Author: Doug

There is a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes in the news and weather video business and it’s not just about what I’m doing but what is happening in general and to the whole economy.

While at the Chaser Convention last week in Denver, which I drove my own truck out to save money, a lot of people were asking me about getting into the video business and I just had one word for them, RUN!  Yes RUN, stay as far away from the news video business as you can.  No it is not just from a stand point of I don’t want anymore competition in the industry because the viewer video has already taken care of that aspect of making just about anyone a chaser, but it is the media business in general. 

I’m a member to several news groups and one of the sites today, news blues, reported this as their top story.

Now before you read this, consider this, why would anyone want to get into this business if it is failing all over the place for the most part? 

One week after declaring bankruptcy but assuring employees that it would “continue to operate (the) business in the ordinary course as we reorganize,” Young Broadcasting informed its stations Friday that, beginning today, it would no longer pay vendor accounts. News departments were advised to gas up vehicles over the weekend, because the use of Mobil gas cards would cease. Payments to Sony and other suppliers would be suspended.

“Maybe we can car pool to the local breaking news,” suggested one perplexed news photog.

In the letter to staff on Friday the 13th, Vincent Young, CEO of Young Broadcasting, assured employees that “We have 20 million dollars of cash on hand and plan to continue to operate our business in the ordinary course as we reorganize. Our television stations will continue broadcasting without interruption, our employees will be paid as usual, and our vendors and suppliers will be paid for all post-petition goods and services.”

In fact, Young had cash on hand because it had defaulted, in recent weeks, on $10,638,000 in interest payments to senior lenders. At least one television executive scoffed that: “20 million in the bank won’t last long when most of your stations are operating at a deficit.”

Apparently, the cash lasted a week.

Station Group:
KRON 4 MyTV – San Francisco, CA – (# 6)
WKRN 2 ABC – Nashville, TN – (# 29)
WTEN 10 ABC – Albany, NY – (# 57)
WCDC 19 ABC – Albany, NY – (# 57)
WRIC 8 ABC – Richmond, VA – (# 58)
WATE 6 ABC – Knoxville, TN – (# 59)
WBAY 2 ABC – Green Bay, WI – (# 70)
KWQC 6 NBC – Davenport, IA – (# 97)
KELO 3/6/11/15 CBS – Sioux Falls, SD – (# 113)
WLNS 6 CBS – Lansing, MI – (# 114)
KLFY 10 CBS – Lafayette, LA – (# 123)

And if that was not bad enough, the headlines today go on with the following.

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Philadelphia Media Holdings LLC, owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Sunday in an effort to restructure its debt load.

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The Journal Register Company, publisher of 20 daily and 159 community newspapers, serving parts of Philadelphia, Michigan, Connecticut, Cleveland, and New York, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Saturday.

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Rupert Murdoch’s love of newspapers and his decision to buy The Wall Street Journal may have placed parent company News Corp. at risk, reports today’s New York Times….which is struggling for its own life.

Now with the news industry in the slums for the lack of a better description, now another group is trying to get into the business of live chaser video for local TV stations.  From what I heard, they tried to get all their stuff up and running over the last month and then merge with another chaser video company doing the same thing but they ended up telling them to get screwed. 

For those in the chaser community the whole thing is pretty entertaining to watch people with no media experience what so ever, other then providing chaser viewer video for on screen name recognition and then try to get into the media market with a new company as the industry is dying. 

People wonder why I never got into dealing with the local TV markets and I’m now planning on going back to film school in the fall if I can afford it and focus more on other projects outside of news while working with the core BNVN crew.  NEWS is dying and for the most part, journalism is dead.  Get out while you can because here is another quote from NB today. 

Appearing on CNN’s Reliable Sources to promote his new book, the increasingly irritating Bernard Goldberg explained that the news media thought it was on a “noble mission” to help elect Barack Obama because the Illinois senator was young, cool, and black.

