featuring black men and women talking about people who have made a difference in his or her life. One guy talked about the man who cut his hair who taught him things about life, even how to run a business. Another man was a dentist who talked about who mentored him. Great stuff. I wish something like this had been done locally. The spots are well done and it brings it home in a way that it really means something. Local heroes if you will who've made a difference.

I actually watched some of the Olympics, alert the media!

Wow, I finally saw some of the Winter Olympics. It was part of the curling competition. Why was I watching? Because I mis-punched the remote control trying to get to the Weather Channel. I will admit, curling ranks right up there with watching ice melt, but there's something about seeing four grown people doing what they do in curling that just captured my attention. One person slides the curling stone down the ice toward the target area while two others sweep in front of the stone to speed it up and turn it if necessary. I bet they sell a lot of beer at these competitions. Okay, the reason I kept watching was because it involved the USA against the Canadians. I only saw about ten minutes of the competition and had to leave.
From what I'm hearing, a lot of people are NOT watching the Winter Olympics and that's costing NBC and its affiliates in a big way. I remember back in the 1980 Winter Olympics when the Team U-S-A Hockey Team won everything. I had never even seen hockey until the "Miracle on Ice". It was "must see" TV. It helped draw me in to watch several of the other competitions as well. They used to have catchy theme music and it was fun to watch. Maybe it was when they started staggering the Winter and Summer games. Whatever the reason, the Olympics just don't inspire me anymore.
One final note on Winter Olympics. Back when I was down on the river working the morning show, we used to record a daily promo to run during 10 o'clock news. I got permission from the ND at the time to write a promo that would run all month during the Winter Olympics taking place in Nagano, Japan. I wrote the promo, and called a person at the University of Memphis who translated into Japanese for me and helped me spell it out phonetically. Then I put it into the prompter and had English subtitles made. The morning team (made up of Marybeth Conley, Todd Demers, Joey Hadley and me) then spoke Japanese during the promo with the subtitles displayed underneath. I've still got a copy of it and if I could figure out how to post it and link to it, I'd show it to you. I will admit it's funny to hear Japanese in a Southern accent.

The new ND down on the river gets a thumbs up from some of the troops!

The guy at the helm of the news department down on the river gets some good reviews from some of the folks who work for him. Bruce Moore, formerly of WVEC in Norfolk has been at the helm of WREG since the last week of January. He's described by his former co-workers as a real journalist who worked his way up through the ranks in his former newsroom. Word on the street in the Bluff City is that he's actually trusting his people to go out and do news. This contrasts with the past couple of NDs who spelled out exactly how they wanted reporters to cover things. I'm hearing that instead of micro-managing the product from the office, Moore is allowing reporters and videographers to go forth and cover things, trusting their judgement in the field. What a concept. I'm hearing it's a welcome change. On top of that, I'm hearing he TALKS to his people and acts like he's actually been in the field. That's making for some happy campers down on the river who appreciate it. And as you well know, a happy newsroom is a more productive newsroom, especially in the long run.

The Weather folks are two for two and I didn't win the Powerball lottery again.

The luck of the Irish hasn't been with me this weekend. First, I really wanted the weather folks to be wrong about the winter storm in Memphis and the MidSouth over the weekend. My reason was not so I could rag on them. I wished they hadn't been right merely because it kept me from getting outside to travel. But they nailed it and I tip my hat to those who sold it as it was and didn't over-hype it. You know what I'm talking about. Those who would try to scare the bejeezus out of the good folks here in the MidSouth. It was winter storm, plain and simple. It could have been a lot worse.
That's all I have to say about that.
I will admit I bought one lottery ticket over the weekend. One dollar is all I spent. This after reading not too long ago that when the stakes get as high as they did, buying more than one chance really doesn't improve your odds if winning that much more. Some might say it's still a shot in the dark, but hey, if you don't buy at least one ticket, you have NO chance of winning. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Weathergasm, weathergasm, weathergasm! Part Deux

