Sorry to have been off line a bit. Much west coast travel to Seattle last week and Pittsburgh and San Francisco this week. Last week in SEA I also came down with food poisoning which forced me to switch from a dinner meeting with Jeffrey Kafer to an evening at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle (nice place if you happen to be sick in Seattle). Again my sincere apologies to Jeff…I would have much rather spent time with you and will again on my next trip.

Alls well now and the travel load shall lighten for a bit.

I came across a recently posted video of the late, great NBC announcer Howard Reig’s retirement that I very much enjoyed watching. This type of thing is NOT the norm for announcers unless they’ve been around as long as Howard. Clearly he was beloved.

P.S. The NBC News team also held a memorial for Howard inside their main news studio on Friday which Brian Williams noted on his blog here.

I never met Howard Reig, the former announcer for NBC and specifically NBC Nightly News but his great service and the retirement of his voice was well covered on these pages. And as a fellow voice talent, I consider him a friend of sorts.

So it is with a heavy heart that I note the passing of my friend Howard at age 87 at his home in Venice Florida.

I’ve noted before how difficult it was to replace him as an announcer and I am sure that same sentiment is now felt by his family, magnified to infinity. I am so sorry for their loss.

NBC News’ Brett Holey wrote this tribute to Howard in 2007 and it is wonderful. Here is a wonderful tribute site Howard’s son created for his Father.

Requiescant in Pax, sir. I was a fan.

Some fairly discombobulated but enjoyable reading from my blog reader today with thanks to all the authors.

Even I know I don’t always say THE most interesting things everyday…variety is the spice of life.

Computers link directly with the brain (Life Hacker) – The opportunities with this technology are wonderful and a bit frightening. But isn’t everything.

Watch CBS Videos Online

Turning your favorite blogs into a printed tabloid (Twist Image Blog) – Hewlett Packard has created software called Tabbloid that takes any blog feed that you enter and creates a print out overview for you to read…sort of a Cliff Notes version of your RSS feed. Seems like this is just a seed of a bigger idea but you gotta start somewhere. Thanks Mitch Joel.

Scribbling on business cards (BryanPerson.com)- I met Bryan Person at PodCamp Boston a few years ago (he wouldn’t remember me) but he’s a very smart and likeable fellow who has fostered the Social Media Breakfasts around the country, which makes him a great networker. Well his blog today talked about creating business cards with enough white space to scribble notes on. My new cards have some room for scribbles.

Getting the best travel rates? (Life Hacker)- If you’re not sure use one or more of these five sites to help you compare. I’ve used Kayak with some success. But my travel experience also tells me that some days (and even some minutes, it seems) its a crap shoot.

And the new host of Meet The Press is? (New York Times)- Care to place your bets?

Tonight, the anchors and managing editors from ABC News, CBS News and NBC News will take over our televisions in prime time.

And it won’t be about an election.

SU2C. Stand Up to Cancer. Please watch and, if you can, please give. Thanks!

OK, not to criticize the founders of Blog Day 2008 but I only found out about it today by reading another blog. And picking the Sunday of Labor Day weekend would not have been my first choice from a publicity perspective.

OK I guess I did criticize but I’m done now being Mr. Cranky Pants.

So the concept is thus:

BlogDay was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On that day Bloggers will recommend other blogs to their blog visitors.
With the goal in mind, on this day every blogger will post a recommendation of 5 new blogs. This way, all blog readers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new, previously unknown blogs.

So here are 5 blogs (in no special order) that I would recommend you check out from my personal RSS list of over 150 blogs on my Google Reader about voiceover, marketing, advertising, broadcasting and other crap (woe to you who should think all those categories fall under “crap”).

1. Trafcom News I can’t articulate to you how bright and talented I think Donna Pappacosta is personally but trust me when I say she is and when you want some generally interesting insight into print, new media (great podcasting stuff) and face-to-face communications, this blog from her business, Trafalgar Communications, is a worthy read.

2. The Daily Nightly this is the blog of NBC Nightly News anchor and managing editor Brian Williams who I first noticed as a top notch talk show host guest on late night talk shows. Bright, articulate and yet still knowledgeable about world and domestic issues. His writing style is something I appreciate and his content is insightful. Other NBC News folks contribute but Brian’s posts are the ones I most like to read.

3. NewscastStudio Blog Well, to enjoy this blog you have to be an admitted behind the scenes of broadcast news geek like me who loves reading about new news sets and graphics and promotion of news (local and national). You get to see the creation of sets (before and after) of stations and networks around the country. The only salvation in my public revelation of this (my) particular geeky trait is that if there is a blog about this, I can’t be the only geek around.

4. Copyblogger To quote its author Brian Clark: “What’s the missing ingredient that prevents most people from succeeding online? Copywriting skills. Content drives the Internet, and using the right words in the right way will determine not only how well your site converts visitors into sales, but also how well you rank in search engines and how many links you get.” Exactly. Every little thing he writes about will not directly pertain to your internet or marketing strategies but enough of it will to make it a read worth your time and subscription.

