DC's Metromix

Metromix is one of the city's newest local entertainment websites. Thursday evening, the official launch party blasted off from the Shadow Room in Downtown.

Lots of music and dancing... with 9NEWS NOW anchor Derek McGinty burning up the dance floor!

There was something for everyone and get this: thanks to an elaborate computer hook-up, party-goers could order food and drinks - just by using their iPhones.

Our own Derek McGinty was at the party and as you can see from this video, he had a great time. To navigate to the Metromix site, click here!

Washington DC In The Summer Time

Ok, I know this is late...it's almost Halloween, but this past summer, I took my twin girls to the Folklife Festival on the National Mall. As usual, it was very crowded, but you would expect that from a premiere event on the July 4th holiday weekend.

This year's festival was appealing to all ages. The country of Bhutan was represented and the entertainment, food and exhibits were top notch. Bhutan is in the eastern Himalayas and bordered by China and India. The people of Bhutan are very friendly and open. We sat in on one of the stages where Bhutanese dancers performed. At the end of the performance, people in the audience were invited to also go on stage to perform with the dancers. Kids and adults alike had a great time.

NASA was well represented this year with several exhibits. The kids had an especially good time by going on a fact finding mission for NASA. They learned all sorts of earth and space science facts from booth to booth. In the end of their research mission, they were rewarded with special NASA pins, which the kids will treasure for along time to come.

Next up, we visited the Texas exhibits and entertainment booths. We went to the Opry House and really enjoyed listening to the Quebe Sisters. Their website is: http://www.quebesistersband.com.

A beautiful group of young women, their music includes western swing, hot jazz, western and cowboy songs, plus vintage bluegrass music.

All three girls play the fiddle and have beautiful voices. In fact, anyone of the girls could easily sing songs for Disney animated movies, their range is just that good.

I'm sure the Quebe Sisters band will have a bright future in front of them. After their appearance at the Folklife Festival, you can bet we'll be hearing more of their music in the future.

I know my family will, because the girls insisted we buy their CD at the festival!

End Of An Era

I've been out of town the past couple of weeks. There was a family emergency down in Florida...which I may write about at a future date...

At any rate, I've been getting back into the workflow and catching up on the news.
One bit of news that I don't think has been reported on a wide basis is that Roger Ebert has left his series, "At the Movies." Granted, he hasn't been on the show for quite some time, but he still had a connection to it.

Now, it's official. After being associated with the show for over two decades, he's official out. His co-host Richard Roeper is also out leaving Disney-ABC no choice but to relaunch the show.

It really is the end of an era for those who followed the show for so long. The show originally ran on PBS back in the eighties as Siskel and Ebert: At the Movies.

When the show gained popularity, the duo moved over to the commercial world...but back then, I didn't go to a movie unless it was given the "thumbs up" by both Siskel and Ebert.

One of the best parts about the show was when they disagreed on the movies they reviewed. They could really get into it and yet remain respectful of each other. If we could all only argue like Siskel and Ebert!

Another bit of news was a new survey issued by CBS Interactive. The survey found that 46 % of online viewers watch television episodes online as their primary form of TV entertainment.

I'll have to admit, I'm slowly becoming one of those people. It's so much easier to watch programming on line. You don't have to worry about the TiVo cutting out and there are only limited commercial interruptions.

As I've said time and time before, the way we broadcast our news is going to change in a radical way in the coming years...make that months.

Those in the business and viewers alike will all need to be prepared for it.

A Most Powerful Quote

This about says it all...
We are now in the golden age of thieves. And where I come from we put thieves in jail, we don't bail them out."
— Rep. Pete Visclosky, Democrat.

Need Examples?

How about AIG and their half a million dollar retreat AFTER the government bailed them out?

MSN published an article on 10 CEO's who made millions AFTER they tanked their companies.

The links are in a previous post.

A Coda To My Last Post

I just saw Alexis Christophorus' stock market wrap up on the CBS feed. I couldn't believe it. The market was down 189 points. Last I looked it was up about the same amount. I truly can't believe the volatility of the market this past week, much less today.