"Batten down the hatches, secure the jibs, throw things over the stern, shiver me timbers and now I've run out of nautical terms. But you get my drift. It's weathergasm time. I'm not saying we're going to die here, but I'm not saying we're not either. "
Do I sound like any weather people you might know?
Hey, we're one for one so far this season on the big winter blows and looking over the forecast for the weekend, we may be in for another interesting ride. In truth, I hope the forecasters are in error because unlike snow which is pretty and causes a few headaches, ice is a bad thing. Ice knocks down tree limbs which knock down power lines which knocks out electricity which makes life miserable.
During the last big ice storm which hit Memphis February 11, 1994, stately Larksmith Manor was without electricity for 6 days. It was like Hurricane Elvis but with ice and the damage was more widespread. If I remember correctly, the area around Clarksdale, MS was really hard hit with miles of utility poles and line brought down by the ice. Some say ice was six inches in diameter on some utility lines in that area. I'd hate to see any kind of a repeat of that kind of mess.
I will admit to one thing that occurred during the ice storm. I was working early morning news and I was sound asleep when I heard the house go quiet as the electricity went off. I sat up in bed to what sounded like gunfire outside the house. It was the sound of tree branches cracking and breaking. I told my wife that I might as well jump into the shower and get ready for work. Since we have a gas powered water heater, warm water wasn't a problem and my wife had lighted a candle in the bathroom so I had some illumination for shaving. It was about halfway through my shower that I realized I had no way of drying my hair. I thought about trying to get to work with "wet head" but with the temperatures below freezing, I knew it would be pretty rough. Besides, I didn't know if the station would even have power.
So, like any reporter who has learned to improvise, adapt and overcome, I got the hand-bellows from the fireplace. I had my wife pump the bellows while aiming it at my head (please no coarse comments, this is my wife) and I dried my hair. Hey, it worked. I walked into the station with my usual coif! My wife is such a sweetheart.
But getting back to the weathergasm. This is one time I really hope the forecasters are wrong.
I promise I won't give you too much grief if you are.

An imagined conversation

George: I guess I just don't get it. A handful of folks hide behind their masks of anonymity and launch their attacks. Don't they realize this involves freedoms they should feel lucky to have and yet they abuse them.

Dick:Yah, they don't realize that when they carry out their attacks from wherever they're hiding, planning and scheming to take somebody down or destroy them, that they are in effect giving others the reason to clamp down on those freedoms. Fewer and fewer people are willing to step up to the plate anymore. Don't they get it?

George: I know I'm not alone in my frustrations. I realize the situation is not perfect, but I had hoped when we got to this point we'd be able to establish a meaningful dialogue where people could argue their particular side as adults. They know who I am and where I stand. I don't hide anything. I didn't start this conflict but I'm just trying to get things back on track. Instead, a handful of people have managed to demean or destroy things. Is it just a power trip on their part? Am I just naive?

Dick: Look at it from their side. Maybe they've been kicked around before and maybe they don't feel empowered. Some people have a reason to be that way, but others appear to be just following the crowd, not really appreciating the damage they're doing. Meanwhile there are people out there who kind of like what we're doing. I'm almost to the point where it's just not worth it and I'm ready to pull the plug on this whole Iraq thing.

George: Iraq thing. I thought you were talking about anonymous bloggers who spew their venom and hatred for whatever reason in on-line postings.

Dick: Better get ready. It looks like they are about to launch another attack. Don't you just wish they'd come out in the open for a change?

George: Okay, which group are we talking about now?

Dick: Incoming!!!!!

Duck, it's Dick!

Okay, that's a cheap shot. Ow, stop it. Budda-bang. Okay, enough of this.
I knew it would happen somewhere and it did. Someone did a simulation of sorts concerning the quail hunting accident involving the Veep.
Interestingly enough, it was a newspaper that did the video and not that a TV station that did the version I saw. It involved staff photographer George Congora with the Corpus Christi Caller Times newspaper www.caller.com who is an avid shooter. Congora fired a 28-gauge shotgun at a paper target to show the pellet strike. Yah, the accidental shooting wasn't straight on, but it did show the pellet pattern. My wife says the video is what you would expect from a newspaper.
I'm disappointed. As many hunters and shooting ranges as there are in the MidSouth and no one locally did this angle. If someone did, please let me know

PortaJohn Maintenance, Spittoon Polisher, White House Press Secretary

Which one of those jobs would you hate the most. Yah, they're all necessary, but I think I'd hate to be the WHPS most of all. This Cheney quail hunting thing has blown up into something it didn't need to be and probably would not be if handled promptly. But it wasn't and now Scott McClellan has the unenviable task of having to deal with the White House Press Corps. I've seen him stand up there day after day on other issues dealing with the reporters and I have to think that whatever he is getting paid is not nearly enough. He takes abuse on a daily basis on issues he not only has no control over but no input on how they are handled. I hope he gets a big bonus at the end of the year and maybe has some kind of good gig lined up when all this is over. I swear, this guy could walk through fire and not break a sweat. Just once, I wish he'd say something like "bite me" to the press. I'd just laugh. I hope his bosses appreciate his efforts.

