"These Troubled Economic Times"

My new favorite drinking game...taking a swig every time someone says, "in these troubled economic times."

Well, the economy has gotten to my station too. We, like so many others, had layoffs right before Christmas, and the future is now for one-man-bands. We offered buyouts to our four senior photogs. We already have a VJ who shoots her own stories, and we're about to hire another. Plus, I hear automation for the control room is on its way and more of my production brethren will be on their way out.

Get used to it folks...these times, they are a changin'

Bieke

Hemenway steps down

KU chancellor Bob Hemenway announces today that he's stepping down effective June 30.



More later.

Where are they now

Laine Baker moves from KSNT, Topeka, to weekend anchor, KNWA (NBC/FOX) in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Her husband is a sports reporter there.

I thought I'd pass along this article to everyone. Way to go Laubhan!

LUBBOCK, Texas, Oct. 11 (UPI) -- A television anchor in Lubbock, Texas, says she had no clue her boyfriend from a rival TV station planned to propose to her on-air during her show.

KAMC-TV anchor Emily Leonard appeared stunned when she saw boyfriend, Matt Laubhan, a meteorologist for KLBK-TV, Lubbock, sitting at the sports desk. Laubhan then asked viewers to "sit back and watch me make a young woman cry, hopefully in a good way." more

The story even made it to the UK.

Jason Matisoff

Editor's Note: My newscast ran this story as a kicker on Sunday! Video from GMA below.

BREAKING NEWS!

In my last post I said live remotes were coming this fall. In fact, they are here. Tonight at 5:30 we did a live shot on the story of the EPA fining KU $80,000 for environmental violations. The live shot was exactly the type that I rail against -- a totally gratuitous standup in an empty chemistry lab which hadn't seen any activity for hours! But we did it in the name of valuable experience for our students. After all, they'll be doing lots of those gratuitous live shots once they're out there in "the real world."
See for yourself.

Live at Five (thirty)

At long last KUJH-TV newscasts are now live at 5:30. Actually, we generally tape the second and third segments and do just the first one live, though we have done the whole newscast live. We've been doing this for a week now and it's all gone well.

Next step is to do remote live shots, which should be coming this semester.

Job opening

From Kathy Vitale at KUSA in Denver: I wanted to pass along a job opening at KUSA/9News- Denver. We are currently looking for a morning news producer. The position is M-F hours could be 11:30am-8:00am/12:30am-9:00am. It's for our four hour morning show. Producer will be responsible for two hours of content, will write news, edit video, make own graphics.

Contact: Jack Maher/EP KUSA Morning News (I'll give out more details if someone is interested)

This was my position; however, I've been promoted to the 4pm news-- so I can sleep like a normal person- finally!

If you have further questions, info-- let me know.

Kathy
kfvitale@yahoo.com

Where Are They Now Fixed

OK, the Where Are They Now? section is back up and running and updated. I think I went back and got all the updates people have sent me, but if I didn't, just drop me a line.

Bieke

Site Problem

OK,

There have been quite a few requests over the past few weeks to update the "Where Are They Now?" section, but I am currently having technical difficulties with getting an update posted (it's a long story).

Please bear with me.

Bieke

Good stories, or even not-so-good

If you have good stories posted on your station's Web site, let me know. I'd like to link to them from our staff Web site so that our students can be inspired by the quality of work being done by their predecessors. I've already posted one from Gina Ford at WEEK-TV in Peoria.