What You Get May Not Be What You Want

So, "gang initiation is calling for shooting 3 women shoppers at Wal-mart." The phone is ringing off the hook around here. Reporters are being questioned at every story they cover. Abilene Police hold a news conference. People are really worried.
But its all a HOAX!! A message that was first sent more than a year ago by e-mail, is being recycled now by text message. And it is spreading coast to coast. It is not just in Abilene, Brownwood, or Sweetwater where there are Wal-marts in the Big Country. It is wherever there is a Wal-mart.
In these days of violent gangs and terrorists, I understand the concern. But this message shows the skeptical eye which we have to use in this day of instant communication. Just because it is on the Internet or on your cell phone, doesn't make it real. Anyone can put anything out there and you have to be able to sift thru what you get to figure out what you may not want.....like a bunch of malarkey which is being used to hold us in terror.
That's why we're here. We can be had, just like anyone else. But generally, a news operation like KTAB has enough contacts to find out the story behind the story. We try to live up to "Coverage You Can Count On" everyday, on every story. (We mentioned Wal-mart threat was a hoax when we started getting calls Wednesday night.)
And something else worries me....postings on Facebook and myspace. But I'll get to that next time.

Time Passes

Not sure if it is just "getting old" or having a long memory. But either way, sometimes a story just happens to cross my desk that flashes me back in time. This day, it was the story of an Army soldier who wears and has special affection for a bracelet with a Texas soldier's name on it. The name is that of Sergeant James Casey Joyce who was killed in Mogadishu, Somalia in October of 1993. His grandmother was long time Abilene resident and loyal KTAB viewer Mary Galbraith. She passed away a few years ago, but was well known and very active in Abilene. Casey was part of the group of 18 Americans killed on October 3rd during a firefight in which a Blackhawk helicopter was shot down by gunmen of a Somalian warlord. Sgt. Joyce was a part of a ground unit in a Humvee. The movie "Blackhawk Down" is based on what happened to Sgt. Joyce and the 17 other soldiers who died that day.
I did not know Casey, but I did know his grandmother. The story brings to mind the many Americans who have served and died for their country. Proud of all of them.
My recollection is of Somalia. I was there with the 463rd Airlift Wing, Dyess Air Force Base a year before the Blackhawk Down incident. A group of journalists flew to Somalia at Christmas time 1992 to showcase the effort by the United States to save lives. Somalia was in a long drought and thousands of people were dying from starvation. The 463rd flew the C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft from Mombasa, Kenya, up the coast of the Indian Ocean to Somalia. Many flights were to the capital, Mogadishu, but others were to remote airstrips to drop off tons of grain and other food items. Pilots flew low over the runway to scare away animals and make sure the right people were there to pick up the supplies. Navigators made sure we were at the right place. The crew in the back sweated over the cargo, its loading and unloading. It was hot. On my desk in the newsroom, I still have a 1.5 litre water bottle (Kilimanjaro Mountain Spring Water)which everyone carried or kept near by. Drank a lot of water.
I have some great video of the Somalians carrying the heavy bags of grain and putting them in the back of trucks, then taking a break, dancing and singing. Video was used for individual news stories and a half hour special which aired right around Christmas, 1992.
Probably most of the people in those tapes are long gone from the Air Force... That was nearly 20 years ago. Operations Provide Relief and Restore Hope, may have been the name of the operation. The journalists, I was the only one from Abilene television to go, flew there and back in a C-141 from the New Jersey Air National Guard. Altho, on the way home, I hopped on an American Airlines DC-10 at Frankfurt/Rhein-Main and flew non-stop to DFW.
That trip to Africa was one of the many great opportunities I've had to work and travel with the fine folks at Dyess.

Welcome

What's it like having your first grandchild visit for the first time? It is great. It happened this weekend when his parents needed to travel on business. The three month old stayed at our place. It has been a long time since we have had a baby in the house. I had forgotten what that's like. It was really neat, what with the smiling, and looking all around, and finding objects to concentrate on, like the ceiling.
It was a joy just to watch. It was nice to have our two sons around to help with their nephew. Feedings every three hours, sleep but not quite on a regular schedule, diapers. My wife and I knew all of that well with our five children. But it is different when it's not your child. Special care required. It's fun to see his joy as he learns about the world around him. The world won't always be so pleasant, but he can enjoy it now.
I miss all our children being gone, although I know that's what happens. Same for the newest member of the family. He's been gone just a little while, but I miss him already.

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.

Bob's First Banter

Hello. And welcome to my blog. We're all starting the New Year around here (KTAB) with the opportunity to have a new style of two-way communication with you. Of course, television is just one-way. You're watching at home, and I'm hoping you're paying attention. Often it seems you're paying attention when we make an error (which hopefully doesn't happen too often.) That's when you call, which all of a sudden makes it two-way communication. We want to hear about that, of course, so we don't make the same mistake twice.
Actually, I'm amazed every time we do a newscast. With reporters and photographers gathering news all day, based on assignments from the assignment editor, then bringing back the video and the facts to write and edit stories, which the producer organizes into a newscast, which the director, audio operator, graphics designer, and studio crew put on the air, live, with the anchors on set, and with only a hiccup or two.... its a complement to each individual who spends her/his day getting a newscast together for you. Weather and sports are working at the same time to build their segments of the broadcast. And it comes your way at 6 and 10pm, plus our other casts at 5:30am, noon, and 5pm. And the developing new world of news delivery right here on the internet.
I'm wishful that your Christmas and New Year holidays were what you hoped they would be.
Until next time here, or on KTAB, Happy New Year.