KSNV's Beautiful Tribute To Miles

Yesterday was Miles' final day at KSNV, the NBC affiliate in Las Vegas. He worked there or at the company's Reno station for 12 years, finishing up as the executive producer overseeing the entire news operation for the past four years. To commemorate the occasion of his departure -- he's coming with me to Ann Arbor to partake in my fellowship -- his friend and anchor Jessica Moore offered these truly lovely words at the close of the last newscast he produced, the 5 p.m. show:

FYI, we're having a little party at Piero's on Aug. 13 from 2-5 pm where friends, colleagues, listeners, readers and viewers are welcome to swing by and visit with us. Hope to see you there!

A Weird Vegas/CES Day In Pictures and Snark

Yesterday was a weird one, even by Vegas standards. It started with me heading to the KSNV studio to tape an upcoming episode of Nevada Newsmakers, Sam Shad's Reno-based TV show. This, above, was idling next to me as I waited at a light. I had no idea Monte Rock III rides a moped!

Then I get to the studio -- the one where Miles, who was coming in late because he had been in Carson City on Monday, is executive producer -- and the tech guy who lets me in sees me craning my neck as we pass the studio. "Oh, I can show you around and show you how we do things if you'd like after your interview," he said. I giggled to myself.

Next I'm in the chair ready to take Shad's queries about Cosmo, CityCenter, Vdara death rays and Frank Sinatra Jr. (Shad's a big fan of The Strip and my interviews.) Sam and his crew were in Reno and I had an earpiece. So naturally, I shoot this:


Before we began, Shad told me there'd be a slight audio delay and they would edit out the pauses. That comforts me. My ear canals must be awful large and slippery -- 32 years of wearing hearing aids, maybe? -- and the ear piece kept sliding out. They tried to adjust it, kept happening. But now it's time to do the interview.

Except during my first response, the thing falls out again. So, knowing it's taped and not live, I stop talking, try to get it back in, it won't stay and I mouth the word, "SHIT." That four-second delay was priceless, because a few beats later, there's this raucous laughter coming from the other end. I apologize profusely and they decide they have to start over and Shad is in my ear -- they brought another, equally ill-fitting ear piece -- begging me not to cuss again. One of the things Sam seems to love about our show is the fact that we can curse -- no FCC, woo hoo! -- so he has this impression that I've got this real potty mouth. I actually don't, but it was entertaining anyhow.

So we do the rest of the interview, I think it went well despite having to futz with my ear thing every time I wasn't speaking, and off I go to interview Shae Wilhite, a Vegas comic-turned-baker whose "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" appearance from 2001 aired on GSN a couple weeks ago. Oddly, both Shae and I must speak really loud because on several occasions, other people at the Omelet House interjected to clarify or correct something. "Um, Lana Turner wasn't discovered in a drugstore, that's a myth," one guy advised. I'd never had group participation in an interview before.

Anyhow, I go home and I'm working on some stuff and I turn around to find our new dog, Aces, has chewed on my property tax bill:


Evidently, the little Mexican dog didn't get the memo from Harry Reid that Hispanics can't be Republicans.

Next I read the newspaper and my favorite section, The View, offers this unfortunate pairing of headline and photo:

So then I'm off to the Venetian for the press preview of the Consumer Electronics Show. And while everybody else is agog about 3D television -- which I can't quite imagine ever needing but I once said that about Twitter, too -- I liked the gizmos that help you find your car or at least your car's keys:



This also seemed practical, a camera that beams your baby's activities (or your college roommate's?) to your iPhone:


This clunker below fascinated me, particularly because it got an innovation award.



It's a $3,000 oven, see. And I thought, "Oh, you can control it from your computer so you can, say, look in on what you're cooking from another part of the house and adjust the temperature or something." That would be cool, right? Nah. For $3,000, it cooks stuff faster with some sort of steam induction thing.

I asked the guy if this was supposed to be someone's main oven. He said yes. I asked if it came in any other sizes. He said no. I asked how anyone was going to get a baking sheet in there. He had no clue.

Why am I telling you all this today instead of via Twitter yesterday? I mean, this is the most sophisticated tech conference and the whole world is wired to transmit every thought instantaneously, right?

Well, this...


...is why. For hours yesterday at the Venetian, I couldn't get email or Tweet except for occasionally via text-message. I couldn't even use my AT&T air card to get online on my laptop with any reliability.

As one of my Facebook friends responded, "Oh, the irony." Way to represent, Venetian!