Cheney's got a gun, Cheney's got a gun...

That's the headline I saw on Countdown with KO. I felt sorry for Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary who was fielding questions from the press corps on the Cheney shooting. As I had blogged previously, I've quail hunted and it's important to know where everybody is at all times when you're about to discharge a weapon. But what could have been a minor issue has blown up because those invovled waited so long to address the situation. The fact that the Secret Service kept local sheriff's officials at bay didn't help. Olbermann interviewed the newspaper reporter who broke the story. I predict Kathryn Garcia, the health and fitness reporter for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times newspaper will have multiple TV offers before the week is up and may find herself at one of the larger stations in Texas if she is so inclined. She is cute and has a good presence on the air. She did well in her live interview with Keith.
I had to chuckle when Keith interviewed Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank about the shooting. Milbank came on the air wearing an orange sock cap and orange hunting vest. He said he did that because he wasn't too far from the Veep's home in Washington.
I will admit I was out of pocket because I had travel back to Kentucky to pick up an airplane. Has anyone on local television gone to a shooting range to show what a 28 guage or a 20-guage does to a paper target at 30-yards. I expect to see it soon. It will show what birdshot can do at that range. Somebody tell me when it's done.

Time to spare, go by air and by the way, watch out for those quail hunters!

If you've ever traveled in a small plane, you know there is truth in the old adage "time to spare, go by air." Such was the case over the weekend. My lovely and talented bride and I had planned to fly to Western Kentucky to take my mother to lunch for her birthday which was Sunday. The weather looked a little iffy Saturday but looked like it might be improving Sunday. We left Sunday morning and let me just say, the weather forecasters were a tad bit off on the conditions. We landed at the airport designated 5KY2, a private airstrip my brothers and I created across the road from where my Mom lives. We jokingly refer to it as "Larkins' International." We had dodged snowshowers all the way up there and I was glad to be on the ground. The forecast called for the weather to improve and we had about five hours before we planned to depart for Memphis. You know about weather in the MidSouth. If you don't like what you see, wait a few hours and it will change. It didn't. By 4:30, we were back at my mother's house and the weather wasn't improving. As pilot in command, it was my choice: take off in weather that the plane was not supposed to fly in and attempt to get home in about an hour or drive the three hours back to Memphis and return the next day to pick up the plane. I didn't want this flight to end up as some headline in the paper or in the news on TV or radio. We drove home. Another adage: "It's better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air than in the air, wishing you were on the ground."
When we walked in the house, I had a message on the answering machine from a former co-worker from down on the river. He works at one of the 24 hour news operations and was wanting some clarification on quail hunting since I used to do that Outdoor show thing down on the river. It seems the Veep had tagged somebody with a 28 guage shotgun while quail hunting in Texas. Hey, it can be an easy thing to do if you aren't aware of where everyone else is in the field, even if everyone is wearing blaze orange. I wasn't aware of the story until DJ's call and then I had to look it up on the internet. One quote in the story was rather interesting. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by God, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good. "
Unfortunately, the person who was shot was in intensive care as of this writing. I hope he pulls through. At 30 yards, which is well within the killing range of birdshot when hunting quail, the human victim should consider himself lucky.

Weathergasm, weathergasm, weathergasm!

Nothing like snow to make folks giddy and ready to kick up their heels and get outside. And then there are the non-newspeople too.
No, seriously folks, I have to admit I was impressed when I cranked up the TV and surfed the local channels at 5 o'clock. Not once did I hear the term "winter wonderland". Of course I surfed the channels quickly to see who was doing what and where so I may have missed someone using that term, but I can only hope those words weren't uttered. Remember, if it sounds like a cliche or you think it's a cliche, it probably is.
What I did hear was good reporting from 3, 5 and 13 regarding the weather. When I got to 24, they were already on a story about a hold-up in a convenience store where somebody threatened to shoot somebody in the face so I don't know if they had gotten through the snow stories by then or they decided it was just snow and the story shouldn't be blown out of propotion.
Having grown up in the Midsouth, it still amazes me how people forget to drive in snow. It shouldn't but it does. I had promised to drive my wife around for her errands in East Memphis in my old 4-wheel drive Pathfinder. Since it's a 1987 model, I don't mind driving it in nasty traffic and when you drive something like that, it's amazing how someone in a new Benz or Jag will get out of your way. It was raining and just starting to spit snow when we left the house at 1:30. By 2:45, traffic at Mendenhal and Poplar was bumper to bumper and at a crawl as the snow fast and hard. As we drove by Target, the lot was almost empty ( at least to Target standards) so we stopped there. No, we didn't buy bread or milk. By 3:15 we were inching along Southern trying to avoid Poplar. Long story short, it took us about an hour to get back to the confines of Midtown from East Memphis.
My wife pointed out that it was February 11th, 1994 that Memphis and the Midsouth got hammered by the ice storm. Our electricity was knocked out for six days. I don't think we have to worry about that this time around. I will admit the snow is pretty, but now that we've had that, I'm ready for it to melt and lets get to spring.

