KLIV Xmas Eve Traffic and Weather, 2001

[figmo]

It’s the night before Christmas in Silicon Valley
And on Highway 17, no one does dally
On Southbound San Tomas at Williams, a crash
Where someone was injured while making their dash
No chains are required on 50 or 80
Cause in the Sierras, just ice will await ye
Take care, says the C-H-P, as you explore
Cause the same holds for 88, 108, 4
The three major airports have spaces, we hear,
In long-term and short-term lots so far this year
The forecast this eve has a slight chance of rains
Expect them towards morning on hills and on plains
The overnight lows will go down in the 40s
And as for your Christmas, according to author’ties
Tomorrow will be mostly cloudy, they say
With a slight chance of light showers thoughout the day
With middle to upper end 50s for highs
You now have a forecast to try on for size
It’s 46 degrees as we near Christmas Day
On 1590, K-L-I-V, San Jose!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good (giga-)byte!

Comments

[kshandra]

You're warped. Please tell me this actually aired. ;-)

Re: Xmas Eve 2001 Traffic & Weather

[figmo.livejournal.com]

Of course it aired!!!

If you'd been listening (I love getting on your case since you're local) at 10:58pm on the 24th you'd have heard me reading it over an edited-down version of Manheim Steamroller's "Carol of the Bells."

This is the 7th year I've done the rhyming traffic and weather report. Christmas Eve is usually a slow night news-wise, so I tend to have the whole shift in which to put it together. The one "monkey wrench" I can be thrown is a last-minute accident like the one I had on San Tomas Expwy at Williams. As long as what I'm saying is accurate I can get away with it. The accident showed up at 10:55pm, which meant a last-minute rewrite of the poem as I was reading the news. Talk about multi-tasking!!!

To give you an idea of how tricky it is when a last-minute accident happens, I had to simultaneously:

• shuffle news, putting each story where I could see it


• make sure my head stayed steady in relation to the microphone


• type the changes into the computer, making sure the damn thing did something resembling rhyming and scanning


• in one ear, listen to what was going out on air; in the other, monitor what was going out on KNTV so I could link up for the simulcast at the right time


• out of the corner of my eye, monitor the time so I knew when to cut away for commercials and start the traffic and weather


• make sure the mouse on the computer controlling the PC-based automation was pointing at the right button (the edited "Carol of the Bells" I'd prepared)


• with my head facing forward and slightly to the right (for the microphone and to visually monitor KNTV out of the corner of my eye), reach my left hand to KLIV's S100-based main automation computer and position it on the button to start the commercials playing




While the commercials played, I made my last edits to the poem, rushed to put away copy, and set up the cassette deck to record KNTV in case any of its audio was usable for the next day's news (it wasn't anyway). I opted to not print out the poem till after KNTV started, buying myself a little time, although this meant I had to do a lot more bouncing around the computer, making sure no more surprises awaited me on the roadways and getting the current temperature (which is actually a blank space in the hardcopy). Fortunately, my last two lines are the same every year: "It's ____ degrees as we near Christmas Day/On 1590, K-L-I-V, San Jose!" I figure that's the one thing that's going to be variable, so I set up the the couplet so I know it'll rhyme no matter how much the temperature changes.

Anyhow, that's more than you wanted to know. :-)