By Frank MacekTime for another behind the scenes look at what's happening at the WKYC Digital Broadcast Center.
The "Director's Cut Blog" is officially 4 years old this week. We kicked off our first articles in January 2007 and have been cranking out updates as frequently as time permits - which somedays - is tough. We are still amazed at who reads our blog and we get emails from those coast to coast.
You may have seen a brand new toy we are using on the air called "Mobile 3." It's one more tool in our newsgathering arsenal that now allows us to go to places where live shot trucks can't. With high speed wireless networks, we can literally take a camera attached to a backpack and transmit in real time back to the station and in high definition for use on the air.
This system has been used recently to bring you live traffic updates during snowstorms from inside moving cars. Also we recently were able to get right into the heart of the Fairport gas explosions this week where vehicles (and other stations) weren't allowed. This gave our viewers a unique perspective of news events through the eyes of those directly affected.
The news race at 4:30 a.m. continues to grow between WKYC, WEWS and WJW now all offering earlier morning news. Although the audience is growing, it remains to be seen if huge numbers of viewers will embrace the earlier start time for any of the stations - or if our competitors feel the need to jumpstart to 4 a.m. in the coming months.
Channel 3 welcomes Jason Nguyen to the WKYC news team as a multimedia content producer. Jason worked previously for WINK-TV in Fort Meyers, Florida, where he shot, wrote, edited and produced content on multiple platforms. However, Jason is originally from Cleveland and is thrilled to be back home (even if the weather was better in Fort Meyers).
We have finally finished up our newsroom construction that included new areas for our web content producers at wkyc.com, Metromix.com and MomsLikeMe. The newsroom is as large as ever as we continue to transition to being an "information center" versus a traditional television station. This will become even more important as we move toward our mobile offerings this year. We have also recently completed an upgrade to our mobile site: m.wkyc.com where you can get the latest news, weather and sports. Look for more changes to be announced soon.
Also, the newsroom has a new mirror set of television monitors that make up part of the background set. See if you notice them behind the anchors in the newsroom off to the right hand side where a "fake" monitor wall used to live.
As always, please don't forget to become a friend of Channel 3 News and Channel 3 Weather. We have special on-line content just for our Facebook friends including your chance to be our "Facebook Friend of the Day," daily behind the scenes promos, sneak peeks at NBC shows, a daily programming guide of what's on Channel 3 and much more.
