TV Phrases, What They Mean to Me

You will hear a lot of "TV" phrases on any television station. You will hear us say "Only on 19." That's one example.

But what does that mean? Well the way I feel and the way our news managers seem to feel is that we call a story "Only on 19" when it's, well, only on 19. That seems to be a good policy. If we say it's a story you'll see only on 19, that means you won't see that story anywhere else. You won't see it on another station or in the newspaper.

Sometimes we will cover a story that is in the newspaper or on another station, but we will still say "Only on 19." But we won't say it's a story, you'll see only on 19. We will say something like, this is video you'll see only on 19. Or this is an interview you'll see only on 19. I've seen some examples of others using the phrase "It's a story you'll see only on ....." when in fact, it was in the newspaper earlier in the day.

Another one you'll hear is, "we've got a crew on the scene." To me a crew on the scene means we have people there where something happened as we speak. However, today I read where someone else said, we've got a crew on the scene of a plane crash in Fort Payne. Brad Hood looked around, but didn't see anyone on the scene. They did show up later. I guess what they meant to say is, we've got a crew on the way to the scene.

I guess a lot of people would ask why we even use these phrases. Well, we say Only on 19 or First on 19, or first to the scene, because we want you to know that when news happens, you can hear and see it on our station first. We want you to know that we're going to get stories you won't see elsewhere. We want you to know that we are in a position like no one else to get to the scene of a story while it's happening. We use those phrases, but we and especially I, don't take them lightly. If you see me doing a story that's "Only on 19", you can believe it's only on 19.

Free HBO

I've got to keep this updated. I don't want to be accused of being like Chris Davis and only updating once a week.

I don't really have anything news related to update with. So I'm just giving you one of my many observations.

Photographer Brad Hood took his family on a short vacation to Chattanooga over the weekend. He was telling me what a nice hotel room they had. He also mentioned it had free HBO.

This got me to thinking how many hotels and motels have signs out front that say, FREE HBO. I really wonder how many people have picked a hotel based on the fact it's got FREE HBO? Personally I've never spent a vacation watching HBO. I don't recall ever watching HBO in a hotel room.

You never hear someone at the office say, "Yep, me and the wife are going to drive down to Fort Walton. We're going to get a us a room on the beach and watch us some HBO." Maybe some people do.

This was the tomato plant out in back of my house one week ago. It had just blown over in a storm. 

Now it's as big as the porch post. How much taller is it going to get? 

I Had No Idea

The little jab I made below at Fox News is getting national attention. A website called confirmthem.com attached a link to my blog on their website today. I wonder how they found it?

Since then I've gotten hits from the U.S. Court System, the FAA, the U.S. General Accounting Office, The University of Minnesota, the City of L.A., the U of Illinois, and the Air Force.

The point of the jab; does it require a FOX NEWS ALERT each time you show the exact same video?

Hey Jerry, I Forgot to Tell You Something

A week ago, Tim Simpson stopped by the station. I was supposed to have told you hello for him. But I haven't seen you since then. So hello from Tim.

Tim used to be our Chief Meteorologist before Dan. He's now at our sister New York Times Station, WREG, in Memphis.

I'll Never Forget Where I Was

According to the FOX NEWS ALERT Chief Justice William Rehnquist has left his home. They've shown it four times now, since I've been watching. Each time with the FOX NEWS ALERT.

I just can't imagine how my life will ever be the same. William Rehnquist has left his home. Excuse me while I get a box of tissues.

Women One Man Bands

I've been reading other blogs about a television station in Nashville using all one man band reporters. They are basically adding photographer to the reporter's job titles and adding reporter to the photographer's job titles.

So if a station has 10 reporters and 10 photographers, suddenly they have 20 people who are basically reporters. I'm curious if the photographers will be seen on the air as well?

Throughout my six year career in TV news, I've often found myself all alone, doing both jobs. My first reporting job at 19 was one man band weekend reporter. And as I've mentioned, I still one man band when Brad, my photog, is out.