Newsweek is making me crazy!

I know, I know, it's not Newsweek that made me this way. My beef is about how the writers have to couch everything and I mean everything when it comes to people speaking to them off the record in various forms. Don't get me wrong, I know you need to have off-the-record sources on some stories and to get some information. But they qualify EVERY off the record source with something like ..."Capitol Hill officials ( who declined to be indentified because the session was private)" or "A Justice Department official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive subject". Both of these were in the same half page story. Almost every story on something in Washington, D.C. has something similar in it. It just seems overkill after a while. Just an observation.

Ask the News Director/Ask the Lazy Anchor

I don't know how many of you check out TVSpy on a regular basis www.tvspy.com/ but some interesting posts have been made in the Watercooler section under "Ask the news director". If you really want a chuckle, check out "Ask the Lazy Anchor" on the next page. It was also proposed that someone start a thread called "Ask the Bitter Reporter".

Bizarre TV

I finally got around to watching Grizzly Man on the Discovery Channel and if you want to see a nature film unlike any that Marlin Perkins ever put together on the old Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, then you need to see this. As a former outdoor show host and having grown up on a farm, I have some idea of what to expect from wild animals and despite the fact that people find some cute and cuddly, they are still wild animals.
Timothy Treadwell who videotaped his time with grizzly bears in the wilderness of Alaska treated theses creatures like family pets, giving them cute names like Tabitha and Mr. Chocolate. In the end, he and his female companion became the main course for one of these brutes. The two and a half hour video shows Treadwell descending into his own little world and near madness where the bears are the good guys and the rest of the world is made up of the bad guys. For the most part, Treadwell is doing the one-man-band thing, and at times is within inches of the bears. In this part of the world the bears are at the top of the food chain. There are some interesting moments in the documentary, which was pieced together from 100 hours of video shot over the course of 13 years. Some foxes follow him around like puppies and allow him to pet them and the overall scenery is breathtaking.
But IMHO, the director took about an hours worth of material and stretched it to two and a half hours which was then followed by a half hour of commentary. If you like nature films, this might be worth your while but while you don't see anything gory, I wouldn't recommend children seeing this. Thank goodness for TIVO to zip through commercials.

Zero, zip, nada

That's how much of the Superbowl and the big pregame show I saw on Sunday. I'm sorry to say I don't feel I missed that much.
Instead, my wife and I caught up on a few magazines after browsing through the CA to get caught up on all things Memphis. We did watch some TV starting in the afternoon. I had TIVOed Lincoln on National Geographic Channel and The Madness of King Henry VIII on the History Channel. That was a total of five hours of programming and if you missed either one, see if you can catch a repeat because both are quite interesting, especially Lincoln. I guess I'll have to look for the score to see who won the Superbowl.
By the way, some of you have posted complaints about extraneous computer type stuff appearing in my blogs. I think I've got that particular problem "whupped". Thanks to all of you who alerted me to the problem.

Treat people like adults, they'll act like adults

Boy was I wrong about that. When I started this blog just before Christmas, I raised the question of why someone would want to blog. I've also asked that if people didn't like to read this blog, please don't. It's like television. If you don't like what you see, change the channel. I've tried to make a few observations about local television and share a little about me. I've gotten mostly positive feedback and the couple of times that someone started to get ugly, I asked people to be adult in their postings. For the most part, they have. Yah, we've had some interesting comments and I appreciate the feedback. But then over the weekend, somebody had to show off and like a little barking chihuahua that is trying desparately to get the attention of the big people, that person acts like a child and posts something ugly, not once but twice. I appreciate the efforts of the poster who attempted to defuse the comments of the annoying little dog, but I just decided to delete all three postings.
When I first started this, I was told I would need to filter the comments of those posting comments and I said "No, if you treat people like adults, they'll act like adults." Well, let me just say I was wrong. I will admit I'm disappointed that I have to run things through a filter. Right now, somebody is reading this with child-like glee and an equally child-like mind and thinking "Boy, I got to Joe Larkins". Yes, you did. You managed leave me quite disappointed. I guess you can be quite proud of that. Don't bother responding, the filter is on. Now, go back out in the yard and play before an adult steps on you.

