For me, it was a night of two very interesting women, Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood.And while Taylor Swift walked away with an amazing number of awards, let’s see, I think it was Album of the Year, Female Vocalist of the Year, and Entertainer of the Year, for me, Carrie Underwood stole the show; she was the total package of perfection.
Her co-hosting with Brad Paisley was fantastic, especially the parody songs at the beginning of the show.It also became very clear during the show that you should never piss off country western singers (pay attention Kanye) because they will nail you every time.Kanye got smacked upside his head several times last night, including once in an acceptance speech from Taylor.
Now let’s get back to Carrie Underwood, my pick for the absolute best country artist in the known world right now.Some women have vocal talent, some women have breathtaking beauty, and some women have great charm and sense of humor.Carrie has them all, and all of them were on display last night.
She came out and sang, but you’ll have to forgive me for not remembering a single note of her song, because she was so insanely gorgeous I think I just went into a coma.
And about that singing of hers --- it is incredible.I have her in the top 5 greatest female vocalists of all time in any genre.Taylor Swift may have deserved many awards for being very entertaining and creative, but make no mistake, on Taylor’s best night her singing cannot hold a candle to the other women she beat out for Female Vocalist of the Year.I have a feeling Taylor knows this, and I do give her points for being gracious.
If singers were like race car drivers, wearing patches from their sponsors, Taylor would be wearing a huge Antares logo, the makers of Autotune.But don’t get me wrong, Taylor Swift is a wonderfully talented entertainer and I enjoyed her a lot, with her edgy style and off-beat lyrics.
Gee, I feel like a virtual Kanye West, running out during Taylor’s acceptance speech of Female Vocalist of the Year and saying, “Imma let you finish, but Carrie Underwood has one of the best voices of all time!”
Gone Country --- Just Plain GONE
There was something rotten in Denmark as they say, and this year it was the mysterious disappearance of the yearly CMA pre-show, Gone Country.KOCO usually loves to brag about this show, promos the snot out of it for weeks before the event, and shows us clips morning and night right up until showtime.This year --- something happened.I doubt we’ll ever know what it was, because they were very tight-lipped about it.
It might be one thing not to air the show, but they didn’t even air interview clips the day of the CMA’s until after they were over.It almost felt like a mandate from the network.Very strange --- very, very strange.
The good news is that the Amanda Taylor and Amy McRee were exquisitely beautiful as they are so often.The bad news is that the shows are totally lacking in consistency when it comes to the quality of the camera-work.
Here’s how it went down on Tuesday.Amanda’s show at 5pm was a pleasure to watch; she got several good quality close-ups.The 6pm show with Amy McRee was an abomination, with not a single shot that I’d be willing to call a “good” close-up.The 10pm show had two good quality close-ups, with a bunch of cold, distant garbage thrown in as filler.
Maybe Blaise Labbe would like to keep in mind that while Amy McRee was getting two close-ups, Jessica Schambach on KOCO was getting five close-ups, all higher quality, and even then KOCO managed to squeeze in some stupid choreography.
That’s the difference between KOCO and KWTV.KOCO has stupid choreography too, but they don’t let it ruin the quality or quantity of their close-ups.In fact, five close-ups is a very average show for KOCO; you can often tune in and get 7 or more on a good night.Ask yourself which show would catch your eye, watching someone in a stunning close-up, or watching them from 20 feet away, shot from the hips up.
But hey, don’t take my word for it, KOCO is running their promo that tells us the AP voted them the Best Evening Newscast, so it’s not just the opinion of one blogger.Evidently, the stunning camera-work catches everyone’s eyes, not just mine, because you certainly could not think that KOCO won this based on journalism that far exceeded that of anyone else!The camera-work makes a huge difference in the beauty and perception of the show!
FOX25 Primetime News at Nine
Now here’s a crew that seldom cheats its viewers.
Jaime Cerreta came out rocking a red jacket over a white top, and I believe she had this little red heart necklace tucked inside that feathered hair of hers which added a nice touch to the neckline.(You were looking at her necklace, right?)She also sported that great “Halo of Light” makeup which looks great in the two-shots.
