Archive for July 27th, 2007
When the news first broke about today’s tragic accident, TV newsrooms everywhere let out a gasp. The very nature of our business — moving from station to station — means that everyone knows someone from just about everywhere. And chopper accidents are especially traumatic because photographers, reporters, assignment editors, producers and news directors always have that fear living in the back of their minds. Newsrooms are families, and many of us have extended families in multiple markets.
KTVK’s Scott Bowerbank and Jim Cox
KNXV’s Craig Smith and Rick Krolak
Please take this opportunity to leave a comment with your thoughts, prayers and condolences for the KTVK and KNXV newsrooms and the families of the victims…
You can leave your condolences on KTVK’s site and KNXV’s site or below…
July 27th, 2007
La Voz and Arizona Republic photographer A.J. Alexander snapped this terrifying shot of the choppers going down shortly after they collided:
You can see more photos on AZCentral.com.
July 27th, 2007
The helicopters for KTVK and KNXV in Phoenix collided while covering a police pursuit, killing all four on board. For KTVK, pilot Scott Bowerbank and photographer Jim Cox died in the crash. At KNXV, pilot Craig Smith and photographer Rick Krolak were on board. (Screen grab from KPHO moments after the crash.)
KTVK’s anchors tearfully broke the news on the air.
AZCentral reports that KNXV pilot Smith was on the radio with KTVK’s Bowerbank in the moments before the crash:
“Where’s 3?”
“How far? Oh geez.”
“3, I’m right over you. 15 on top of you.”
“I’m over the top of you.”
The accident happened shortly after the driver of the truck being pursued jumped out and carjacked another vehicle. A witness said he noticed the choppers were flying too close together. “It was like a vacuum. They just got sucked into each other, and they both exploded and pieces were flying everywhere.”
“The news directors at the stations are members of our association, and our heart really goes out to them in a situation like this,” said RTNDA chair Barbara Cochran. “These pilots, they are very professional. They combine the skills of pilots and skills as journalists. It’s something that’s very, very sad.”
(First screen grab from KPHO’s chopper shortly after the crash. Second screen grab is from KTVK’s air as the anchors share the tragic news).
- KTVK’s coverage | live stream | mirror link to live stream
- KNXV’s coverage
- Arizona Republic
- KPHO coverage and live stream (in player on right)
July 27th, 2007
In today’s edition of David’s Daily Grump, Adobe is making me mad. I’m evaluating some software for various reasons, a fine Friday afternoon thing to do. After lengthy downloading and much time wasted (and yes I should have read the Premiere Pro CS3: FAQ first), I’ve learned painfully that it won’t run on my trusty G5 because i have a PowerPC processor and Adobe decided to only support Intel based Macs. A sound business decision? Sure, Apple isn’t making PowerPCs anymore, but there are piles of them out in the marketplace that have yet to depreciate and since Apples pretty much run like tanks, they are going to be there for a while. Adobe really impressed me at how they bundled InDesign into their early Creative Suite releases and priced them so that as everyone got the crucial Photoshop and Illustrator upgrades, they pretty much pushed Quark right out of the way. I have never seen a pagination program take that much marketshare that fast. When I saw that Premiere was going to be bundled into CS3 versions, I thought they were setting their sites on Apple’s Final Cut with the same vengeance. But, without a bridge or patch to trick out SSE2 support on PowerPC macs, I see a whole pile of possible customers who will be happily using Final Cut. You can be sure that Apple won’t provide it, and this won’t be a case of buying out Macromedia to swap the mighty Dreamweaver in for clunky GoLive. Grrrrumble.
July 27th, 2007
Enough of my game, print and advertising yakkin’. Here’s the latest ComScore report on online video. Measuring May 2007, nearly 75 percent of U.S. Internet users watched an average of 158 minutes of online video per user during the month. No surprise to see that sites in the Google family pulled down more than 20 percent of the 8.3 billion video streams served out during the month. YouTube alone accounted for 1.7 billion streams. Fox Interactive Media was a distant second with a mere 8.1 percent of the total.
July 27th, 2007
PlayStation 2 is the big winner in the first release of Nielsen’s new GamePlay Metrics, accounting for 42 percent of all metered gaming in the month of June. Nielsen will be providing monthly updates on game console use and PC game play. From the release:
68.1 million individuals used a video game console in June, playing an average of 7.5 days during the month. On the days they played, Xbox 360 users logged an average of 2.2 sessions, with an average session length of 61 minutes. In contrast, PlayStation 3 users’ logged an average of 1.9 sessions, with an average session length of 83 minutes, on the days they played.
The most played PC game was a blow-out as “World of Warcraft” took the prize being played more than four times as much as any other PC game.
July 27th, 2007