My very first reporting job was in Tuscaloosa. I was also a one man band. I was also the only male reporter. The rest of the newsroom was filled with women reporters. But none of them had to one man band. In fact, our news director, who just happened to be a woman, would not allow women to operate cameras. She always said if was unprofessional for a woman to carry around a big, bulky camera. (So much for equal rights I guess.)

Interestingly, one night a week, I would have to shoot my story and also be the photographer for our other nightside reporter. Her name was Susie Edwards. I've seen her around somewhere recently I think.

All By Myself

Not much to talk about today. I'm working by myself. So I will be a "one man band." I'll shoot video, I'll write, I'll edit, I'll set up the live shot, I'll do the live shot." This is always fun.

Actually it's kind of nice sometimes to get a break from just reporting. I actually get to set up my own shots. That way when I get back to the office I already know what kind of video I have.

Official Speak

I had a news director, a long, long time ago, who once said, "I never want to see a politician on TV." Luckily, he's gone.
But I don't think it's that he had a hatred for politicians. It's just that politicians and officials tend to be a little boring on TV.

It's actually kind of funny. When we turn on the camera and start asking questions, many suddenly become like Data, the android on Star Trek: The Next Generation. What I mean is that they don't talk like a normal person would talk.

Let's say there's a fire on your street and you walk up to a fireman and ask what happened. He would never say, "Well sir, at approximately 3:15 this morning, we received a call that there was a structure fire at 1321 Hickory Lane. When we responded the structure was fully involved. We attempted to evacuate two other nearby residences to make sure the occupants weren't in danger."

That's what we call "Official Speak" or "Official-Ease" Watch TV long enough and you'll see it. Who talks like this in real life? Yet it is often the type interview we will get.

What he would probably say to the average person is, "The house caught on fire early this morning. By the time we got here there wasn't much we could do. So we just tried to get the people out of the other houses so they didn't get hurt."

It's conversational, but it's still professional. Sometimes you just wish people in authority would talk like real people.

What I try to stress to people, is that you're not talking to me or the camera. You are talking to the average person at home. So talk like you were having a conversation with them.

The Newspaper Advantage

Newspaper reporters have a lot of advantages over us TV folks. People will talk to a newspaper reporter, when they won't talk to us. It all boils down to the camera and the microphone.

I guess a notebook is a lot less scary than a big hunk of camera on a photographer's shoulder.

Many public and elected officials are the same. They will sometimes be much more accommodating to a newspaper reporter than they will with us. They will give them little bits of information that they suddenly won't share when our camera starts rolling.

This is a little confusing to me. When you talk on TV, your words and picture are on the screen for a few moments. Then those TV signals are gone and making their way out across space.
The newspaper on the other hand, is there for good. The reader can sit there and read over and over again the words you said. Example: In campaign commercials, the opponent always uses quotes from a newspaper to bash the other guy, seldcom television quotes.

Another example is courtrooms. Our camera (the tool we use to do our job) isn't allowed in courtrooms. But the newspaper reporter is allowed to carry his or her notebook into the courtroom. If we have to check our camera at the door, I think they should have to check their notebook at the door.

Actually, I don't believe that. My point is that there are no rules in courtrooms that prevent a newspaper reporter from doing his job to the fullest. Our jobs however are hindered. We work in a medium that lives by pictures and sound. Yet we are often times not allowed to use those tools.

Just some rambling thoughts today.

I'm stuck inside my house this morning. I can't get to my car. The rain is coming down in buckets, my rain coat is in my car and there's two inches of water in front of my door. 

Will the rain ever stop?? 

The Bureau Tomato Plant. Claire, our 5pm producer brought me two plants. We put one of them outside the office in Albertville. This is what you call really "Digging" for news.

The other Tomato plant that Claire gave me, I put in a pot on my back porch.

But Monday's storm, which was probably the worst one I've ever been caught in, broke the Mater Plant. 

My Work on 31????

I've been told that the story I did on the kid in the airplane aired on Good Morning America. They took the story we sent to NNS, and had one of the Good Morning America People re-voice it. They used what I had written and the interviews we got. So our helicopter pilot, and our video was seen on a competing station.

