television

IU / memories / site / television / Thursday / video — Comments Off on Let us talk about sports shows
30
Sep 21

Let us talk about sports shows

Let us talk about sports shows. Here are two of them. First, this is your standard issue updates-from-the-desk, reports-from-the-field highlight show, Hoosier Sports Nite.

And this is The Toss Up, your standard issue sports talk show. Four people sitting and talking at great depth, and with some degree of fandom, about the upcoming Major League Baseball playoffs.

Now, The Toss Up dates to 2016, when I got here. It has, more or less, always been shot as a show in-sequence. They do little pitches to another person for a sidebar, or a package, and they will sometimes shoot those out of order, but, generally it just makes sense to shoot it in that straightforward way. It has always felt natural and done in realtime, over the course of the four regular hosts it has had in those six years.

The first show above, Hoosier Sports Nite, is 11 years (or so) old. It has always, at least in my experience, had elements produced out of sequence. This means that if the anchor “pitches” to a reporter in another part of the studio, it’s an editing trick. The reporter part was done earlier, or later, and they just put it together in post-production. There’s nothing wrong with this. It happens in the industry all the time on programs that aren’t live. (Sometimes, for example, the person doing the pitching is live and the person catching the pitch is on tape.) There are different ways and reasons for doing that. They’re all legitimate. From our perspective, it usually has a lot to do with practical reasons like time, or our experience and so on. (We’re all still learning in this shop, of course.)

So imagine my pride when, last night, they produced Toss Up as they normally do — timing segments and getting in and out in a logical way and leaving me only two or three constructive criticism points to make — and then they did Hoosier Sports Nite straight through, a show produced truly live-to-tape. They did two bits over to correct small errors, also not unusual, but it’s all there as one live show.

I stopped by their post-production meeting to tell them so. To thank them and congratulate them for their work. It’s no small thing, doing a live show, and they’ve been building to this for a while.

When they rolled out the first episode of The Toss Up, the talk show, this semester, I noticed they’d changed the last of the original bits of the show. I remember all the components well, as it was the first show* I helped IUSTV bring to life. Every year something would change on this particular show. The logo improved. They added lower thirds or sharper segments. The last thing to go was the music. And that got updated this year. The guy that really brought this show to life, Jacques, he’d be pleased with the program today. He specifically wanted to start this show and give it to the people that came after him and let them run with it. And they have! The music was really his thing. He’d probably like that his music stuck around the longest from the original show. But now, aside from the name of the show and one line at the very end, they’ve organically grown the premise of his project, just as he’d hoped.

When I was watching them shoot Sports Nite last night, and talking about it and congratulating them after that, I was thinking of the through line of that show. Jacques was the first sports director I knew here. He graduated and then came Ben. Ben produced and improved those shows, graduated, and is now a producer at ESPN. When he moved to Bristol there came Auston. He produced and improved those shows, graduated, and went into the local sports writing business. The next year Michael was the sports director. He ran the shows, had his senior year in the studio cut short by Covid closing campus, but they grew a ton nevertheless, and he’s now doing sports at his hometown TV station in Iowa. So Drew and Jackson moved into the sports director roles after Michael. Drew graduated and is doing news in Fort Wayne now. Another Michael came along to help Jackson out and he just graduated and is on the market. Jackson will soon be graduating. Each of those guys have always told me what they liked about what the previous sports director did, and what they wanted to do differently. And as I stood there, beaming with a little pride, I could see all of that distinctly running through the night’s work. Those sports directors, and all the women and men working on those shows, were a part of making that particular episode a special little effort.

The thing is, all of this hard work is foundational. And, sometimes, you necessarily have to wait to see the development. It just keep building, though. From here it’ll grow through a room full of talented young folks learning from today’s upperclassmen, because those sports directors I mentioned have always aspired to raise the bar. It’s all cumulative. If all those now-graduated people had a mysterious little chill, or felt the hairs stand up on the necks, last night, I suspect they’ll get a more profound sensation when we have our next big moment. The thing is, it won’t be long now.

*Since I’ve been their adviser — and helper and cheerleader and all the other things — we have created seven new shows from the very air. Five of them are still running.

IU / television / Twitter / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on Late night, so just a few quick things
29
Sep 21

Late night, so just a few quick things

Something for you to listen to, if you haven’t already heard this one.

These school board meetings, around here, around the country, the angst, the rage, parents targeting students. It’s a bizarro world driven by the insecurities of a few preying on school board members who didn’t sign on for this. And everyone knows it.

Read this statement from a school district in northern Indiana:

A person’s beliefs notwithstanding, harassing and trying to intimidate others because of what you read on Facebook or have seen on OAN is some kind of performance. People are going to have to live with this one day. Righteous indignity and a lack of self-awareness don’t stay merged forever.

Except, of course, when they do.

Tonight!

It was a part of a big show. They shot it like proper television, and it worked well. They only had to loop two or three pick-ups.

I stopped by their post-production meeting — which I do about twice a year at most, even though they always look like a lot of fun — to compliment them specifically. The sports folks are doing some really nice work to be this early in the year.

And the news side, a bit younger but no less enthusiastic, is coming along, too. These were the shows they produced when we were in the studio last night.

And on this show, Anna was riding solo. It was a bit of last-minute planning. Unfortunate that it had to happen, but this is a good place to have to learn to deal with curveballs.

And if you like baseball talk, come back later tomorrow, and Friday, for a lot more sports, here in this same space. Until then, listen to that show above. And if you see yourself in a television, be just as cool as Ta, up there.