“I’m saying they crossed the line from media bias to media activism,” Goldberg told Howard Kurtz. “And they did it because they felt the cause was worth it. What Chris Matthews talked about, a ‘thrill running up his leg,’ that’s not commentary. That’s a man-crush.”

When is it the “media’s mission” to do anything other than report THE NEWS.  When you start to craft and create the news, it is not the news, it is now entertainment.

Okay, It’s been over a week since I updated my blog but that’s because I was pretty busy. 
Where do I start?  Okay went to Denver for the Storm Chase Convention.  It was okay but I’m so sick of hearing about the same forecasting stuff for the last 5 years.  There needs to be more time for mixing and meeting people.  That was what the whole thing was about when it started, hanging out and meeting friends and making new friends.

Lets see, still no official air date on the show or at least anything I can talk about.  Sorry folks but that’s just the facts of life when you sign a contract that says STFU.  It was funny hearing people talk about what they think is going to happen on the show when I was at the convention and I really had to top from busting out laughing. After years and years of hard work and risking my life, I finally got my profile on Weather.com   

https://web.archive.org/web/20090324052201/http://www.weather.com/tv/personalities/Doug-Kiesling.html

I feel like Steve Martin in the movie The Jerk when he got the new phone book and his name was in it. 

But what else is going on?  I got a ton of stuff happening behind the scenes and I don’t think blogging about video editing stuff and the boring side of the video production would be all that interesting.  I could blog about trans-coding HD footage and making demo tapes for clients but I really think people would get bored with that. 

Ok, just an update with stuff and why I have been off the grid so to speak.  I have been reviewing the huge amount of archive footage that we have and reviewing a ton of footage lately for the new web site. To give you an idea about how much video were talking about, it is in the three terabyte range.  It’s a lot of stuff…

And video, with the “LIVE CHASE VIDEO” fad hitting the chaser scene over the last year, I have looked into it but right now, unless your doing something for a TV News station and being paid to stream video, it’s still a major pain in the ass from what I have experienced.

As a chaser, yes you can stream but the video for the most part is not all that good.  When I started streaming years ago with a webcam, I did it with a system that would put up a new low rez JPG image every 2 seconds.  The image quality was good but it was not ASAP fast video.  Now with the latest video coming on line, they all kind of suck. There, I said it, not holding out on any of the streams, some of who are friends of mine, yes all the setups kind of suck. 

Looking at the Flash Video setup which is being used by two of the three streamer groups, the feeds look good if they are in a parking lot.  But the second they start rolling done the road, forget it, it looks like crap.  Motion blur on the flash is just plain bad from what I have seen.  Then there is the Windows media setup from the other company who has a decent setup but they also have a major server issue as in it was down for a chunk of the day.  They are for sure going to catch hell about that from the chaser community but who knows, maybe they just maxed out their viewers or something.  But it was down and that’s going to give them a P.R. issue.  Anyways, the feeds when they did work did look better then the blurry flash video from the other two sources.  But all three of the sources had issues they could not help, that was crap in, crap out, crap content.  

Yes, the feeds looked like crap, as in there was nothing worth watching in the first place.  Some had dark skies but blurred video while others were under blue sky busts.  I finally ended up just going over to watch the live feeds on KOCO which was pretty damn good for the most part.  KFOR had some decent chopper cam footage as well of the tornado that hit north of OKC in the Edmond area. 

Now the coverage from KFOR and KOCO has been pretty entertaining for the most part.  I can really feel the HYPE of the situation from some of the news reports when I was just watching the weather channel.  It feels like they are going into “RED ALERT STORM MODE” and looking for death and destruction and there just getting some destruction as they would from any storm but no MAJOR destruction or people being killed. In other words, an average spring chase day in Oklahoma. 