Then, the heavens opened up, almost as if FOX25 was celebrating the fact that it actually knows how to give viewers a beautiful show, and they did something they only do a couple of times a year --- they brought a reporter to the desk instead of giving them a standing-shot!And oh yeah, it was yummy!Britten Follett continued her story on Joyce Gilchrist, sporting perfect porcelain-doll makeup, with absolutely exquisite glossy pink lipstick (made even more stunning by the fact that she was in a close-up!) and deliciously beautiful straight hair, curved inward slightly around her face.Against a more stark background than I usually see, the shots were to-die-for.
And as if to rub salt into Blaise Labbe’s wounds, they threw in Lisa Monahan in a live-shot, giving her shots that in many ways exceeded the quality that Amy McRee got in-studio in her 6pm show!Lisa’s shots were beautiful; the lighting was nice, it brought out her cheekbones and she had that smile rocking even though it wasn’t a true Money Shot.Lisa found a way to nail it, even wearing a FOX25 parka.
It’s nice to tune in and see a show I can count on, and not have to fall to my knees each night and beg for a close-up!On FOX25, we get great photographic excellence along with some truly butt-kicking journalism, along with great humor.
And I always find myself happy for Britten Follett, because if things had not changed, she’d still be doing live-shots at NEWS 9, never getting to sit at the anchor desk, and probably never getting to do the kinds of stories that she gets to do at FOX25.At FOX, she gets to really exercise the full gamut of her gifts.Thankfully, we get to enjoy them too.
This ridiculously unsatisfying show was the straw that broke the camel’s back.It marked yet another show with ridiculously poor shot-selection and shot-quality.
After 3 years of this garbage, I hold Blaise Labbe responsible.He is the News Director, and I have to assume he is in charge of all the people that ultimately put the final product on air, and that includes the quality of all things visual.Evidently, Blaise cannot tell the difference between garbage and art, because he has allowed garbage on the air ever since NEWS 9 put in their new custom-designed FX Group set, but he obviously thinks it’s art.
It’s bad enough that over a year ago they took the only planned Money Shot out of the show and turned it into a standing-shot, nullifying about 50% of the beauty of the legendary Amy McRee smile, but last night, they found an entirely new way to butcher the show.They gave us a close-up of Amy coming out of My 2 Cents, and for a second, I truly believed that we were going to get that smile of hers in a true close-up.But silly me; I once again underestimated the boundless stupidity of the director at NEWS 9.Just a few words away from the McRee smile, they cut away to an off-angle shot from the rafters, then added insult to injury by sliding Amy’s face off the screen so she was scarcely visible.
People wait the entire show to see that smile, and somehow the director thinks it’s something he can just throw away.This type of stupidity is not an isolated thing, it’s an ongoing problem at NEWS 9, and it’s one of the reasons I started this blog back in 2007, to combat this type of ridiculous garbage.
Let’s recap the kind of garbage I’m talking about, things we’ve all had to put up with since the new set went into place and since Blaise took the job at NEWS 9.
Years ago, on the first 10pm primetime show with the new set, Amy McRee did not get a single close-up in a half-hour show, yet we got shots from all over the set in every strange angle they could place a camera.This was so disgusting and unsatisfying that even Mark Shannon mentioned it in his blog and supplied a diagram of the anchors running all over the set.Even today, we’ve still had shows almost this bad, and I believe within the last two weeks we’ve had a show with no close-ups of the female anchor.
The close-ups have gone from very good quality back in 2005, to the weakest in the entire local news market, despite protests from many viewers.Has Blaise paid attention and made changes?Not enough to bring the show back to the quality it had before he took the helm.
The female anchors on NEWS 9 in primetime get about 1.5 minutes of total face-time, at least a full minute less than the anchors get on KOCO, and KOCO face-time is far higher quality, even with their own brand of ridiculous choreography.