We started out up 190 points, down 200 points, up...down...up down...and then when things were looking up, it crashed down again.

New Looks, Debates and Frosting

Ok, I'm just about to put the finishing touches on this blog...it's all written, I'm going through spell check, and boom, it disappears...ouch.

So many things to write about and I'm doing it again. First off, we had our new look debut last week. It's actually a new look and new sound. It was one of the smoother relaunches I've been apart of...very few glitches. That's not to say it was a perfect launch, but you should see Derek's blog for that little detail.

We've also been through two debates. The VP debate -- entertaining, but ultimately meaningless. The second Presidential debate -- boring.

Neither candidate took advantage of the forum to really put themselves ahead. We're in the midst of the most serious financial crisis to hit since maybe the Great Depression and we didn't really hear how the candidates would deal with this. We're also fighting a war on several fronts and nothing too specific was said about that.

Add to that, you had some very awkward production moments, moments that even Katie Couric mentioned in her anaylais. I mean the ending of the debate was kind of screwed up with the candidates walking right in front of Tom Brokaw as he was wrapping up. Why couldn't the producers have told the candidates to stay put until Tom was done with his copy?? Whey did we see the candidates turn their back to the cameras so often?? The camera placement could have been much better. Saturday Night Live will have a field day with this debate come the weekend...I can't wait to watch it!

Going back to the financial crisis, I was really disappointed that the candidates didn't address how this bailout would help us. All I've seen is how CEO's have made millions while their companies crashed and how AIG employees enjoyed a spa retreat after the government bailed them out. It's outrageous. See the AIG bill for the spa resort yourself or check out this slideshow of CEO's that have made millions while their companies sank. I'll be honest, I couldn't stomach seeing the whole slide show or reading that invoice for very long.

Maybe the government shouldn't have bailed out Wall Street and let nature take it's course. It looks like that's what Wall Street thinks too. The dow has been tanking this past week and the volatility alone today is proof that we very well may not be on the right course.

Only time will tell as to what will happen, but you can count on 9News Now to bring you all the latest details!

Finally, a little advice on if you eat birthday cake with red frosting....don't. Our assignment desk manager, JR celebrated his birthday last night. We chipped in and bought him a cake...it had red frosting. We've come to find out that stuff can actually stain your tongue...one of our reporters found out the hard way...and we'll leave the rest to your imagination.

July 4th Fun

Ok, I'm a little late. I really meant to post this BEFORE midnight...but work kind of got in the way. Actually, it did get in the way...but hey, priorities and all...gotta remember those.

At any rate, we did something pretty cool tonight. During the fireworks display at the National Mall, we posted the display live on our website.We do stuff like this all the time, but this was a bit different.

Our evening executive producer, Carl Gottlieb thought of the idea originally...he's a GREAT idea guy! Anyway, we took the video from one of our videographers, James Hash, and mixed his video of the fireworks with our traffic cameras. I added a lower third graphic and in essence, this became a full blown production of the festivities exclusively for our website.

It's a big deal...at least it is for me.For readers who have read this blog for awhile, you know that

I've discussed how people are getting their information and entertainment from different
platforms.

By keeping our regular programming on CBS and webcasting the fireworks, hopefully, we gave people an alternative of going to the National Mall and braving the crowds and at the same time, once the display was over, they could tune back in to CBS programming!

Least you think that nobody knew we were webcasting the fireworks display, we had an alert at the top of our homepage and Carl had the foresight to run crawls during CBS programming advertising the fact.

It's just another way to demonstrate our commitment to bring everyone a diverse range of programming on the many different platforms of distribution.

In fact, I'm also including a link to this post so that you can see the video again on the web or download it to your iPod.

Before I go, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the help we had from engineers Tom Buckley and David Rankine. Tom tuned in the live shot for us and Dave was my technical director...a couple of guys that I can always go to for anything here at the station.

Ok, enough writing...click on the picture below and enjoy the show.