High School Musical - Hawaii Style

In case you’ve been under a rock or don’t have contact with a child or teen, Disney’s High School Musical has been a major hit. It spawned a sequel and “High School Musical 3: Senior Year” is in production and headed for theaters this fall.

The show has also given some younger entertaining hopefuls a chance to become a star.

Disney’s “High School Musical: Get in the Picture” has been airing on ABC for several weeks. It’s kind of a take off of American Idol that 12 performers would have the chance to win an opportunity to star in a music video to air during the movie’s credits.

Among the 12 hopefuls are two young Hawaii women. Christina Brown, 18, of Nanakuli, and Christy Brooke, 18, of Kaaawa, are hoping for that chance. KITV’s Pamela Young interviewed the two and will bring you their stories on KITV 4 Island Television at 5 on Tuesdays.

Whale videos

Here are the links to the whale videos:

 

http://www.kitv.com/video/16260953/index.html

http://www.kitv.com/video/16255795/index.html

Long Lines, Scan Design Says Goodbye

After word in the Honolulu Advertiser that Scan Design’s Honolulu store is set to close and offer drastically marked down prices, people lined up down the block for a chance to get in.

I sit facing King Street, so I can see the line from my office window.

People trying to get to the sale are clogging nearby roads, including Ward Avenue and Hotel Street that runs behind Straub Hospital and Clinic and the Honolulu Police Department’s headquarters.

The store is shutting down after 29 years in the islands.

About 150 people waited in line for the store to open. The workers were limiting the number of customers that entered at a time. Only 10 people were allowed in at a time every 30 minutes.

Scan Design still has to empty its warehouse, so new product will be brought out each week until it’s all gone, company workers said.

KITV has a crew following the customers and the closing sale. Tune in at 6 p.m. for the story.

Dying Whale Calf Popularity

Gary Sprinkle aired video he and videographer Sonny Ahuna captured with researchers off Lanai of a humpback whale mother caring for her calf as it died.

The compeling story he told has captured a lot of attention. Here is a link to the video:

http://www.kitv.com/video/16255795/index.html

The story and video has brought about a lot of attention. I’ve received e-mails wanting to know what happened. I have a friend who got married on Saturday and she leaves for her honeymoon to Australia and New Zealand on Tuesday and she wants to know about the whales.

Someone called wanting to know where it is on the site. (It took a little time to load it because I couldn’t find the tape.)

I spoke with Sonny about the shoot. It was seven hours on the boat without a tripod. That’s a lot of work, but he said it was an incredible experience.

Stay tuned. Gary shows more of what they found during the researchers time off Lanai all week.

Brent Suyama

Ratings (Sweeps) Time

We are now into one of the three periods of the year that Hawaii television stations face ratings by Nielsen Media Research.

This is the time when you see all the news departments airing promotional ads about their series on, for example KITV’s “Smart Tips 4 Fighting Back” about saving money during the tough economic times.

Other stations air their series of stories in hopes that you will stay tuned to more than one newscast and add you to their ratings numbers.

Since Hawaii is an isolated and lower-ranked market (73th), we don’t have boxes hooked up to the TVs of select viewers. Instead, we have “diaries” sent to about 900 homes. What they record about what they watch will represent the state’s roughly 424,000 television households.

The thing about diaries is that people often forget to fill them out until it is time to turn them in. Viewers sometimes get things wrong, but we hope they are close.

The outcome several weeks after the sweeps is what the TV stations are waiting for: ratings. The ratings obviously determine what station is top-rated and lowest-rated. However, it is also crucial to how much the TV stations’ sales people can sell ads for.  Shows like American Idol and Lost command top dollar for high ratings.

Some of the most critical ratings looked at involve each stations’ news programs. The ratings for those programs can mean a big difference in what each earns.

In the world of Internet and hundreds of cable stations the ratings world has become a different game. Expect to see more promo ads through May followed by more promos touting who is No. 1 in primetime and sign-on to sign-off with even more promos on the airwaves about which station’s newscast is No. 1. Expect to see those ads in June.

One of the best parts of ratings is all of the new episodes of your favorite programs. Prepare for a cliffhanger in Lost and the winner of Dancing with the Stars.

Friday is Scarf Day

Here at KITV, if you walk through the front door or call the front desk, you are greeted by Lydia, our receptionist.

Like many other businesses, Lydia is so much more than what her job title suggests. She can help turn a person’s day around. She can make sure things happen for us as well. She is one of the brightest lights we have here at the station.

Now, Lydia is battling cancer. There have been fundraisers for her climbing medical expenses.

Since fighting this disease, she started losing her hair and evetually shaved it off. She wears colorful scarfs to cover her head.

One of our employees, Wanda Wehr, suggested that others at the station wear scarves on Fridays. It is now common place to see men such as anchor Gary Sprinkle wearing a scarf (albeit a manly one) around his head as he walks the halls on Friday.

A photographer from the Honolulu Advertiser took photos of Lydia and some of us wearing scarves. Look for it in an upcoming edition. 