IU / photo / television / Tuesday — Comments Off on Puck and Oberon do not appear in this post, but other fossils do
28
Sep 21

Puck and Oberon do not appear in this post, but other fossils do

Here are a few of the crinoids I found down on the lake shore on Friday, or, as I’ve lately come to think of it, My Struggles With White Balance.

I shot all of these on my phone, because that’s convenient, isn’t it? But, next time, a real camera. There’s just far too much variation, and at the same time, a poor representation of the fossils colors.

Here are a few small samples of the 340-million-or-so year old columnal segments which became a part of sedimentary rock.

At first I wrote that in the present tense. Like it was happening before our eyes. How many millions of years ago did all those lumps freeze up as one?

You don’t often find samples, at this site anyway, which demonstrate the animal’s branches.

And a bunch of the typically small artifacts you’ll find on a public and oft-used site.

But, hey, not everyone comes here for the fossils.

No one does.

Some of you want to see things that are living.

Or at least pretending!

So here’s a rugged bit of damage on a young tree just trying to make do in the shadows of its elders.

(It’s doing well, in fact.)

Somewhere after noticing fall, and all of its pleasures, it’s time to notice the falling away of the ubiquities of summer. It’s the moment after Lileks’ annual observation of the apogee of summer and before Camus’ proclamation of the second spring, and you can see it easiest in the flowers we still have now.

All year, these two walnuts have been together. I wonder how far apart they’ll be when they eventually fall from the branches. I’m not saying it’s Midnight Summer’s Dream in those woods, but if you think of Hermia at the end of the second act, I would understand.

And, if it’s too late in the month for a bad Shakespeare reference, here’s something more prosaic. Anna Black is doing standups for What’s Up Weekly and I somehow managed to get all the signs in one shot. And she isn’t even blinking here!

That was this evening, one of two shows the news division of IUSTV produced this evening. I’ll share them in this space when they make it online, which should be sometime tomorrow.

family / IU / memories / music / photo / television / Thursday / video — Comments Off on What was your first concert?
23
Sep 21

What was your first concert?

It was a productive and quiet Thursday, which allowed me to catch up on things and prepare for tomorrow, which will be productive and hectic.

I had a great memory this morning.

This is Ray Charles’ birthday. He was born in Georgia. I saw him when I was a little boy at Opryland, in Tennessee. My mother and my grandmother were at the park. And, to be honest, it was probably just an excuse to get out of the sun and heat for an hour or so. But, as I recall, they opened the doors for general admission seating and I, being smaller than everyone waiting to get inside, weaved through the crowd and got us seats close to the stage and right in the center. Maybe six or eight rows back.

Pretty great first concert.

Charles came on from stage right, sat at his piano, and The Raelettes came in behind him. At some point my mother leaning over and saying “I remember, he was old when I was young!”

He would have been about 54 or 55 at the time, my mother was in her mid-20s. That sentence is now hilarious.

He played to the crowd for a nice long matinee set. He leaned way back on his stool. He sang all of the songs you’d expect. He wailed on Hit the Road Jack. I remember that clearly. This isn’t from that show, but a concert about two years before.

I’m sure my grandmother knew some of his songs. Probably some of the country catalog and the stuff that, by then, had become American standards. I wonder what she thought about the show.

Here’s the sports show from last night. It’s just a barrel full of IU sports. What transpired, and what’s coming up. It’s all on Hoosier Sports Nite.

And here is one of the planters out front of Franklin Hall. This area, in the Old Crescent, is one of the campus highlights, and it’s always photogenic. The landscape and facilities people are putting out their best fall colors. They always do terrific work on campus. Just imagine this sort of thing all over the heavily landscaped parts of a sprawling campus.

We’re waiting for them to return my call about whether they work on private residences. I’ll let you know.

bespoke / IU / photo / television / Twitter / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on A case of pareidolia not smooshed flat after all these years
22
Sep 21

A case of pareidolia not smooshed flat after all these years

I park in a parking deck on campus. It’s a block from the office. I like the walk, most of the time, because it’s almost enough to separate the parts of your day. (Plus it keeps my car out of the weather!) So you figure I’ve parked there almost every working day for five years. Which means I’ve made that walk more than 1,000 times, allowing for parking in other places and what not.

Which means I’ve made that walk, back and forth more than 2,000 times or so.

Which means I’ve walked by this speed bump that same number, whatever it is, and never noticed …

But I saw that expression this evening and my immediate thought was, Now here’s a speed bump that’s seen some things…

The daily duds: Pictures of clothes I put here to, hopefully, help avoid embarrassing scheme repeats.

Today it saw a classic pocket square.

It’s all a part of my fall collection. I did not make that square. It came with a tie I bought years ago. Later this autumn I’ll wear the tie.

Here are today’s bespoke cufflinks.

I made these last summer. The colors mean they’ll match a lot of shirts.

I’m a fan of that sort of utility.

Last night’s TV productions … the news!

And the pop culture!

Tonight we were in the studio again, and it’s all about sports.

This episode, which I’ll share here tomorrow, boasts of origins from Indiana to Thailand to Alabama. And, no, that part isn’t me. Noah, the third person in that gif, is from Montgomery. Studios may as well be home, and you always want to have a bit of home around you. But it’s even more fun to talk about the same towns and schools and restaurants and such with someone who grew up not far away from where you did.

Someone has to tell all these midwesterners about good food, after all.

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