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Notes from the Newsroom: 10/20/09

By Frank Macek

It's time again for an edition of "Notes from the Newsroom" as your blogger shares some of his thoughts on our little corner of local broadcast television.

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WKYC is gearing up for our station wide event called a "Heroes Help Northeast Ohio" that will benefit several different groups this holiday season. From 5 am until 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, you can stop by the WKYC Digital Broadcast Center to make your donations to help benefit the Cleveland Foodbank, Salvation Army and Coats for Kids. WKYC will broadcast live throughout the day on WKYC and SportsTime Ohio's "All Bets Are Off with Bruce Drennan" show. We'll even have the Perry High School Marching Band to play for us during the morning hours. And, you'll be able to see our live, all day web stream at http://www.wkyc.com/video/livestream/channel3news.aspx. Please come and make this year's outreach to the community our biggest yet!

WKYC, WVIZ/PBS & 90.3 WCPN ideastream and the Plain Dealer are teaming up to present a special show examining some of the important issues facing voters in this year's General Election on November 3rd. WKYC Senior Political Corrrespondent will appear along with WVIZ's Dick Feagler for "Road to Reform" and an in-depth examination of Issues 5 & 6 that could very well reform Cuyahoga County government. The show will air on WVIZ this Friday, October 23rd at 8:30 p.m. and on WKYC on Sunday, October 25th at 10 a.m. You can read the Plain Dealer for special stories related to this project and on-going coverage of the county reform initiatives. Be sure to watch the show for details on a follow up, web only special that will answer your questions directly the following week.

On the corporate level, welcome back to Gannett CEO Craig Dubow who recently returned to work after surgery. We wish him well. Also, as we mentioned late last month, Gannett posted solid 3rd quarter financial results giving the business some hope we may have turned the economic corner as we head into 2010.

Don't forget, the Winter Olympics from Vancouver, Canada, are only 3 months away. We are busy planning for the return of the "Olympic Zone" show that will feature some great content from our Gannett sister stations covering the event in February.

Our personal thanks to Virgil Dominc for sitting down with your blogger last week to discuss the future of television and to get his insight on what lies ahead. His consultation has been crucial to our success at WKYC this year as we have weathered quite a storm.

Finally, we discovered that former WKYC weekend anchor/reporter Scott Newell is running for Pepper Pike City Council this election day. Our Director's Cut spies were out in full force and happened to find one of his campaign signs planted with his big ole smiling face. We wish Scott well in his endeavours.

You can read more about Scott's campaign run at:

http://www.scottnewellforcouncil.com/

(and no, Scott did not personally approve this "message" in the Director's Cut Blog, but we are sure he'll be reading our column).
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