Congratulations To Jill Kuramoto!

After months of being a growing trooper at news stories KITV’s Jill Kuramoto gave birth on Tuesday.

Jill gave birth at 3:20 a.m. to a nearly 6 lbs boy named Jace Randall. Everyone, including mom baby and new father David are doing well.

Jill will be off the air for a couple of months while she cares for her newborn. We wish her and the new family the best.

By the way, Jace’s birth comes just days before Jill’s birthday.

-Brent

Recovering From Merrie Monarch

The Merrie Monarch Festival is over and I’m recovering from posting livestreams, videos, stories and stats.

We had thousands of people visit KITV.com for the festival from all around the world. We receive dozens of e-mails from people who watch the event online.

“Our Hawaiian club, Hui o Hawai’i, at Stanford has been watching online together for the past two nights. It’s been great to be able to bring a piece of home here to California while we are away at school. We want to send our aloha to all our ‘ohana and friends at home. Mahalo.”

“Expat local here and I just wanted to say that I’m watching from Italy.  I had no idea that there was an online version, so it was nice to be tipped off by a kama’aina!”

“How lucky we feel to be sharing in this beautiful evening of hula and mele.  Last night was wonderful (and of course Miss Aloha Hula night) and tonight is starting out  so colorful, lyrical, and energetic.   Another 4am night,.. and we wish there were more nights to follow.”

 

Not everyone who wrote in was happy. Some couldn’t get the livestream to work and others couldn’t get audio. I apologize. We are working each year to improve the system.

We have another 12 months to work out more of our kinks.

Aloha-

Brent

Aloha Dancers; It’s Merrie Monarch Time

The 45th Merrie Monarch Festival is in full swing. Last night, KITV broadcasted the Miss Aloha Hula competition.

It is a huge feat to coordinate everything. We have crews in Hilo and back here we have our head engineer monitoring the broadcast.

I’m in charge of the live video stream. I’m constantly monitoring the feed and fielding questions from viewers from all parts of the world about how to watch or helping them troubleshoot their problems.

It always amazes me to see where people watch from. Last night we had viewers from Italy, Thailand, Mexico, Japan and of course all over the nation.

We have Hawaii club members at colleges getting together and watch until the dawn for some of them.

Some West Coast residents get together for a luau on Saturdays.

It’s our effort to bring a bit of the islands to everyone. We hope you enjoy it.

- Brent

Dealing With Breaking News

Sunday was more than just a tough day for nearly 2,000 Aloha Airlines’ employees. They are left with a lot of questions and I’m sure a lot of frustration.

 I received the news as I drove to the store to get some cough syrup for my wife who has a bad cold. My 9-month-old son is pretty sick, too. The KITV weekend assignment manager/reporter Shayne Enright called to say Aloha was shutting down its passenger flights.

 It was a bit of a shock. I had to make it to the store, so Shayne teamed up with the national part of our company that helps out on the weekends and sometimes at night. They did a pretty good job of getting the details up before I got home.

 (side note: While I’m the managing editor of news for KITV.com, I am actually not employed by KITV. I work for Internet Broadcasting Inc. based in St. Paul, Minnesota. KITV’s parent company, Hearst-Argyle TV, mostly owned by Hearst Corp., is an investor in IB. They contracted IB to set up sites for all of Hearst’s TV stations. IB also serves NBC, McGraw-Hill, Post-Newsweek, Cox, Meredith and several others.)

I got back to my house and jumped on the computer. I checked my e-mail to find a plethora of notes from Aloha, Hawaiian-Air, Hawaii Tourism Authority, hotels and more responding to Aloha’s shutdown.

Working from home can be a blessing and a curse. It’s great to be able to be home, but it’s tough when your crying infant son wants you to carry him while trying to get the details of a major breaking news story onto the site for people to have access to.

 I had to make a couple of calls back and forth to KITV. The team helped me a lot with information and scripts. Our Associate Producer Nate was solid in getting up video of our coverage and sending me tons of information.

While covering a story, as I’ve detailed here, you get caught up in what needs to be done. It usually isn’t until later that you really get a chance to let the human element hit you. You know about it when you cover it and you make sure to let viewers hear the stories of the people hurt by such a thing as the shutdown. Sometimes you look back at the story and find so much more in it.

 1,900 people losing jobs is crazy, but take that apart and look at the 1,900 lives it affects.

 One of the interviews Dick Allgire had in his report was from a man who worked at the company for 35 years. He said it was 85 percent of his life. How do you go from something you’ve done for 35 years to something else completely new? Perhaps this man, Joe Kauweloa, will find a job doing the same thing at another airline. It still will be life-changing.

 I feel terrible for these people, and it won’t just affect them, it’s going to impact the state.

 I sit here writing stories and then I guess at 12:30 a.m., with my wife asleep and my son getting up occasionally because of his cough, I get caught up with the same thing people all over the state are thinking. What if it happens to me?

 - Brent Suyama