The Slowdown, Festival Friday and Awards

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged and maybe that’s because of the season. For some reason, summer is always the slow news time of year. I believe it’s a combination of school being out, the fall elections are too far off to demand significant coverage yet, and most businesses are geared down for the summer because their employees are on vacation. The first half of this year has been very busy from a news perspective, so I’m not going to complain about the slowdown.

Festival Friday is undoubtedly my favorite part of work in the summer. Theresa Pollick and I get to travel from town to town to preview the weekend’s coming festivals. If your town has one coming up, please let us know. We’d love to come to your town.

Right now, I’m putting together a DVD composite of our coverage of the 2005 grain fire down by the river. Our Coverage won a Regional Emmy in 2006 and now it has been nominated for a National Emmy. And speaking of awards, I was lucky enough to win the Ohio Associated Press first place award for Spot News Coverage with Alexis Means. 13 ABC won a bunch of AP Awards last Sunday, more than any other station in the state of Ohio. The awards are very satisfying personally, because I’ve spent the better part of January the last two years putting together the compilation pieces for the awards we enter. 13 ABC also won two Edward R. Murrow awards not to long ago, one being for Bill Hormann’s series “Truth Test,” which I edited. (Bill also won a Walter Cronkite Award for the series.)

Go Tigers!

-Billau

The Indy 500 2007 (and 2006?)

Well, another Indianapolis 500 in the books and it was good one. Good except for the rain delay and the early end to the race, but it was still good. I think if the rain would have held off, the Penske boys and Danica would have all challenged for the lead on the final lap. However, weather is always one of the factors and Franchitti did lead the most important lap of the day. It was a good race.

The Indianapolis 500 isn't so much a race as it is an event. Similar to NASCAR (the Daytona 500), IRL has their "Superbowl" near the beginning of the season. The race itself is the climax of a month-long festival in Indy. Throughout the month of May, the track is hosting Carb Day, Bump Day, practices, parades, one party after another. Race day itself is filled with traditions and events before the race even begins. The Spectacle of Bands, Jim Nabors and "Back Home Again in Indiana" (though he was ill and unable to attend this year), and the fly-over are all Indy traditions. There's live music. This year Daughtry performed (you know, the bald guy who should have won American Idol last year).

Another Indy tradition is the red carpet walk. All the big shots come out to be seen on this walk. Usually it takes place outside the Pagoda. This year with all the rain, most of the goings on happened inside. This brings me to why I'm writing this blog. Sunday night after all was done and Rob and I were leaving the track, we got to talking about last year's red carpet walk and our Gene Simmons interview. Gene is very involved in IRL and when Rob questioned him about a favorite, Gene took the mic right out of Rob's hand. I thought the disk that had the interview was long gone, but Rob told me he watched it the other day and the disk was on his desk.

Yes this is more than a year old, but it's one of my favorite Indy moments. The clip never saw air, so here it is on the web. (Phil Powell this one's for you.)
-Billau

Welcome Home!

Yesterday 16 servicemen from the 180th Fighter Wing returned home from Iraq. Unfortunately due to time constraints we were only able to include a limited number of the reunions in our package. Here is my raw video of the men returning. To the servicemen, thank you for what you do and welcome home.

And then you can have lunch...(Billau's Version)

Ah yes, and then you can have lunch. Chris blogged about the difficulty of finding time for lunch. Some days you’re a man down because someone is sick. Other days people are OOTL to work on special projects. Some days you’re just simply understaffed. Today was one of those rare days where “and then you can have lunch” happened. In fact, lunch was the highlight of my day.

You see, that trip to Cedar Point I felt I was so lucky to get out of the day of the propane fire, well it caught up to me. After doing some interviews with Cedar Point’s media relations guy, we headed to one of my new favorite local food joints.

The New Sandusky Fish Company.

They easily have the best perch sandwich I’ve ever had. Today was my second trip to this place, and it won’t be my last. The place is no frills. They just do what they do and do it well. I can’t tell you exactly how to get there, but just go to old downtown Sandusky and head down to the water. You’ll find it. Try your sandwich with a side of fried okra. I can’t vouch for anything else they have, but if it’s anything like the perch, you’ve got nothing to worry about. No question, the highlight of my day.


The Calm Before the Storm.

Also a big thanks to Becca the Media Relations intern. She got our crew water when we needed it (see a pattern here) and answered the questions we had. Good luck back in Syracuse, Becca!