Look, Up In The Sky.....

For those who don't remember, the title for tonight's theme is the opening line from the "Superman" tv series of the 1950's. I would write the entire opening announcer voice over if I had time and there wasn't some copyright infringement probably lurking.
What brings that to mind is several phone calls and emails to KTAB. "What were those lights in the sky?" I have checked on unusual lights in the sky for years. Usually, its the sun reflecting off a weather balloon launched from Marfa and climbing to 100,000 feet plus. Or a B-1 or C-130 doing patterns at Dyess or tracking the VOR. Or a jetliner cruising at FL350. But calling the police, sheriff, DPS and feds as I have just done, usually gets you the "Huh? and stifled laughter" treatment. Same this 1/29 when lights displaying an unusual, intermittent pattern were reported generally to the southeast of Abilene.
The last time the lights were called in from roughly this area, a blimp with unusual anti-collision lights was making a nighttime landing at Abilene Regional Airport. The tower reported no blimp or any other unusual aircraft tonight. No calls from panicked citizens to local law enforcement. But calls and emails to us.
A callback from one of those folks had the answer. The military was doing some training near Brownwood. There is special military air space near Brownwood where lots of military training from helicopters to jets is done. This night, they were dropping flares from aircraft. As the caller told me, he had seen flares at night in Iraq, and they are brilliant. And that's what folks saw, as we reported on KTAB News at 10. Flares from military aircraft as part of an exercise. No UFO..... Sorry.....
"....it's a bird, it's a plane.. No it's Superman... Superman, strange visitor from another planet with powers and..."

The Winter of Our Content

So how did you make it thru the Deep Freeze, as we called the ice event at KTAB? A few weeks ago, we had ice form on bridges and overpasses early one Monday morning. It was one of those things that there wasn't a whole lot of talk about on the newscasts the day before. And the ice just sort of appeared between 5:30 and 6 that morning.
This time Dan, Sam and Kira talked about the possibility of first, rain, then somesort of freezing precipitation, for nearly a week prior to the event. So, not only were we prepared as a news agency to cover it, emergency agencies and road crews were on top of it, and so were our viewers. So the late Monday thru Wednesday morning ice/sleet event wasn't a surprise. The KTAB team turned in hours of coverage on the freezing rain, freezing fog (that's a new one), sleet coming, arriving and leaving, plus whatever else happened because of the cold weather. Almost every school district in the Big Country called us with late start times, busses running or not, school closures and events postponed. That's a lot of phone calls with a lot of information to put on the air and the web site. There were other changes too, for Dyess, businesses, churchs, social clubs.
We aired extended morning broadcasts for those whose work and school plans changed. We did live cutins thruout the day to keep our viewers updated on the latest developments and devoted evening news programs to that topic. Plus additional information at bigcountryhomepage.com. KTAB takes the approach that there is no such thing as too much information in a critical time like that. And people took our advice... staying off the roads, or at least slowing down and driving more safely.
Maybe that was our last winter event, altho it will be cold again. Now, KTAB will start planning on how to deal with spring storm season.

Flashing Lights and News

We’re an unusual group, news people. Just like some lawyers, we love to chase ambulances (and police cars and fire trucks… anything with flashing lights). Today for instance. When I showed up at the station, there was a list of fairly routine stories planned for our newscasts. Then grassfires started breaking out. And a bank was robbed. And a local religious group sent their attorney to talk with us. This all happened between 3:30 and our newscasts. It is stimulating to have your newscast planned, and then have it all go up in smoke and flashing lights.
We really don’t like bad things to happen. And I think if you look at KTAB newscasts for a week or a month, you’ll find mostly good positive stories about children and pets and schools and sports and weather. A majority of our stories are “good news”, even though people complain that we never do “good news.” But then there are days with fires and accidents and ice and high school football.
Again, we don’t want people hurt or property damaged. But our job is to report news… which is something that is out of the ordinary and that people are talking about. I could go on about KTAB news philosophy, but I just heard a fire truck go by.