Archives for April 2006

Great news. We now have a contract on the house. If things go well, we’ll close at the end of May and relocate to the Nashville area. It seems like only a few weeks ago I first made the drive to Nashville, living in hotels before renting a room in a house. Now, four months later, we’ll all be together under the same roof.

A few weeks ago I was pretty stressed out about selling the house. I was tired of making the drive every weekend and not being there for school plays, report cards, dinners and lost teeth. I had several people, including my mom say “well, God may have a reason for the house not selling before now”.

I’ve always been pretty careful about saying or thinking whether God was involved in such details. With wars and disasters happening around the world, did God really have time to influence when my house would sell? Was He holding up someone putting an offer on our house? Does God really get involved in our lives like that? Would He really put a hold on our house until the semester was over so my kids could finish the school year?

I prayed hard that night. Asking for some discernment and understanding and probably comfort more than anything. It was an emotional night for me; unable to sleep for hours wondering when or even if the house would sell and how much longer I was going to be commuting back and forth.

Now I’ve never put much stock in dreams. I usually hate it when someone starts a conversation with “I had the weirdest dream last night”. But the next morning, I woke up with so much comfort about our move. I dreamed that I was out on a story on an artist. It was an old college buddy of mine who I hadn’t thought of or even wondered about in years. He was the creative type in college who might have grown up to be some type of artist. So in the dream, I was interviewing him and looking at some of his artwork. The woodwork didn’t look that unique to me at first, until he said…”You have to look at it until the light catches it just right. You have to look at the DETAIL.”

Well, when I moved my head around so the light caught it in different ways, I could see the name “God”.

God was in the detail of that artwork! Why that dream popped in my head, I don’t know. Was that God’s way of telling me “I’m taking care of the details in your life”. Did I make that dream appear because I was thinking about it as I fell asleep? And if that’s the case, why in the world did I remember that old college buddy who I haven’t heard from in nearly 20 years?

Regardless, I’m convinced that God is in the details of our lives if we invite Him and allow Him to shine light on them. As Garth Brooks sings ‘Maybe God knows what He’s doing after all.”

“Delight thyself also in the Lord: and He shall give the the desires of thy heart”. Psalms 37:4

A friend of mine, Chris Welch of The Huntsville Times wrote a very fitting tribute to Alicia Smith Heaton who passed away suddenly this week. Visitation is this evening. I know my general manager will be there and I’m going to try to finish up in time to make the drive to Lawrenceburg to see Terry.

Alicia was one of the sweetest and friendliest people I met while working in Huntsville. Though we worked at competing stations and I didn’t know her very well, she always was quick with a hello and sometimes a hug when I did see her. Soon after I made the move to Memphis, I got a call after my first story or newscast. It was Alicia who was also in Memphis. She simply called to say hello and welcome me and told me I would do fine there.

Keep Terry in your prayers. These next few days are going to be tough.

Alicia Smith, a former producer/reporter and anchor at WAAY-TV31 in Huntsville, passed away suddenly and very unexpectedly last night.

Just over a year ago, Alicia and Terry Heaton were married. I wouldn’t be in Nashville were it not for Terry. We’ve swapped e-mail and phone calls through the years but only met a couple of months ago when he stopped by the station and welcomed me to Nashville. He is a man of very strong faith and I know he is relying on that faith this morning.

Terry and Alicia worked together at Channel 31. He was the boss, she was the Shoals bureau chief. They re-met at a Channel 31 reunion a few years ago and, as Terry wrote “they haven’t been apart since.” My thoughts and prayers go out to Terry.

link

A good article in today’s Huntsville Times about Dan Satterfield, Chief Meteorologist at my old station WHNT-19.

They got the slug right, or the name of the article: “Love him or hate him, he’s changed local weather forecasting”. Written by Mike Marshall who appears to have shadowed Dan during a recent outbreak of bad weather, Mike has captured the passion of (I hope I don’t upset anyone with this) the best meteorologist I have seen work.

