Monday, August 10, 2009

Notes from the Newsroom: 8/10/09

By Frank Macek

Time for another edition of "Notes from the Newsroom" as your blogger shares some of thoughts on our little corner of local television.

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An update to our earlier story about our General Sale Manager, Tom Humpage: he is headed to Portland, Maine as General Manager of the Sinclair station. One of Tom's long time ambitions has been to become a General Manager, and we know he will do very well. We'll miss Tom very much, but wish him nothing but success in his new role.

The WKYC Production Department is gearing up for another season of Browns football - one we hope will be more exciting than last year, or the year before, or the year before. Once again, this year's preseason games will be directed by my colleague and WKYC Production Manager, Allen Wohl. Al is responsible for coordinating all aspects of our coverage from reserving facilities to getting graphics designed, to doing interviews with players to broadcasting the actual production on Channel 3 during the next four weeks. Al, our game producer Jeff Yakawiak and our technical crew spend thankless hours putting together the final production you'll see on the air. We'll be following Al and the gang this year and let you see a little behind the scenes action.

Speaking of Browns programming...we'll have our usual full roster of Browns shows as the official television home of the Cleveland Browns. This will include:

Browns Pre-Game Huddle: Sunday mornings at 11:30 a.m.
Browns Tonight: Sunday evenings at 11:30 p.m.
The Point After: Monday evenings at 7 p.m.

In addition, Jim Donovan goes "One On One" at 7 p.m. this Saturday night with new Browns head coach Eric Mangini, right before the pregame show at 7:30, and kickoff to the Browns vs. Packers game live from Lambeau Field on Channel 3 at 8 p.m.

Behind the scenes, our engineering team has been very busy finishing up a new, fully HD Master Control Room that will go online soon. This will allow us to automate more of our facilities as we continue building out future projects. Also as you may have heard, this new setup will allow for our parent company, Gannett, to remotely run master control operations in the future from our hub in Jacksonville, Florida. This is primarily for monitoring purposes and for taking control of the station to keep it on the air in the event of a regional or local disaster that impacts our ability to operate out of 13th and Lakeside. After Hurricane Katrina, companies began to seriously look at the "what if" situations with their stations. While an emergency is not likely, no facility can be assured that interruptions will not occur. Remember the big blackout? Fuel supplies for generators only last so long.

Another big station project is the annual Susan G. Koemen "Race for the Cure" just around the corner. Once again, we'll have complete coverage of the events on Friday, September 11th, with a special edition of Channel 3 News at 7 p.m. Then on Saturday morning, September 12th, WKYC Senior Health Correspondent Monica Robins and WKYC evening anchor Romona Robinson will host our live coverage of the race itself from Malls B & C downtown for our 16th annual event. For more information or how to participate: CLICK HERE

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