Real News from the Advertiser-Gleam

News in Saturday's edition of Guntersville's Advertiser-Gleam:

Randy Smith killed a big rattlesnake.
All of Mavis Thrash's family ate lunch with her Sunday.
Emily Berry had to go to the doctor.
There was a big storm on June 6th.

And last but not least, Tammy Godwin locked her keys in her car at the Town Creek service station.

That's what I call real news.

Jerry Hayes and Sharks, Oh My

Friday night I got to fill in for Jerry on the 10 o'clock news. It's different anchoring a show during the week. There's a different feel. Possibly because it was the first time I wasn't also having to produce the show. I also didn't have to run my own prompter. It took me awhile to figure out what to do with this extra foot I had.

I also did a story on Friday with a girl who had a run-in with a shark on vacation in South Carolina.

Interviewed shark attack victim; there I can add that to the list of different things you run across and do stories on in this business. It's really all over the board. I've done stories on September 11th. I've done stories on a police officer being killed. I've also done a story with a singing dog.

Video on Fox News

The video from our story yesterday was on Fox News this morning. (Video shot by photographer Brad Hood) I told you yesterday how we send it to CBS. Well, in doing so, it also gets sent to a conglomerate of stations and networks called NNS. CBS, CBS stations, Fox News and Fox stations are all a part of it.

But sad to say, that really bad CBS script about the crash goes right along with the video. So Fox also reported the kid had taught himself to fly using his X box.

As far as I know right now, from checking with the newspaper reporters who also cover Fort Payne, that piece of information was totally made up by CBS.

"Aeroplane" Video Goes to CBS

The video we shot of the 14-year-old's plane crash was sent to CBS. We feed it to them, they then send it out to other stations across the country.

They also send a script with the video that has all of the information about the story. The script they sent doesn't look like anything I wrote. It has information that I know to be wrong.

One, the CBS story says the boy got airplane training using a computer game. We were directly told the boy didn't have anything like that. We understand that his family is actually quite poor.

The CBS story says he flew for an hour. He flew for exactly 36 minutes.

The CBS story also says, "the talkative juvenile." How do they know he's talkative? No one's spoken to him. They also call it an "aeroplane" An aeroplane? Is CBS being run by the British now?

You've Got to Watch Tonight at 4:30, Five or Six

Today I've covered one of the most unusual stories I've covered since I've been a reporter. A 14-year-old in Fort Payne, who had never been in an airplane, stole one and went on a 30 minute ride before crashing.

You've got to see this tonight.

Don't Mention Them!! You Know Who, Them

I watch a good bit of cable and network news. Something I've noticed is that they don't have a problem mentioning their competition by name. You might see a story on ABC's World News Tonight where they say something like, "Rumsfeld told NBC News that...." When Peter Jennings announced he had lung cancer, there was a story on every channel about it.

But local stations across the country find it very taboo to mention the competition. In the years since I've been watching local television news, which is pretty much my whole life, I can count on one hand the number of times one local station has mentioned another local station.

I'm not sure why this is so. I'm sure the fear is that if you mention the folks at other stations, somewhere in the viewers subconcious mind a voice will say, "You must watch this station they speak of." So I won't use the numbers 31 or 48 on this blog. And just to make sure I don't cause any problems of that sort:

19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19

No Good Tomatoes Were Hurt in the Filming of this Story.

Today I threw Tomatoes. We did a story about teens who went on a rampage inside an Arab grocery store. Besides yelling, cussing, knocking cans off of shelves and pouring dog food in the floor, they also threw tomatoes.

So to do the story right, we knew we needed some tomatoes to show what they might have looked like hitting the store window. We are lucky to have our office right next to a Piggly Wiggly. We went over and they happily gave us some tomatoes that were on their way to being thrown out.

They didn't bust open when they hit the wall as much as we thought they would. They just kind of hit the wall and bounced off. But it was still better video than having nothing.

Another picture from my trip to D.C. A WW2 Veteran taking a moment at the WW2 Memorial.  

How Many Times Can You Write One Story?