Dan came to Huntsville when I was anchoring there in the mid-90s. I had seen his work before at WBRC in Birmingham. Back then Dan was on the weekends and the station hired him to replace Tim Simpson, who had left the valley to return closer to home at WREG in Memphis.

Dan didn’t take long to grab the attention of every viewer in North Alabama. He is the first, and maybe only meteorologist that I knew of to call and cancel his own tornado warnings. The National Weather Service either didn’t call ’em fast enough or call ’em off fast enough for Dan. He caught some flak early on, but Paul Harvey once applauded him on his radio show.

I talked to Dan quite a lot back in my days in Huntsville. I found his interest and energy and intelligence when it came to weather fascinating. One day I remember sitting back in his weather office talking about what the news department might expect with some approaching bad weather. Sharing a cup of coffee, Dan caught the radar out of the corner of his eye and flew into action. In a matter of seconds, Dan had identified a ‘hook echo’, called master control and gone on the air with a “tornado warning”. The NWS followed about 2 minutes later.

But just as he is quick to warn, he’s also first to let people know when they can breathe again. He’ll give the ‘all-clear’ a few minutes before the NWS when a storm has passed by.

Some criticize Dan saying he loves the spotlight and loves to be ‘on tv’. I can understand how they might think that, given his excitement when bad weather hits. But I’ve never thought Dan is the type to be hungry for attention. He’s hungry to predict the weather, and he’s darned good at it. I’ve worked with some terrific weather people, but I can honestly say (and with apologies to Tim, Ted K, Austin, James Paul, Todd and the new folks I’m getting to know in Nashville) Dan Satterfield is tops in my book.

But he stinks at fantasy baseball.

I’d love to hear an explanation as to why, sometime in the past 5 years, tv stations have dropped multiple part series for sweeps months.

I remember growing up watching Birmingham television, every station in the market would have multi-part “series” pieces during May, November, and February. Kind of like “Roots” or “Rich Man/Poor Man”, these news departments put together interesting, sometimes provocative 3 or 5 part series that would air during the newscasts. The stories would either air during the 6 or 10 o’clock news, and if it aired Monday at 10, the following pieces would run at 10 the rest of the week.

Some of these series were investigative. Some…were just darn interesting. I remember one in particular from WVTM-13, the NBC affiliate. I was in high school when a reporter put together a series on fast food. They wanted to see which fast food places were truly the fastest. Using cameras put in vans, they sent in a reporter or intern to place an order. At precisely the same time, they had another reporter or intern place an identical order in the drive-thru. They then put a clock on the orders and showed it on screen.

One night they chose several McDonalds, then they’d tease “tomorrow, we’ll try Burger King” and then Wednesday it was “Wendys” and then “Krystals” and “Captain D’s”. Then at the end of the week, they gave us the entire report card.

Now I remember everybody talking about this series. Especially us high school kids. And you know what, if someone missed a night, or didn’t know it was on, everybody told them how they just had to watch it the next night. By the middle of the week, even the newspapers had picked up on the story. News? Nope. But it was interesting, and since everybody…I mean everybody eats at fast food restaurants when they’re in a hurry, it was universal.

Fast forward to 2006. TV station newsrooms are busy researching and/or shooting so-called “series pieces” for May. But they’re not series at all. One story. One newscast. Special reports, maybe 2-3 minutes in length. They’ve moved away from true “series” and produce only these reports.

I’ve had news directors try to explain why nobody does “series” anymore. “Consultants” they claim “say people don’t tune in from one night to the next for series pieces. And if we do try multiple reports, we have to air them the same night in several different newscasts”.

That just doesn’t add up to me. I’m working now on a special report for next month which may be the biggest undertaking of a series that I’ve ever done. It could be the most interesting series I’ve ever worked on. Shoot, it could be a great documentary that I don’t believe anyone has done before. If it’s done right, I’m certain viewers would talk about it at work, tell others about it, and tune in night after night. Trouble is, I’m afraid it might not get that chance. I’m afraid intstead of really looking at the subject matter and talking with everyone who has different opinions and ideas, we’ll wind up putting it together in one 3 minute piece. Miss it…and it’s over.