The shot-selection on NEWS 9 is the worst in all of local news.You can easily see twice the number of close-ups on KOCO that you get on a NEWS 9 broadcast.KFOR too, does a good job giving its viewers a satisfying number of close-ups with very good quality.
When we do manage to get a close-up on NEWS 9, it’s often one of their terribly anemic shots, sometimes shot from the elbows up, rather than from the top of the shoulders.
NEWS 9 often skips over its female anchor in the first trip though the stories.In other words, we’ll get Kelly Ogle and a couple of close-ups, then when it’s time for Amy, they go directly into the segment and skip her face-time entirely.It is not that uncommon for Amy to only get her first “real” shot at around the 4-minute mark.Competing stations have already given us a couple of high-quality close-ups by then, and if someone is channel-flipping, you can bet they’re not going to stop to watch a female anchor that they can’t see.I wonder if it ever occurred to Blaise that the reason you hire female anchors is to put them on camera!
And let’s mention the single most poorly directed show on all of local news, NEWS 9 This Morning – Weekend Edition, starring Jennifer Pierce, the only solo-anchored show that NEWS 9 airs.The directorial stupidity displayed regularly on this show simply defies the imagination.Here is a show with arguably the most beautiful woman on all of television, getting about 4 close-ups per hour, with easily 40 minutes of nothing but distant standing-shots (or seated mid-shots) for both hours of the show.The shot-selection on this show is so bad that even a person who works for KFOR complained to Jennifer Pierce about it!
This show could be the greatest work of art aired each week on local television, and instead, it stands as a monument to the incomparable stupidity of a management team that has placed choreography above all else, including viewer-satisfaction.
Blaise is responsible for all this, and it’s time for him to go.I don’t care where he goes, I just want him to go away and take his misguided directors with him.
And if the ratings have begun to decline at NEWS 9, it’s not because of the anchors or the journalism, it’s simply because the shows are only half as enjoyable to watch as they were back around 2005.The shows were warm and intimate back then; now they’re cold and distant.
So we have Blaise Labbe to blame.But don’t go away mad, Blaise --- just go away.
Take your misguided choreography and go ruin someone else's shows, but stop ruining the shows on a station I’ve watched for 20 years.
This show was a bright spot in my day, because it featured that famous FOX25 “kick butt and take names” journalism, along with what will probably turn out to be the most exquisite camera-work done on an anchor in a segment that I will see all year.
This was a multi-part segment done on the infamous Joyce Gilchrist and how she has ruined so many lives with all the lying, cheating, and stealing morality that she brought to her job.Like I’ve said before, are there any government workers we can trust anymore?
This was a fairly lengthy interview with three men who had served prison time unjustly because of Gilchrist.Not only was the journalism good and important, the photographer who shot it gave us the best of Britten Follett.It was a beautiful sight to see, with Britten shot against a black background (no doubt to match the black heart of Joyce Gilchrist), getting some exquisite, riveting close-ups.
The photographer at FOX25 once again took journalism and wrapped it up with great photographic art.
After an insanely beautiful appearance from Jennifer Pierce early in the day, it was pretty-much downhill as far as Saturdays go, with OU losing to Nebraska in one of the most gripping low-scoring games I've ever seen.
But if there's one thing that can rescue a day, it's the smile of a beautiful woman. Enter Lisa Monahan, co-anchoring with Michael Henrich at the FOX25 news desk.
Lisa wore her hair in the ultra-curled style, and I do believe those curls on the side had some extra kick to them last night. The most amazing thing in the show however, was an absolutely astounding running Money-Shot we got from Lisa that bracketed a story on Sesame Street. Launching into the story, she nailed that killer smile of hers, and she really lit it up. Then, she gave it to us again coming out of the segment and somehow the whole day just felt better.
This smile is going to go down in OKC broadcast history along with the great Amy McRee and Maggie Carlo. If you're not out pouring money into Bricktown's enclave of the rich on a Saturday night, or killing brain cells in some sports bar, you should be watching Lisa Monahan. Trust me, it's a lot better for your health.