I'm sitting here trying to put off writing a web version of today's story. That's because I've written this story four times already.

We did a story today about an 18-year-old boy who died swimming in Little River Canyon National Preserve. I wrote the story for our noon show, the 4:30 show, the Five Show and the Six Show. Now I've got to write it for the web.

I don't like to cut and paste stories, but there are only so many ways you can tell one story. Oh well, here I go.

Sitting in the Sat Truck

I'm in Mountain Brook covering the Holloway story. I was sitting here watching as the Jackson Verdict came down. I heard a reporter for Fox News say,"This is certainly a big day in American History." Guilty or Not Guilty, I don't really believe this will be one of those things that gets a section at the Smithsonian. I don't think kids will learn about this day in their history books someday. But I guess that reporter thinks so.

I know I'll always remember where I was. Where am I?

I Don't Work at Wal-Mart

Sunday I was in Wal-Mart in Arab. I was standing in front of the razors when this very elderly man comes up to me. He says, "Son, do you know if they have enemas here?" The thought went through my mind, "OK, where are the hidden cameras?" But I just said to him, "Umm, I don't know." He said ok and walked away.

I'm pretty sure that Wal-Mart probably does have enemas, but I felt the safe answer was to say I didn't know. If I had said yes, I was afraid he would then want me to help him find them.

Laranda Nichols

This morning I opened up The Huntsville Times to find that Laranda Nichols had passed away. She was the Marshall County reporter for the Times. It says she died from cancer. I didn't even know she had been sick.

It was always a pleasure to run into Laranda. She knew all of the ins and outs of Marshall County. She was a great reporter. She will be missed by the readers of the Times and by those of us who knew her.

Funny

I hear the competition was out at the Huntsville National Weather Service doing a story on Friday. And they had a shot of the weather service's feed of ARMOR radar, our radar.

Glad we could help.

By the way, I just got home from Kids Count Expo in the Shoals. Nice to meet everyone, but I'm tired and going to bed.

2005 Vacation Review

Below I have posted pictures from this year's vacation. I visited Washington, D.C.

Now I know in the past I've visited obscure places like Alaska and South Dakota. D.C. is certainly not obscure, a lot of people go there every year on vacation and business.

But how I went there is certainly obscure. I made a day trip. I did the whole thing in a 14 hour period.

My flight left Huntsville at 7 in the morning. I got into D.C. around 9:45 EDT. I caught a ride on the Washington Flyer bus. It took me from Dulles to the West Falls Church, Virginia Metro Station. I got on the Metro and rode the Orange line to Metro Center. There I switched over to the Red line and made my way to the Smithsonian Station.

I got off the Metro and went right up on to the Mall. I made my way over to the Smithsonian Museum of American History. (I went to the Air and Space Museum last year. The Space and Rocket Center is much better.) I spent an hour or so inside. Then I ate a hotdog from a street vendor. Too salty.

Then I made the long walk(it seemed long in the 97 degree Heat Index weather) to the World War Two Memorial. I had never seen it. It's a very nice tribute to the veterans of WW2. You should go see it sometime.

I then spent some time walking to see the White House. You can't get that close anymore. After that, I jumped back on the Metro and went to Union Station. There I ate some junk food. I bought a pin for Photographer Brad Hood. I get him one from every place I visit. He puts them on his camera.

I sat there for a while cooling off, then it was time to start making my way back to Dulles. So on the Metro I go. Back to Metro Center where I caught the Orange Line back to West Falls Church. There I caught the Washington Flyer back out to Dulles. At Dulles I waited in the longest security line ever. ( I really like Huntsville International) I was early, so I wandered around Concourses A and B. I watched people get on flights to France and London. I watched a couple of "Valley Girls" run in a mad dash out of the bar(I wasn't in the bar) to catch their Jet Blue flight to Long Beach. I ate at Burger King.

At 7pm EDT, I was getting back on board the Independence CRJ to fly back to Huntsville. At 8:25 Central time, the wheels hit the runway in Huntsville. At 8:48, I was leaving the parking deck.

