Tag: sports director

My Fighting Side

As a kid, some of my fondest moments were spent screaming politics with my Uncle Murray

I enjoy a good argument. If done right, and with the right person, it can be fun. As a kid, some of my fondest moments were spent screaming politics with my Uncle Murray.

I had a good argument last night at work with our sports director, Noah Finz. He’s just started a web feature where he debates a sports oriented topic with one of our staffers. The result is posted on the station’s website.

Since he and I had been ‘discussing’ the UCONN football team’s decision to play a home game out-of-state, instead of in their new, taxpayer financed, stadium, we argued about that.

Believe me, he is a friend, I am not ticked off at him. I am more than a little perturbed at the UCONN Athletic Department’s decision.

Another Day With The Dumpster

When I came home from work Thursday night, I noticed Helaine had (as usual) taken the trash to the curb for pickup.

When Steffie was in school we put out three cans a week. Now, it’s usually two. This week – one!

I’m sure going to miss the dumpster when it leaves us – probably Monday morning.

Astoundingly, the dumpster has become a status symbol. Helaine tells me she’s spread the word to some friends, all of whom expressed envy and one of whom has already rented one of her own!

Only 22 feet long? Poseur!

Today, as I was carrying out another load from the attic, I noticed our next door neighbor Margie standing at the dumpster’s door. She was on her cellphone, but looking at the dumpster.

It’s OK. Earlier we told her to take advantage. We’ll never fill it alone.

I lifted the long rod connected to the safety latch and pushed the door open. She looked in and gave me an approving smile.

The unfinished portion of our basement is the most astounding part of this epic saga. It’s as if an extra 50% was added to its capacity. Walls, which had been growing in toward the center, are now back where they belong.

Every year, when our oil company sends someone to clean and adjust our furnace, I apologize for the condition of the basement. No more. We now have a model basement. He can bring a camera next time!

Next, I took another swipe at the attic. There’s stuff you just can’t throw out. It’s stuff I’ll never use and haven’t touched for years. It is, in essence, sacred to me.

When does one get the intestinal fortitude to heave it all? How long after it’s gone before it’s needed?

Even with dumper’s remorse, I made a bunch of trips to the dumpster. As layers peeled away, I unearthed some more interesting finds.

There’s a photo of Helaine and me, taken at a charity pajama party in Buffalo, circa 1983. I was sitting with a cigarette in my fingers.

Ugh! I quit smoking late in 1984 and never looked back. Best move I ever made.

Another photo, an oversize publicity photo from work here in Connecticut, shows me with our news anchors, John Lindsay and Janet Peckinpaugh and our sports director, Bob Picozzi. They’re all long gone and I’m totally out-of-touch with them, though I heard Bob calling a college basketball game last night.

Is there more to be found? Tomorrow I attack my office.

Who would have though a dumpster would fill up so much blog space?

Color Versus Monochrome

Taking a lot of photos has made me a better photographer. They’ve also made me a better Photoshopper. Without Photoshop (or sometimes “The Gimp” – a free equivalent) I’d be lost.

My pictures are sharpened and brightened and intensified. They don’t necessarily look exactly like what I photographed. They tend to look like what I want to remember.

I sense, if you had traveled the west with Ansel Adams, you wouldn’t have seen exactly what his amazing photos show. So much of what is portrayed on his prints is the product of the time and effort he spent in the darkroom.

From time-to-time I make offers to friends to help them with their photos. Sometimes I can make a real difference. Sometimes I just want to fool around with someone else’s work to see if there’s something in their shooting technique I can use later.

I’ve been bugging Noah Finz, our sports director at work, to bring some photos of his daughter Paulina, so I could make a poster. In the past I’ve done oversize composites of orchids and our Mexican vacation. I’d never concentrated on a single person.

Last week Noah brought about a dozen shots, and I went to work. I had asked for close-ups, which he had.

Paulina is incredibly photogenic and expressive. The poster came together quickly and easily. I liked how it turned out.

Then, I experimented.

I went to each photo individually, converting it from color to monochrome with fairly high contrast. There is a ‘desaturate’ button that will do all this, but I wanted more control and the ability to achieve a more stylized outcome.

I then added an orange filter. It actually doesn’t look orange in the finished product, and I’m not sure why. I tried to adjust it to warm the print and give it a classic look.