In other news, the stimulus bill passed today and America is pretty much on the path to Socialism.  I heard parts of Obama’s town hall meeting today where people where asking for their free stuff.  There is no such thing as a free lunch and people are expecting free stuff.  Sorry, but I bust may ass and risk my life to do what I do for a living and the pay is not that great.  Why should I pay for someone else who makes mistakes and failed?  Let people fail and then maybe people will LEARN from their mistakes and we will all be better and smarter in the long run.

Tonight Neva and I were working on a project for my stock video collection.  While I was shooting footage, Neva was taking photographs of the event.

We posted just a few of the photographs on line and I have a bunch of video to still review and catalog from tonights event.  Here is the full bio of the event. 

Harry Connick Jr. is starring in the upcoming movie “New In Town”, which opens nationwide January 30, 2009. Harry Connick Jr. also starred in “P.S. I Love You, Bug”, “The Iron Giant”, “Independence Day”, and the television show “Will and Grace”. Harry, also a talent musician and singer, composed music for the movie “When Harry Met Sally” and has released his own albums including “Other Hours” and “Harry for the Holidays.”

Also appearing from the new movie will be Siobhan Fallon who has been on Saturday Night Live and Seinfeld.

The New In Town Celebration Day will include a Tapioca tasting, a winter fashion show, an autograph signing and a red carpet appearance for a prescreening of “New In Town.”

Okay, this morning I wanted to get into one of the coldest spots I could find and I did it just down the road from the St. Cloud Minnesota Airport while heading into Minneapolis to shoot some early morning cold weather footage.   When I got out to experience the -36F temps, it was a shock to the system and hurt to breathe the air since it was so cold if you were not expecting it.

This is NOT the wind chill but the actual air temp.  Factor in the wind chill and it was well past -41F or the break even point when -41F is about the same as -41C. 

Yeah, someone find me someone talking about Global Warming and how green house gas is bad…  I had to let my truck warm up for about a half an hour this morning just to be able to survive.  The news radio was reporting 2 dead this week from the cold in St. Paul.  Funny, I can’t remember anyone dead in Minnesota from Record Heat. 

Yes this cold is getting annoying and it may climb up into the normal temp range by Monday before the next big deep freeze hits but hey at least some man eating polar bear can walk around on the ice in the dark up north this time of year.

To borrow a term from Pink Floyd’s Pulse DVD, Say Goodbye To Life As We Know It…  Tornado Road is coming soon…  The production company that I have been working with going on eight months now has put the blurb up on their website. 

TORNADO ROAD
“They call it Tornado Alley; the stretch of land that runs from Texas, north through Oklahoma, into Nebraska and Kansas. Here, a unique combination of geography and climate conspire to create some of the most spectacular, powerful, and deadly weather in the world. But while a massive twister sends most people running for the basement, it causes a very different reaction in others. Meet the storm chasers of Tornado Road. They are the professional and amateur meteorologists for whom a category five tornado is a dream come true, who put themselves in harms way to capture that perfect image of the world’s deadliest weather, up close and personal. “

Upon seeing this up on the site this afternoon, everything for the website updates has been kicked into overdrive now as I don’t have long to get things in order before I have to “Say Goodbye To Life As We Know It…” working behind the camera. 
Today there was a pretty good winter storm that hit the metro area but at the last minute I saw it shift to the south metro and decided to blow it off.  There was a Blizzard Watch up for just to the west of us but that also shifted about 100 miles south so along with some other issues, I blew off the chase.

The other issues were that I woke up this morning to find that our cat Gustav messed up my laptop when he walked on the keyboard.  Nothing bad but he some how managed to hit the right keys to delete my finger print id system.  And people wonder why I named the cat after a hurricane.

The other big project is the websites.  I have a massive amount of data to go through with all the new video files and new format.  I have been sorting through all the hard drives and getting things organized.  I know it sounds like just a little job but since I have been chasing so much of the winter storms, I just have not had the time to do stuff in the office and get it on auto pilot. 

Well I should get back to work since it is after 1:00 A.M. and I still have a couple hours of work before bed.  So still around, just been busy doing stuff and no time to update the blog.  

