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.

Are You Famished?

Posted 7/3/2008 12:40 AM EDT on WUSA9.com
As promised, here is the full video clip of our very first kitchen segment. The main feature on the menu: barbeque!I am going to HAVE to figure out a way we can do a cooking segment at 6 or 11pm...any ideas?

Everyday Heroes

My twin girls love the pool. Each and every morning, they are up at the crack of dawn for swim practice...no matter how cold the water is.
As such, this week's edition of Todd McDermott's "Everyday Hero" really hit home for me. Click on the picture for the story.

TMI

Posted 7/2/2008 5:22 PM EDT on WUSA9.com
My day started earlier than normal today. I had a meeting at the Washington Examiner before work. Once I got to work, I took a look at some of the newscasts from earlier in the day. We had the debut of our new kitchen set today. Bill Rayment morning director extraordinaire, had the honor of directing the first kitchen demo. The dish of the day: bar-b-que ribs and chicken. It looked great on tv...the ribs, the chicken the direction and of course the talent!
Andrea, Mike, Howard, Kim and Angie looked great on the set and I could tell they really enjoyed themselves. Click on the picture below for the video of the debut. Later on, I'll post the first cooking demonstration. Ok, now to the title of this post, TMI...{Too much information} I was looking at some possible stories to post on the web. I found two of them, that I just don't think readers would want to see...you tell me. I'm not going to describe them here in the post. I'll let you click on the pictures below and you can read for yourself!
Get back with me and let me know what you think!

New Website

Starting Friday morning at 7am, 9News Now will have a new website. As such, all blogs will be moving to the new website.

To follow all the happenings at WUSA, please navigate to: (and save in your favorites)

http://beta.wusa9.com/life/community/persona.aspx?plckPersonaPage=PersonaBlog&plckUserId=26f869fd64294cd38a2cd42dd320d7f9&U=26f869fd64294cd38a2cd42dd320d7f9&sid=sitelife.wusa9.com

More On That "Invasion"

A couple of posts ago, I provided a link to an interesting story. It seems that television programming has "invaded" one last frontier, our cars.

Now before anyone says tv has already invaded our vehicles, let me just clarify what I'm writing about.

Yes, we've had DVD players in our vehicles for a number of years now. I can say that as a parent, it is a life saver on those trips to Florida.

What I'm referring to is satellite television delivering live television programming in our vehicles. WiMax wireless technology is the company that is starting to bring television programming to our cars and minivans.

I guess it was just a matter of time before we had access to this technology. When you think about how long XM and Sirius radio have been around or that you can view live television programming on planes and of all places at the gas pumps, the question I have is, "how come it took so long to get live tv programs in our cars?"

Naturally, it wouldn't be prudent for a driver to watch tv and drive, but the passengers will reap the benefits. I can see already special travel channels that will deal with real time traffic with an anchor on set.

This will become mainstream soon enough and I can only hope that the tv studios are figuring out some way to measure viewership on this new platform to base their commercial rates.

Emmy Link

A while back I mentioned that Jennifer Ryan and I were nominated for an emmy. The story was called, "Virginia's Heartless Little Secret." It dealt with the state of Virginia's Birth Related Injury Compensation Program.

Here's the link to that story:

http://www.wusa9.com/rss/local_article.aspx?storyid=55500