Flights resume at Will Rogers


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On Thursday, we posted two videos about travel delays at the airport due to fog: Fog closes Will Rogers to incoming flights and Fog in OKC (catchy headline, eh?) . This morning, NewsOK.tv’s Tanner Herriott was at Will Rogers World Airport as soldiers returned home for the holidays.

And holiday travel has resumed.

Tanner’s video will post later today. Here’s the accompanying story from Brian Sargent on NewsOK:

About 420 solders from Fort Sill are scheduled to leave from Will Rogers World Airport today for two weeks of holiday leave. Soldiers also are departing from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

About 2,700 soldiers from Fort Sill’s 434th Field Artillery Brigade are participating in the annual event, commonly known as ‘exodus’ or winter block leave, fort spokeswoman Emily Kelley said.

“I told my family all I wanted for Christmas was to come home,” said National Guard Pvt. 2nd Class Joshua Bliss.

Bliss, 23, hasn’t seen his family in Columbia, S.C., in about three months. He said he is looking forward to spending time with his family, especially his wife and 2-year-old daughter.

We taped four videos this morning in the OPUBCO Studios. Ed Kelley’s Oklahoma Matters commentary was about Pete Maravich. He was there to watch Pistol Pete’s performance at the State Fair Arena in 1968.

We also taped two entertainment videos Weekend Look with George Lang and Heather Warlick (who uses some festive font colors in her latest post) and TV Talk with Penny Soldan and Heather Warlick.

And we just wrapped up the daily energy update. It usually airs live at 2 pm. Yesterday, Oklahoma House Speaker Chris Benge spoke about touring an Arkansas nuclear plant, so we included a clip from Benge.


How we go “live” from Washington DC

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Ed Kelley will do a live talkback with Mark Green from Washington. Well, we tape it live. Then it becomes On Demand on NewsOK and the rest of the Web.

Here’s how it works. Or at least here’s how it happens:


- Mark uses his iChat software on a MacBook Pro from The Oklahoman’s corner office at the National Press Building in Washington DC. He chats with his favorite OPUBCO buddies, in this case, us in the studio.

- Ed stands in front of camera while we bring up the iChat with Mark on the plasma screen behind him.

- We tape their standup Q&A using Final Cut Pro, which we will use to do further editing in post production before posting. In fact, this video may not post until the weekend.

Think it’s low-tech? Actually what we do is Internet video, so it’s right down main street. We’re not a network or local TV affiliate broadcaster. We’re Internet video and we use the technologies within that medium.

But don’t think the networks aren’t using similar tactics. CNN used Skype recently for a breaking news video. That’s cool.

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American Idol: David Cook to the hospital

Some stuff you might want to know today…

Maybe not, but here it is.

According to Access Hollywood, “American Idol” contestant David Cook was taken to the hospital following Tuesday night’s show. Apparently it was nothing serious, and the producers were being cautious when the 25-year-old contestant out of Tulsa wasn’t feeling well. Cook is now “back at the hotel and doing fine” according to the report.

With her 18th chart-topper “Touch My Body,” Mariah Carey has passed Elvis Presley for the most No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, and is now second only to the Beatles. Carey’s single is the new No. 1 single on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart: The song also is No. 1 on the trade magazine’s digital download chart thanks to a precedent-setting 286,000 downloads in its debut week.

And the third thing you should know is Thursday night is opening night for the Oklahoma RedHawks. Ed Kelley, editor of The Oklahoman, spoke with Scott Pruitt, managing partner with the RedHawks, today with 3 things we should know about the opening. We also learned in video shot by Damon Fontenot that the Bricktown Ballpark is Ed Kelley’s favorite place in OKC. And I thought it was behind the cameras in the OPUBCO Studios?


Last day on the Hill

Tuesday was a busy day for the OPUBCO crew on Capitol Hill.

Jones, Horton and I finished trouble-shooting our gear, tweaking the settings and going through test drives of the new Washington DC video set. Jones and I wrote training documents for our boys Chris Casteel and Mark Green.

Would you believe you can’t find a printer in DC? Two Fedex/Kinkos did not have printers for our thumbdrives to print the documents. It’s always the little things that are the most frustrating setbacks.

We joined Ed Kelley for a tour of the Washington Post Interactive. I met up with old friend Matt Havercamp at WPI as we picked their brains about newspaper video. More on this visit in a future blog.

Back at the National Press Building, both Mark and Chris taped debriefs for this weekend with Ed. Both seemed comfortable running through the processes of setting up the set and going on camera.


News from DC

Today’s big news is Fidel Castro announcing he will step down as Cuba’s leader. Ed Kelley and Mark Green ran through a quick debrief on the new set.

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Oklahoma weather in Washington

I took a tour of the Belo operation in Washington DC today. I was joined by Ed Kelley, David Jones, Scott Horton, Chris Casteel and Mark Greene from OPUBCO. Our mission was to look at what Belo is doing with their bureau from the Capitol.

We didn’t expect the surprise.

And we didn’t expect the gorgeous weather: 70s and perfect.

Upon arriving in a mostly empty building (it’s Presiden’ts Day and DC takes this day seriously), we were pulled aside and told the Belo staff at the DC bureau were just informed on Friday of staff cuts. The Belo bureau in DC is a combined print, online and broadcast team. I got the impression they had more synergies in the past than the present. And the staff cuts would only further that gap.

Ed and I spoke more today about how large operations like Belo and the Atlanta Journal Constitution are going more towards silo’d efforts, where departments focus on their core compentencies instead of collaboration.

Should be interesting to see how it shakes out.


It was also interesting to see the weather take a left turn, for the clouds to roll in and the skies to open. The temp dropped about 20 degrees and it started pouring. Welcome back winter.

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