Trains, Planes and Automobiles; more than a thousands miles; many Washington sites and all in one day. I'm tired.

From the Window of the Independence Air CRJ-65 on the way to Dulles. 

The Washington Monument. 

The Puffy Shirt from the episode of Seinfeld called, the Puffy Shirt. 

A 1950s era television studio camera. 

The Flag that was draped over the side of the Pentagon after 9-11. It now hangs inside the Smithsonian where the Star Spangled Banner once was. The SSB is being restored. 

The World War Two Memorial. The Lincoln Memorial in the Background 

The Pacific Section. 

Each Star on the wall Represents 1,000 men who served in WW2. 

The Atlantic Section. 

The Alabama Section of the WW2 Memorial. 

Hail to the Chief. George couldn't squeeze me in on his calendar. 

The building where Fox News, C-Span and CBS Newspath operate out of. I did a live shot from there last year. 

A nice shot. 

Union Station 

A Canadair Regional Jet like the one I flew to and from Washington on. This is at Dulles. I was actually trying to get a shot of the 747 in the background. 

The flight back to HSV. I think that could be the face on Mars, on the left side of that cloud. 

Back for a Bit

I'm taking a small vacation from my vacation. The reason is so that I can properly say goodbye to the best reporter I've seen come through Huntsville in the six years I've been here.

If you read the other WHNT Blogs, then you've probably seen by now that Jeff Butera is leaving. I mentioned it the other day, but didn't give a name. I felt that was Jeff's
prerogative to be the one to tell you himself.

Since I began in this business, I've heard stories about reporters who blow in, that you know won't be around long. They are so good that they will be able to pave their own path to where ever they want it to take them. With all due respect to the other reporters I work with and have worked with,(I'm certainly in there with you) no one had fit that bill until Jeff came along. I'm sure our 5pm producer Claire is surprised to read this. Since I would quite frequently ask her, "So, what's Wonder Boy Butera going to dazzle us with today." It was a joke Claire.

Jeff came to WHNT fresh out of college. It's almost unheard of for a new college graduate to begin working in a medium sized market like Huntsville. What's even more rare is for a fresh college graduate to not be bad. But not only was he not bad, he became the best reporter at 19. Usually the great reporters have a bad habit of knowing how good they are, and not letting you forget it. Not Jeff.

Jeff and I were on opposite sides of the state. We didn't run into each other that often. Usually just at station staff meetings.

I hate to see you go my friend. But something tells me, we'll all be seeing you again.

Vacation Review Part 3-The One That Never Was

So I've been to Alaska and South Dakota. How did I choose these spots? Well, I like to go to places that aren't the usual vacation spots. The beach is nice, but it's more a place you go for a couple of days, not a week.

But I actually can't take credit for choosing the locations. That goes to Brad Hood. Every spring I throw out the question: "where should I go on vacation this year?" He will sit there for a second and finally throw out "Alaska," etc.

The first year I worked in the bureau back in 2001, I did the same thing. Brad's first choice was probably the most unique. He thought for a minute and then said of all place, "Connecticut!"
A strange destination, but I said I'd try to go where he picked. There's not much to do there. But I planned to go see Mark Twain's home and drive up to Massachusetts to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

I bought the plane ticket, I booked the hotel room and I reserved the rental car. There was just one problem. My flight left on Saturday, September 16th, 2001. I guess you can now see why this was the trip that never was. My flight got canceled and besides, I wasn't in much of a vacation mood. It still makes me mad that those 19 moron terrorists stopped me from going to Connecticut. One day I plan to finish that trip.

So where am I going next week? Stay tuned and prepare to be under-whelmed.

Edit to the Above: When I talk about the terrorists ruining my vacation, I don't want anyone to think that's the only reason I was upset about 9-11. I was just giving an example of how it impacted me directly.

I wrote on here once about the foods I've never eaten. Chinese was on the list. Well tonight, photographer Shawn Bracey insisted I try some. He paid, so I did. I wasn't impressed. I guess it's just not my thing. At least I haven't missed anything these past 28 years.