I spent my afternoon impregnating fertile and impressionable young minds.

I got a call from a former coworker of mine from down on the river about coming over to the University of Memphis to speak to her journalism class. Some of you may remember Lurene Cachola who left reporting to pursue academics. She is now Dr. Lurene Kelly at the U of M and asked me to spend a couple of hours with a producing class. She said part of their work dealt with on-air work and she asked me help with some on-camera work in the studio. (Yah, I guess she couldn’t get anybody else to come out on a rainy Thursday). As I explained to the class, there are usually three ways of doing anything and my way is just one way. I shared some of my experiences with them and was under the impression that I was just going to critique their on-camera performance. Dr. Lurene asked me to read through some scripts on camera so they could see how I did it.

I have to admit, it was kind of strange to sit in front of a prompter and on a set again. But as I sat there, I began to have this feeling of deja vu’. I told them that the set really seemed familiar to me and that’s when I was told, it was the old WREG set. The colors were changed and there was no Memphis backdrop. I started to check under the set to see if some of the gum I put there might still be chewable but I decided not to.

Afterwards, I was chatting with one of Dr. Lurene’s coworkers who is working on his Masters at the U of M. As I’ve said before, I think there are only about 300 people in the TV News business and every few years they all change jobs. This guy had worked at WVEC in Norfolk and remembered working with Bruce Moore who was a reporter at the time. Moore just arrived this week to assume the head honcho position in the news department down on the river. Talk about a small world.

One other note about my experience impregnating fertile young minds. I emphasized to them that if they ended up as an anchor to remember to be nice to people. For some reason, some of the folks who get to that post in the newsroom feel they have to talk down to co-workers and feel that they are someohow something special. I told them that an anchor is merely a cog in the news wheel and without all of those editors, shooters, producers and reporters; the anchors don’t have a heck of a lot going on and would get really lonely sitting on that big set. Remember what you learned in kindergarten. Just be nice to everyone.

Do we really need Black History Month?

The passing of Coretta Scott King, the wife of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., started me thinking again about something I heard on television back in December. The comment was this:

“You’re going to relegate my history to a month? I don’t want a Black History Month. Black History is American History."

Actor Morgan Freeman made that remark during a "60 Minutes" interview with Mike Wallace who had traveled to the MidSouth to talk to Mr. Freeman.

I started thinking about how in Memphis, during the month of February, television stations usually attempt to do something to honor those black leaders who left their mark on history. Don’t get me wrong; I think there were some powerful people who helped the cause along the way. But each year I’ve been in Memphis, black reporters are assigned to do a series of stories or Public Service Announcements on the same people year after year. Some of these stories are well done. Other reports appeared to have been phoned in.

Who doesn’t know what George Washington Carver did with peanuts, that Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a fearless anti-lynching crusader and that Robert Church Sr. was born a slave but by the end of his life had become the South's first African-American millionaire. If I were a person of color, I’d be a little P.O.ed that I was given a month for black history and then fell off the radar screen until the same time next year. If we are going to do it, why don’t we honor heroes and great people all year long and let’s examine those every day heroes and everyday great people. You know who they are. They are the people who make a difference in everyday life and usually are NOT politicians or someone in the public eye. Yah, you have to look for them and chances are, they don’t want the publicity. But it’s easier to trot out the same old, same old, find some pictures, and narrate a track on them than to hustle out and find these unsung heroes.

Perhaps someone has done that and I just missed it. I would love to see such a thing on local television, but I won’t hold my breath.

A colorful set on Highland

I caught WHBQ’s evening newscast after watching the State of the Union address on PBS. After talking to some folks around town and reading a few local blogs, I was expecting something big, bold and impressive and it was all of that. Can you say colorful? Actually my lovely and talented bride thought it was colorful and artful but that it overwhelmed the anchors. We agreed you wouldn’t confuse it with any other set in town. This was just a first impression. Maybe it will grow on us.I flipped over at 10 o’clock to catch the folks down on the river to see how the chemistry was going with the arrival of Claudia Barr. If there were two shots during the first part of the show, they were so short or I must have missed them so I can’t really comment on how they meshed. I also must have missed the three shot after weather if there was one.
I also heard from Pam McKelvy who is back on the blogging trail. For those wanting to check her out, go to pammckelvy.blogspot.com/ .