A very satifying day

Before I go further let me say that I'm in no way glad that two people were shot at Jackson County Courthouse in Scottsboro late this afternoon...the reason why this day was satisfying to me is because it is my job to cover stories, and I think we kicked tail on our coverage at 10. Our job is to inform viewers but didn't overkill. To put it in perspective we had two reportes and photographers (meaning 2 crews) out there, 19 had three crews, and 48 had four...Three is probably the absolute limit on what you need to tell the story without overkilling and driving it into the ground (and we actually ran a 3rd story that we showed about a year ago about the secruity at that courthouse).

Earlier, Mikelyn and I were planning on doing a story about the new self-defence law that takes effect starting tomorrow. Jason and Justin headed out to Scottsboro we we heard, but it became apparent that we needed another crew out to fully cover that story. So Justin got the meat and potatos, so to speak, the who what when where why, while Mikelyn, dropping this other story, focused on the hero of the whole thing, dove into one of the who's and how's

Before we started editing we grabbed some dinner, as we were pulling out, our satellite truck was pulling up, LiveStar 31, wow! that thing is awesome (and twice the size of 19's and at least a 1/3 bigger than 48's!!)!!

The OTHER thing that was neat about tonight was getting to hang out more with some coworkers while inbewteen shooting and writing/editing...the COOLEST part of tonight, if it's true: we are apparently the CNN affiliate in this market and there was talk about them wanting our stories on this, like airing both of our packages!! How cool is that...it would be the second time that I'd have video on CNN (the first being from Tuscaloosa, exclusive video of Moore being transported to the Tusc. Co. Jail after killing 2 police officers and a 911 dispatch op. in Fayette).

Even more news today actually. The four of us missed a meeting partly about our eletion coverage and partly about the station sell. It's nothing new for news stations to switch hands, it's part of the business, like baseball teams. Apparently we've had 5 bids put in as of today (currently owned by Peidmont who is selling). For most of us that means a good thing, the possibility of money coming in, new equipment, a larger staff, possibly a pay or either benefit increase if this were the outcome.
They say we should know something more definate in a couple months, and that the new owners probably wouldn't take over until December. Bunch of stuff to go through with the FCC and the Federal Government to make sure that certain rules are being followed. So we'll see what happens next.

Side note - I took the live truck test this afternoon and passed, so I'm now certified to use our live trucks!