I’m lobbying for a return to the old days of multiple-night series pieces. And I’m lobbying hard.

So somebody tell me…why doesn’t multiple-series ideas work? Or why do consultants say they don’t work? If it’s interesting enough, do you think people will talk about it and tune in night after night. Couldn’t it lead people to make an appointment to watch? Or have our attention spans shrunk to the point we can’t look past 3 minutes?

For those not in the tv news business, the name Don Fitzpatrick may not mean much. But for news folks, they’ve been reading Don’s work since the early 90s.

Don Fitzpatrick, founder of TVSpy and Shoptalk, passed away today at the age of 56.

Back in the early 90s, when fancy computin’ machines hadn’t hit many homes, I found Shoptalk, subscribed and then started printing out the daily newsletter and posting it in the newsroom at WHNT-TV19 in Huntsville.

Shoptalk, covered the business of covering the news. Whether it was job openings, job promotions or topical jokes of the day, Shoptalk was the start of something much bigger. It was the first daily online newsletter (that I’m aware of).

I once sent an e-mail to Don thanking him for Shoptalk. I got a personal thank-you note for the thank-you note from Don who also wished me well in my career. Though I never met Don Fitzpatrick, I can honestly say I’ve read his newsletter every day it’s been published since the early 90s.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m a big baseball fan. For the past couple of weeks (since Opening Day) I’ve set my XM satellite radio on the baseball channels and stopped listening to anything else.

My fantasy team is currently in first place. And I’m constantly scanning the stats and waiver wires for possible changes. One thing about fantasy baseball that I love, is the creativity people have for naming their teams. I named my team Tuck’s Friars in the mid-90s and have kept the name since. I did toy with the idea of naming my team “Pray for Rain” at one time.

But today, the folks over at USA Today posted a contest and named winners for the best Fantasy Team names. The winners, are hilarioius so I thought I’d share them here.

There’s Chico’s Bail Bonds (from Bad News Bears). Scared Hitless, The Runs, Joe Mamas and Broke Bat Mountain.
There’s the Fowl Balls, Pabst Smears, Me Love You Long Ball, Tejada they Come, Tejada they Fall. And the best, according to USA Today…The Haas of Payne ( a play on the last names of the two owners).

Personally, I think “Pray for Rain” could have been on the list but I didn’t know about the contest until the winners were announced.

It’s probably too old to be news, but I heard or read comments which said “If it’s true Logan Young accidentally hit his head and then he wandered around the house trying to make it stop bleeding, why didn’t Logan dial 911?” Short answer: he would have gone to jail.

It’s a good question. You’d think just about anyone would call for help if they were bleeding to death. Even a drunk would try to pick up a phone if they had the where-with-all to walk around the house and find towels to try to stop the bleeding.

Well, from what I’ve learned, Logan may have had a good reason to not call for help. As part of his conditional release after being convicted of selling a player to Alabama, Logan was not to drink. Friends say he recently had a liver transplant and had quit drinking. I don’t believe that to be true. Every time I visited Logan at his home, he had a drink in his hand. I don’t believe he would have been able to stop.

And if he had called 911 and a medical team had responded, they would have noticed he had been drinking. That would have gone on their report. And if went on their report, it would have been picked up by investigators or police and Logan likely would have gone to jail. An attorney confirmed this, saying that Logan could not drink as a condition of his release on bail, pending the appeal. And, the attorney said if he had been found to be drinking, prosecutors would have pushed for him to be incarcerated. Judges and prosecutors don’t take people violating the conditions of their bail or bond lightly.

And what has happened to this case? Did they perform an autopsy? Have they held a funeral for Logan? Will there be anything more to this investigation or is the case closed?