I did some A/B comparisons. I like the tinted monochrome version better. Maybe I’m biased, since it was my decision to go on from the color version. I don’t know.

To me, in the color version, Paulina’s clothes are too bright. They detract from her. Let Paulina be the center of attention.

In this way, photos differ from real life. I’m sure she was as adorable as could be wearing bright colors. Like I said, I want the finished piece to look like what I want to remember.

Blogger’s note: Click on either photo to see a larger version. The actual files being printed for Noah are significantly larger still – too large to fit on your computer’s monitor.

A Quick Glance At The Future

I went out to dinner last night with Noah Finz. He’s our sports director at the station, a very nice and smart guy, but a technophobe.

We got to talking about where technology is going, especially as it concerns communications. I was surprised at how interested he was… or how well he feigned interest.

With that in mind, I thought I’d write a little about where I see things going. Please remember, the past has taught us it’s really tough to accurately predict the future. This is even tougher than weather prediction because this part of the future will not replicate past events. And, remember these predictions are coming from someone who loves technology. I’m trying to hold back my bias.

To me, the key to the future is not in speedier processors nor more memory and storage, though certainly those things will enter the picture. The big deal is bandwidth. It is the 500 pound gorilla in the room.

Bandwidth limitations is why you ‘only’ receive 150 TV channels. Bandwidth bottlenecks are why your computer often waits while it is plucking data off websites or the Real player takes so much time caching those first few seconds of video before it starts to play.

With enough bandwidth, television can become a one to one medium – unlimited video on demand. Any show or any video source can be run when you want it. Desperate Housewives Tuesday at 8:41 AM. Why Not?

Already, even if you’re not in their home market, you can still watch your favorite baseball team play, because nearly all the games are available over the Internet. CPTV, here in Connecticut, sells a package of UCONN women’s basketball games for out-of-towners with high speed Internet access.

The radically changes the paradigm of commercial television. Without a mass audience watching the same commercial at the same time, television begins to lose its unique sales appeal. There will have to be another way to pay for this.

It could be commercials, maybe a subscription, or maybe both. We’re not limited by what we’ve seen in the past. Sending video as a digital stream rather than analog allows for the integration of other info.

This ability to receive the programming you want, when you want it, will turn television into a narrowcast medium rather than its current broadcast model. There is a demand for shows on knitting or cars or computers or… well you get the idea. Those sharply targeted programs&#185 will steal audience from today’s broadcasts.

In the pre-cable days there were a lot of shows that, today, look like they were ‘going through the motions’ to fill the time. I’m afraid we’ll look back at what’s on TV now in the same way, as soon as the floodgates open in this new communications world.

The days of high production cost TV production are limited. Gresham’s economic laws will be seen affecting TV. We’re already seeing some of that as networks run more ‘cheaper to produce’ reality shows and re-run more of primetime TV.

Is there a long term viable business model for shot-on-film hour long dramas? I’m not sure.

Today, local television stations serve two general purposes. They produce and distribute local programming, like news, and they act as a distribution channel for nationally networked and syndicated shows. With video on demand, I can’t see why these program producers will need local stations.

Local stations will be forced to be local stations. Those who don’t will be marginalized out of profitability. This has happened in radio over the last 40 years.

That doesn’t mean the economic model of local TV is gone. It just means stations will have to better understand how to produce more content for local consumption. I also think they’ll have to shift their focus from producing programming to fill their air time to being producers of programming for anyone who will distribute it.

Today’s TV stations will have to turn out video streams the way Chinese companies, like Twinhead, turn out laptops. The majority of Twinhead’s products are produced for others with other people’s brands on them. You might be using one now, with no way to tell. Twinhead’s expertise is production… as is today’s TV stations.

A newspaper in Wilmington, DE is already producing video webcasts of local news. The New York Times is expanding their multimedia content online. I think, in the mature model, newspapers will provide the news and a company with video production expertise will package it for them.

All this is happening and we haven’t even hit our stride as far as bandwidth is concerned. My cable modem at home now brings in data nearly three times as fast as it did a year or two ago. It’s getting to the point where it will soon become faster than my home network can handle!

The price of this bandwidth will do nothing but fall for the foreseeable future. There are many factors at work here.

First, there is the onrush of technology which promises to deliver bandwidth wirelessly. That should add another level of competition for the cable and legacy phone companies.

