Football, Favre & Friends

Well by rights I should be sleeping right now. Heck, I should have been sleeping at 1:30pm when I woke up but I couldn’t resist my restlessness about tonight’s Browns preseason game against the NY Jets.

At least when I left work this morning, the Jets were planning a 6pm news conference with Brett Favre here in Cleveland. Yep, the days-old soap opera with one of the most beloved NFL players ends here in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame city. I’m sure there will be all sorts of satellite trucks set-up around Cleveland Browns Stadium tonight.

The news about the trade between the Packers and the Jets broke at 12:31 this morning. The Associated Press confirmed the deal had been done. It made picking the story of what our morning reporter, Joy Benedict, would “front” live easy. Cleveland is Browns Town and add in all of the drama surrounding the Favre saga and you got a story suitable for a morning show. I didn’t even say it was brand new for people, even those who watched any 11pm newscast. I talked to people from the Milwaukee ABC television station, WISN, overnight. They wanted Joy to do a live hit for them. It’s always great when you have a fresh story to lead the newscast.

I have to give continued props to Kevin. Without him, all of tonight’s festivities would not be possible.

Camp Nolan

If you check out the picture, you’ll see a helicopter next to the house. Who has a chopper land at their party? That’s the fun for at least two years in a row at my friend, Nolan’s party.

First, it was great getting to see some of my former co-workers. I live in the same city, work in the same industry but get to see them so infrequently. I guess it takes a party with something like cars, choppers, food and libations to bring people together. I got to see Newshutr and meet Mrs. Newshutr along with enjoying some dinner talk with them at the picnic table. I work for the competition of many people at this party but they all seem like family.

I got to meet the daughter of one of my friends. I got a lot of e-mail photos and picturemail but never got to meet Olivia in person. She’s cute and loves the water even though she got her dad’s shorts soaked. Soaked shorts suck!

Two of the radio stations were represented. The Buzzard and that Majic station showed up for the party.

It’s always great to see my friend’s mom and her husband. She’s a social butterfly at these events. Everyone who hasn’t met her, wants to. I saw her pulled in a hundred different directions about five or six times throughout the night. I don’t know how you couldn’t love her.

I love it when people you don’t know ask you your age and then come way low. I can never tell if people are being polite or telling the truth. You get the truth from me so if I guess old, well, I don’t have a degree in guessing people’s ages so don’t worry too much about it. I digress. The boyfriend of one of my friends and I got to talking him about getting older. He was older than I guessed. He was divorced. I didn’t get married, we stopped short. Anyhow, he told me how he dropped 30 pounds right after the break-up. I laughed. He didn’t understand until I told him I did the same thing. He said he’s working out a lot. I laughed. He understood. It’s fun sharing life changing information with people you don’t know.

I spent time with one of my former directors, Mark, and his wife, Julie. They are a riot. Their kids are grown-up enough to take care of themselves while Mom & Dad are away so they had a good time. Mark has always been supportive of my work. He’s one of the people always asking me when I’ll come back.

I have to admit getting a little old my bodyclock was getting the best of me at the end of the night and left around 10:3opm to go home. I arrived back downtown around 11:15 and was sawing logs around midnight. I argued with myself this morning when the clock read 7:15am. I woke up again around 10:30am. My body needed the sleep.

Is that another week and busy weekend staring at me?

Emmy Nominated

I can now add “Emmy Nominated” before my name.

NewsChannel 5’s 11pm producer Tara Sutton and my former News Director, Steve Hyvonen, are also named in the category of Outstanding Newscast – Evening – Markets 1-20. The newscast was the night of the SuccessTech shootings. Everyone worked hard on the newscast.

You can see the complete list of nominations by going to the National Television Academy Cleveland Regional Chapter

WEWS/NewsChannel 5 got 19 nods for this year’s awards.

Congratulations to everyone!

Looking Who’s Coming To NewsChannel 5

The blogosphere is powerful. Just ask P. Diddy, Puff Daddy or whatever he wants to be called. He alerted the world to his moniker change on his blog.

Politicial bloggers can help sway the country, expose a candidate’s story they didn’t want you to know. Entertainment bloggers do the same thing with new shows, movies, careers and celebrities themselves.

Enter the “mommy blogger”, one of the most famous of them is Heather Armstrong from dooce.com. “Mommy bloggers” are all over the country and all over the world. I’m glad to say I know Mom2Amara personally. Another of them with a good following is here in northern Ohio. OHMommy is coming to talk with NewsChannel 5’s Good Morning Cleveland on Friday. Her blog is located http://www.classychaos.com/. You’ll find her post about her appearance here.

I hope you’ll watch the newscast on Friday and hear her story about being a mom who blogs about raising her kids and her huge following.

Kids Say The Darnest Things

(courtesy: The Plain Dealer)
They do and this is proof. Obviously, Jacob Sanders’ parents do a lot of watching NewsChannel 5 because he’s not a big fan. At least, he’s telling the truth.