Week 247: Minutes of fame

I believe I have now used up 3 of my allocated 15 minutes of fame. This week, I appeared on our local NBC affiliate to talk about cystic fibrosis and Great Strides. The development director for the local chapter of the CF foundation had reached out to the station months ago, and the anchor of the 4pm news show agreed to have us on for a short segment to publicize the walk. The original idea was that we were going to have 4 minutes, and both the development director and I would appear. Then, the development director had a scheduling conflict that she couldn't get out of, so it was just going to be me. Then, news happened, so the time slot got cut down to only 2.5 minutes, so it was probably just as well that only one of us appeared on the show.

I got to the station about 15 minutes before 4 and was ushered in to the studio. The only mental image I had of a TV studio was the glimpses I'd caught on the rare occasions that I'd watched a live show in the past. Those mental images included lots of people running around, manually pointing cameras and lights. Maybe that's how some bigger studios still do it, I don't know. What I can tell you for sure is that NBC15 in Madison doesn't do it that way. The total list of people on the set for the 4pm news in Madison was myself, the anchor, and the weather guy. There were many cameras and lights, and they did move, but they were all controlled remotely from a big room down the hall.

The anchor was really nice and chatted with me before the show started and through all the commercial breaks. It was pretty hilarious to hear her transition from regular lady-next-door voice to serious news anchor voice and back again from sentence to sentence. Secret information: the weather guy is wearing a jacket and tie, but also sneakers since you can never see his feet. I sat on the interview couch while the rest of the news went on, and then a member of the crew came in and wheeled the couch into position in front of the cameras right before my segment.

You can view the segment here: http://www.nbc15.com/video?vid=482330961

I had practiced what I thought I was going to say, but the anchor hadn't told me exactly what questions she was planning to ask me, so I was caught off guard by a couple of them. And then, just as I felt that I was sort of hitting my stride, the segment was over. At least three different people checked to make sure I'd turned in my microphone, and I went home. Hopefully the segment connected with a few viewers who wouldn't otherwise have given CF or Great Strides a thought, but it's impossible to tell--there's even less feedback than with blogging, where at least I can see how many people looked at the blog each week!

Speaking of feedback, how about heading over to our Great Strides page and making a donation? The walk is this coming Saturday May 19, and we are about half-way to our team goal. At the moment, Papa Bear is ahead of me on fundraising, which is sort of embarrassing (in a good way). So, head on over by clicking here! I'm trying to follow NPR's new model of having the fund drives be really short, so let's make it sweet. Thanks in advance for your support--there is no cause more important to us!