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