Next, there is a vast network of ‘dark’ fiber – glass lines that have loads of capacity but have never been used. My guess is, the intercity capacity of unlit fiber is a multiple of what’s currently in use.

The people who really need to be worried are the incumbent wireline phone companies. More bandwidth is their enemy. Already they are facing competition from broadband VOIP companies like Vonage, with cable companies jumping in.

When there are wireless access ‘clouds’ of connectivity over most areas, portable VOIP phones will trump cellular and wired phone networks with cheap and probably unmetered, flat rate, phone service.

It is a very exciting, very different world of telecommunications that’s right around the corner.

&#185 – I am having trouble using the word program here because it describes something that might not be. When content becomes very narrow and the viewer becomes very focused on its content, the formality of a ‘program’ may vanish altogether.

Seven Thousand Three Hundred Five Days

Seven thousand three hundred five days ago, Connecticut still had toll booths on I-95 and the Merritt Parkway. There was no state income tax. Our governor, William O’Neill, was a tavern owner.

Back then, WTNH was a middle aged television station, owned by Capitol Cities Communications – before it bought ABC. It was second place in what was, for all intents and purposes, a 2 station market. A station with an identity crisis, not knowing whether to be Connecticut’s station or just concentrate on New Haven. It was making money hand-over-fist, which tended to minimize their concern.

On May 21, 1984, One thousand forty three weeks and four days ago, I walked into Channel 8 as an employee. If you would have told me twenty years ago that I’d still be there today, I’d have called you a fool. In my 11 years in radio, I had worked all over the country. No job had ever run more than 3 or 4 years – and most were much shorter.

Al Terzi (WFSB), Gerri Harris (who knows) and Diane Smith (WTIC radio, CPTV), were our main anchors. Bob Picozzi (ESPN radio, UConn Women’s basketball play-byplay) was our sports director. Our news director, the guy who hired me, was Mike Sechrist (General Manager WKRN – Nashville). His assistant, Wendie Feinberg (Executive Producer Nightly Business Report – PBS). In the control room, Tom O’Brien (General Manager KXAS – Dallas) and Jeff Winn (Fox Sports “Best Damned Sports…”).

Of all the on-air and management personnel at the station that day, only I am left. I have survived 4 different owners, 4 general managers, 10 news directors and countless dozens of assistants, producers, reporters and anchors.

Still, I often ask myself, where have I gone wrong?

That’s not to say my professional life hasn’t been good. In fact, it’s been great. This is a very rewarding job and the people who watch have been generous in their support, while my bosses have been… well, they’ve been generous too. I just wonder, what if?

Have I missed the bright lights of the big city? Would I have been able to compete at that level?

Today, if I were looking for work elsewhere, would I be taken seriously? A few years longevity is a good thing, but twenty years in New Haven makes it seem like I’ve been unable to escape.

Since I have been at WTNH, only four of the on-air people hired were older than I was at the time – and three of those came within my first year. This is a business of the young… and I say that even though this station isn’t anywhere near as youth obsessed as some others.

I remember early in my radio career, seeing people who’d been in one place too long, who were now just going through the motions. I promised myself that would never be me. I’ve kept my word.

It is still important to me, after all this time, to know whether I’ve entertained or not. There are no gimmes. A bad Friday night 11:00 weathercast can ruin my weekend… ask my wife.

Even tonight, I brought home a snippet of tape because a few seconds of well timed on-air chatter with the floor director seemed memorable. Every show counts. I am never unhappy to go to work. I have never taken, or needed, a ‘mental health’ day.

I still have my fantasy jobs – things I’d like to do and sometimes even dream about. I’d like to do a game show. I’d like to do a sit down fun chat show. I’d like to fill-in again on Good Morning America. Who knows?

I worry about losing a little off the fastball – about someone up-and-coming who might want my job. I worry about a new owner or manager who might not care that I’ve put twenty years in. After all, in the 21st century, company loyalty is something employees have toward companies… not the other way around.

About 15 years ago, my agent said there would come a time when I’d want to shave ten years off my age. I think I could actually pass with that lie. Until recently, I’d regularly get viewer mail telling me to stop coloring my hair… even though it’s never been colored. But, I won’t lie about my age because I’m proud to have the experience and knowledge that only comes with being 53.

I am not sorry that I’ve made it to 20 years. I am not disappointed in what I’ve accomplished. I have a wonderful life. I only wonder where the other paths led.