5. Brand New – It’s pretty evident to anyone who knows me I’m kind of a logo design slut. The creative, the methodology, the evolution and the final product is something I find very fun. And the fact that there is usually millions of someone else’s dollars riding on its success just adds to my fun. It’s logos before and after with some often funny critiques along the way.

A final note- you’ll notice not one voice over blog on my list. You’ll also notice a plethora of links in column on the right of this post to darn near every voice over blog that I am aware of…a list that’s posted 24/7/365; not just on August 31st.

Enjoy the reads.

Buffalo, NY

June 16, 2008

Tom Brokaw
NBC Nightly News
30 Rockefeller Plaza
Room 1420
New York, NY 10112

Dear Tom:

I hope you will convey to Betsy Fischer and everyone at Meet the Press what a great broadcast you all put together to remember Tim Russert on June 15th. I know you also did a special and there were countless other quality remembrances from NBC News, MSNBC and competing news outlets but the MTP show was the one that had to soar above all others and it did.

In our internet age, I actually saw the special report of the Russert announcement Friday on MSNBC.com and was momentarily surprised to see you breaking the sad news. I kept thinking how uniquely difficult this particular bulletin must have been for you to deliver compared to the many incidents you have had to report over the years.

Surely all the subsequent broadcasts up to and including Sunday’s show were equally as taxing for everyone in the news division. You all lost a great friend, a respected colleague and via both his political passion and personal joie de vivre– a real force of nature at the network. A positive force but a force none the less.

Our city lost a great friend too. I didn’t really know Tim at all except for a couple of brief introductions at some local functions here (we attended the same high school albeit 14 years apart). But I think his wonderful everyman demeanor for me clouded the great impact he was having on the national stage. It was “Buffalo’s Tim Russert” simply doing a bang-up job. And maybe like all of us, I assumed I’d have lots more time to reflect on his influence.

Just know that all the efforts NBC News put forth on behalf of your colleague and friend was likely appreciated deeply by his family, certainly by his hometown and absolutely by this writer.

Sincerely,

{signed}

Peter K. O’Connell
President

Every one of us has wished for the power to erase or take back something we’ve said to someone. We were thoughtless, hurtful, angry, ignorant or insensitive but whatever the reason we said something wrong or improper.

We can offer apologies until we’re blue in the face but usually only time eases the memory for all parties (and sometimes not even then).

But if like me you’ve ever been on a live microphone broadcasting to thousands of people, you know the pitfalls of saying something wrong on the air. The “wrong” gets magnified significantly. Not only can you not take it back, someone may have actually recorded your mistake.

Avoiding such wrong or improper comments on the air is part of how one gets labeled a responsible broadcaster. Making a mistake, even one time, may cause a broadcaster to receive the opposite label.

Sue Simmons’ f-bomb on a live newscast promo for WNBC-TV in New York on Monday night is but one prime example of a classic broadcasting flub. These promos are sometimes live and sometimes taped. Simmons confused the two Monday night and the bomb was dropped live.

I’m not sure what should/can be done about it other than to offer a sincere and contrite apology which Simmons did on the station’s 11 o’clock show. I can only imagine the dread she felt when she realized her mistake, had to read the apology and live with outcries from viewers and know-it-alls. If only….

When you are around microphones and cameras all day, sometimes you forget they are there, that they are on and that they are live. You make a mistake and you live with the consequences when you are a live broadcaster. She could be fired or suspended or the matter could be dropped. It depends how the lawyers feel on that particular day and what Simmons’ reputation has been. She’s pretty well liked and respected from what I’ve heard.

Contrast that with another broadcasting mistake uncovered this week and played over and over. Bill O’Reilly was taping (big difference) a promo for Inside Edition some years ago when he had a diva-like temper tantrum and dropped an angry f-bomb (or two) during his tirade. That incident was more telling about O’Reilly’s true personality and professionalism as a broadcaster – both poor in my opinion. I kept thinking as I watched his tirade how glad everyone must have been to get that guy off their show. Colbert’s spoof last night was awesome:

Here’s a dirty little broadcasting secret, off the air many (not all) radio and television broadcasters swear like sailors on occasion. It can be very salty. Maybe it’s because of the restrictions and pressures of not saying bad words on the air that causes them to be unleashed (usually in a humorously intended way) off air, but it happens.

The bad news is sometimes when broadcast performers unleash, they forget where they are and they don’t realize the on-air light is on.

Now its time for YOU to fess up. What’s been your worst broadcast flub, live or otherwise?

Thanks for reading.

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I knew what was going to happen when I started the player. I had seen it hundreds of times from many angles.

Yet today when I clicked on the player, as I watched the event unfold again, my eyes squinted, my hands trembled and my posture was taut.

Knowing that the plane was going to crash into the second tower on September 11th didn’t ease my shock nor did it still the memories of everything that played out in the hours, days, weeks, months and years ahead.

The Internet Archive has collected video from all the major American and UK networks as the events of September 11th unfolded live on TV.

From a journalistic or media perspective it is an invaluable resource which again proves how the internet can be a wonderful educational tool.

You should watch it for that reason or because you are an American or because you are a human being.

So much time has passed and I am still so angry.