Director's Cut Blog with Frank Macek

As the 2011 baseball season gets underway, the Cleveland Indians will spend this season honoring the life and career of pitcher Bob Feller, who died December 15, 2010. WKYC will share a special memorial service at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Cleveland on Thursday at 11 a.m. live on wkyc.com Feller joined the Cleveland Indians without having played in the minors. He spent his entire career of 18 years with the Indians, being one of "The Big Four" Indians pitching rotation in the 1950s, along with Bob Lemon, Early Wynn and Mike Garcia. He ended his career with 266 victories and 2,581 strikeouts and led the American League in strikeouts seven times and bases on balls four times. His fastball was nicknamed "the Van Meter Heater." He pitched three no-hit games and shares the major league record with 12 one-hitters. Feller was the first pitcher to win 20 or more games before the age of 21. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962, his first year of...

Brennan Donnellan Brennan Donnellan is joining the Channel 3 News team as Managing Editor of News and Digital Content beginning April 4th as Channel 3 strengthens our committment to be a leader both on-air and on-line. Most recently, Brennan served as Business Development Director of nSixty, a company using video sharing to connect brands, fans and customers in the Cincinnati area. His strengths include reinventing old brands, finding underserved audiences and narrowly targeting their needs. Brennan has an extensive television resume including stints as News Director at WLWT-TV/Cincinnati and WSTM-TV/Syracuse, Assistant News Director at WHDH-TV/Boston, Executive Producer at our Gannett sister station WXIA-TV/Atlanta and News Producer at WVEC-TV, WBNS-TV and WSYX-TV. While at WLWT, Donnellan was responsible for making wlwt.com the areas #1 tv news source in the Cincinnati market. He is originally from Springfield, Ohio, and and studied at Ohio University.

Channel 3 continues to be your local choice for late news and we are excited about that. Click on the video to see how Channel 3 News is doing even more to "Keep You Connected"...

By Frank Macek It's time for another behind the scenes look at what's happening at the WKYC Digital Broadcast Center. Spring is sprung and we've got plenty going on with the launch of our brand new "News @ 7" show with Robin Swoboda and Chris Tye. The show launched on Monday and is getting plenty of feedback about the new format and approach we are taking to covering news at 7 p.m. Some folks don't like change, of course, but we feel the time is right to mix it up a little bit. The new show features more interviews and discussions on subjects that affect our communities. And, we are getting out into the neighborhoods more and featuring more in-depth reporting about our suburbs and features you may never have noticed. Our goal is to cover both the positive and negative aspects that communities face in these economic times and how they share similar issues with their neighbors. Our hope is to help Cleveland and northeast Ohio move forward by getting some s...

CLEVELAND – The Public Relations Society of America, Greater Cleveland Chapter, is awarding WKYC-TV’s Brooke Spectorsky and Micki Byrnes the 2011 John W. Hill Award for outstanding leadership for internal and external communications by chief executives. The honor will be presented on March 16 at PRSA’s Hill Lighthouse Young Awards ceremony. The award is the highest honor an organization’s leader can receive for communication practices. Spectorsky, Senior VP Gannett Broadcasting, and Byrnes, VP Advertising and Promotions, are the first couple to win the honor in the history of the Hill Award for Cleveland PRSA. Brooke and Micki will be recognized for exceptional strategic communications outreach initiatives including: WKYC’s leadership role in emerging content delivery platforms, including broadcast, web, social media and mobile. As a result of their work, WKYC, one of 22 Gannett-owned television stations, is considered a leader in emerging platforms for the corporation’s broadcast...

By Dave Summers WKYC Reporter CLEVELAND -- We've been forecasting deep snow and treacherous conditions well before the Weather Channel came to town, but you know when the Weather Channel commits it's resources to a live location, it's going to be big. The travel crew set up in front of Progressive Field downtown. They thought it would be appropriate, since Opening Day is just three weeks away. Meteorologist Mike Seidel of the Weather Channel has for 20 years forecasted the dreary in lovely little towns all over the country. Now he's in ours. Seidel and his team have had a busy winter season, with 22 days on the road in January. This is his seventh straight day this month. "We're looking for six to ten inches of snow," Seidel said. The crew will work the night shift, sleep a few hours, then get back up for what is expected to be a blustery morning commute. As gigs go, Seidel enjoys Cleveland, even under a foot of snow. "You got a lot to ...

Matt Granite By Frank Macek The latest addition to the Channel 3 News staff is Matt Granite who joined us in February from our Gannett sister station in Buffalo. Matt is our "Ways to Save" guru and produces the weekday 4:30 a.m. morning show on Channel 3. We recently sat down with Matt over a delicious cup of coffee and asked him a few questions that will help you get to know Matt better. Here is what Matt had to say to the Director's Cut Blog in our "Get to Know Team 3" feature. Question: What stations have you worked for during your career so far? Matt: In grad school I worked for WYCC-TV, a PBS Station in Chicago and went on from there to work as a Washington D.C. Capitol Hill Correspondent for WCAX-TV (Burlington, VT). Unfortunately, the weather wasn't cold enough for me so I relocated to Minnesota and worked for KXJB-TV and KVLY-TV (Fargo, ND) as the morning show producer and live reporter. I then moved to Buffalo (WGRZ-TV) where I developed ...

We are often asked why, during our severe weather coverage, do we send reporters out in the storm to bring you a first hand account of the conditions. Well, our colleagues at WXIA in Atlanta have finally put into words and pictures the answer to this question: Because we can. Here's a behind the scenes look from one reporter's perspective.

Gannett Co., Inc., parent company of WKYC-TV, today launched a new corporate brand strategy and national advertising campaign that elevates the company’s corporate identity and supports its unique portfolio of trusted brands, powerful network of broadcast, digital, mobile and publishing properties and unmatched local-to-national reach. The new tagline, “It’s all within reach,” captures the benefits Gannett provides for consumers, business customers and employees. Through its portfolio of trusted brands, Gannett gives businesses the opportunity to engage targeted audiences on any platform – TV, local and national newspapers, online, handheld devices and even in a specific elevator in a specific building on a specific street. “We have significantly changed our business and portfolio over the last several years. Our brand launch represents the natural evolution of that transformation,” said Craig Dubow, Gannett’s chairman and chief executive officer. “Today, Gannett offers consumers a...