Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Community access show step toward recapturing all-kicking of old

Sam Amick (left), Marcos Breton and Eric Hogue share a moment before taping Ed Fletcher's Access Sacramento Show on Sacramento's great arena debate. 
I hosted my second Access Sacramento show Thursday morning. It was "Meet the Press-"style news show on Sacramento's consideration of building a replacement arena. It some ways it's odd that I'm doing this. I don't have Comcast and I never watched free community content television. As my small small group of readers know, I've been a print news reporter for sometime. A dozen years professionally to be exact.
To over use a phrase it was interesting confluence of events that has me pretending I can produce and host television. I have done some multimedia reporting for my newspaper and I really enjoyed. Here is a link to somethings I've done, but that is a serious diversion. In the end, my apatite for doing it was more than theirs for it. By must accounts, I was holding up my end in terms of talent, but the Edventures didn't generate enough traffic and it was stopped before it really started. To be fair they were hyper labor intensive. Maybe I need a whole post on Edventures.
I embraced using skills I haven't used since high school and my early days of college.
The second tier of my confluence of events: Rufus. Rufus is one of my longest friends who happened to be crashing at my house until about six months ago. Rufus is a very private man so I'll have to let your mind wander for details on that subject. I can say that Rufus knew me most during my years as the forceful, innovative, ass-kicking editor of the student paper at my college the Southern Digest. Rufus pushed me to recapture a bit of the ass-kicking.
Along those lines, I'm making greater effort to execute some of my brilliant ideas. If I feel like an arena-focused panel discussion is good for public discourse, then find a way to get it done. It's a good place to start. Far too often we put our great ideas away because we don't think we're qualified, or have the money, or have the time.
Why shouldn't I get on stage as a standup comedian? Why shouldn't I start a non-profit? Why shouldn't I throw a street party?
The third event: Through my guild work, I met Ron Cooper from Access Sacramento. He was helpful and enthusiastic about the project I was proposing. In the end, that project never got off the ground. But eager for new programming, he asked me and my former guild vice chair Walt Yost if we were interested in hosting a show. It would be months before I took that leap.
It's not like I wasn't active over the last decade, I've been active with local National Brotherhood of Skier, the Urban League Young Professionals and the Guild. But I've always felt restrained, like my employer owned my good ideas. As layoff have become a twice yearly ritual, I've decided to forget holding back. Be respectful of your continued employment, but don't be so beholden to The Man as to let a good idea die.

About the show:

Three respected Sacramento voices discuss the woes of Power Balance Pavilion, rate Mayor Kevin Jonhson’s leadership and offer their predictions on the likelihood of success in efforts toward building a replacement sports and entertainment complex on an upcoming Access Sacramento show (Comcast Channel 17).
The panel consists of Marcos Breton, of the Sacramento Bee; Sam Amick, of SI.com; and Eric Hogue, of News Talk 1380. The show first airs at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 24 on Comcast 17 and will be streamed simultaneously at AccessSacramento.org.
The show News Forward is sponsored by The Sacramento Press Club and Access Sacramento. It’s hosted by The Bee’s Ed Fletcher.

Be your own judge but I think the show went off remarkably well considering the fact that what little television experience I had -- behind and in front of the camera  -- is a decade old. This was definitely one of those fake it until you make it situations. Let me know what you think, if you catch it.

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