Ok, for the record, the global warming thing is a farking scam in my opinion.  Yes we should be clean and not pollute the water and air but we are already doing all that so shut the hell up with the global warming stuff because it is hella cold outside.  Besides, nobody is talking about the massive Pacific Garbage Patch. Clean up the oceans!!!

Yesterday I went out to take some photos of the frost on the trees along the river and was given a rude awakening because my coffee turned to ice in a couple of minutes because it was -24F outside.

The frost was pretty cool but I need to use a macro lens to do the shots that I want to get.

So with the hella cold temps, we get pipes bursting and what could be worse then a water main bursting?

Yes, today Neva called me as soon as she went to work and told me that the alley was flooding?  I thought she was crazy because it’s freaking cold outside but no, the alley was flooding with a busted eight inch water main that was just starting to break the surface.  This was not a hard thing to film since it happened right down the alley from our house.

So I stopped what I was working on and started to take some photos and video.  Ok, so we got a busted water main, that would be kind of cool to film but it was right down the alley from our back door and now the flooding is going down the alley towards our home. This did not shoot way up into the air like I was expecting but it just bubbled up and flooded out the whole alley.

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Since the city did not come by and dump a bunch of salt and sand down and plow out the alley to remove the mess, and Neva came home and got stuck in the alley and made my head ache 100 times worse, I said screw it and bought 430 pounds of salt from Sams Club.

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Here is 430 pounds of salt that was dumped in the alley after I used the snow blower to get rid of a lot of the melted slush that was in the alley.

That’s 430 POUNDS of salt. Seven 50 Pound Bags and Two 40 Pound bags of the water softener salt that will work this time…

Now yesterday, I also posted on my Myspace blog about this cold weather but on my personal blog, I could not get the link to work so I’m posting the text link to this video.  This is the Minnesota For Global Warming song.  

Where the hell is My Global Warming? 

If we had some Global Warming, I would not have to dump a quarter ton of salt in the alley.

Where the hell is my Global Warming?

It’s five in the morning and I’m up early because I have to bring Gustav to the vet this morning. When I looked at the weather outside here in St. Cloud, all I could say is WTF.

Current Conditions: St. Cloud Regional Airport
Time: 4:53 AM CST (10:53 UTC)
Temperature: -20 F
Dewpoint: -26 F
Relative Humidity: 72.9%
Wind from: Southeast (120 deg)
Wind Speed: 3.5 mph (03 kts)
Windchill: -30.7 F
Pressure: 30.04 in Hg
Visibility: 10 Statute Miles
Clouds: Sky Clear

WHERE THE HELL IS MY GLOBAL WARMING? I’m Freezing my ass off.
Oh wait, since it was not warming they changed it to Climate Change… If all the former “WARMING” people would put their energy into cleaning up the worlds oceans and bodies of water from people and corporations that dump their trash in the water, it would be a much larger impact. Just think of those “Cruise Ships” where do you think they dump their trash?

Happy New Year.

Just getting caught up with the massive amount of work here at home before the next winter storm hits this weekend.  New Years day was a busy one for me as I finally got to go back and document the annual “On It & In It” polar plunge event at Lake Minnetonka.  This is where they cut a big hole in the ice that is over a foot thick and people pay to jump into the four foot deep freezing cold water for charity. 

Here is the link to the video that we shot

Last night Neva told me that I have not updated my blog in a while.  Wow, been a few weeks but hey, I’ve been pretty busy here with the holidays and the weather.

Here is the short version of what I have been up to.  Winter storm after winter storm, new business stuff, Christmas, working on stock footage stuff, more winter storms and more editing.

Here are some screen caps of what I have been shooting.  The first three are from this morning and the rest are from a week ago. 

The first image is a video still of some footage that I have been trying to get for a while.

This next shot is one of the most insane pieces of footage you can try and shoot.  This is looking back while riding along side a snow plow.  One wrong move and your dead.

And of course a car way down in a ditch.