Our New Year's Eve In Las Vegas On TV

So here's the montage version of the Party at the Panorama that KSNV Channel 3 anchor Marie Mortera staged featuring me, Marie's boyfriend and Panorama resident Amy Turner, whom many of you know as fill-in guest host on The Strip and co-host of the GritstoGlitz podcast. (Ladies, surely this experience merits a new edition of your show?!?)

At the end of the video is a photo montage from behind the scenes and of the fireworks from the Panorama deck.

A few things to note:

* I didn't record the closings/goodbyes because the show went over time and Cox Cable is simply incapable of knowing when shows actually end. But thanks to Norm Kresge of Las Vegas for helping me figure out how to get it from DVR to DVD to YouTube!

* KSNV won the night! Their 11:45-midnight ratings were stratospheric. I'm quite proud not just because I got to participate but because it was, of course, Miles who managed this coverage and ran the show from the News 3 ranch. I don't know what the other channels were doing, but it's clear that News 3 has regained its mojo after losing to KLAS a couple years running. Yay! Miles hates it when I toot his horn, but toot toot and deal with it, Smitty.

* We did the party in the Panorama unit I own. Marie misspoke about Amy owning it, but Amy has been living there for about six months.

* KSNV arranged the food from LBS Burger and Hachi at Red Rock Resort and the Champagne provided by Southern Wine & Spirits. I was not involved in those arrangements. It was all quite lovely, though!

* Happy New Year, Everyone. If you don't mind, here's the most awesome picture taken so far in 2011:


As you can see, Aces (left) is already an integrated part of the family with Black and Jack. Hooray!

Watch Me On KSNV Tonight For New Year's Eve!

I'm sort of co-anchoring one of KSNV's New Year's Eve locations tonight with reporter Marie Mortera, so tune into Channel 3 from about 10 p.m. PT until midnight or so for our various cut-ins. There are anchors and reporters for Channel 3 on the Strip, Fremont Street and at least one other location, too.

Not to give much away but Marie and I will be in a more sedated locale where we'll be having dinner -- and you'll probably recognize one of the others at the party as a frequent "The Strip" guest host, FYI -- and chatting about the year past and ahead in entertainment, the casino biz and more.

I don't know if the coverage will stream online, but we'll record it and figure out a way to get it online if their site doesn't archive it later. Should be fun. I even rented a monkey suit, see?

I'll also be Tweeting between shots, so pay attention at @TheStripPodcast. We also will have, with little doubt, the very best vantage point for viewing the fireworks, so you'll want to watch KSNV to see what I mean.

[Disclosure: Miles is the executive producer at KSNV and will be managing the coverage from the studio. It was, however, Marie's idea to pair up with me, not Miles'.]

Election Winners & Losers, MEDIA EDITION

OK. As I wrote for Politics Daily, Harry Reid's a winner and Sharron Angle's a loser. Duh. But there's much, much more to it.

* WINNER: MSM. Sharron Angle believed the Fox/Limbaugh hype that the "lamestream" media is irrelevant. And perhaps in the national universe that's become more true. But not in local races and certainly not in places like Nevada. Literally running away from reporters looks juvenile and inept. Believing you can simply say you never said the thing you just said and get away with it when you're recorded makes you a bad liar. Pissing off the most significant pundit in the state by reneging on a clear promise to debate before him with your opponent is just asking to be treated as if you have no credibility. Angle will surely claim the press was out to get her, but she even froze out the Review-Journal after the June 8 primary, and those are her people. Yes, Harry Reid also played hard-to-get with the media, but at least his people didn't, providing quick and thorough responses to every niggling question in a usually timely, respectful manner. Also, he's the incumbent with years of media under his belt; you're the relatively unknown challenger. Contrary to what Palin and Friends say, The Media is an important means for leaders to be held accountable for their statements and actions and a useful way to communicate with the broadest cross-section of the public they hope to lead. This trick may work in Kentucky because Rand Paul was always the red-state favorite, but it didn't work for Angle or Delaware's Christine O'Donnell and probably not for Alaska's Joe Miller. Miller's folks handcuffed a reporter.

* WINNER: Jon Ralston. The only pundit who got it right is also, as we learn again and again, the only pundit who matters when it comes to Nevada. He could've played it safe and hedged, but he perpetually railed against the likely inaccuracy of the polls -- oversampled this, ignored that, did not make any sense. He predicted a win for Harry Reid and saw silver linings in early voting data and took some guff for it, most notably from the Review-Journal publisher Sherm Frederick, who claimed it exposed Ralston's partisan bias. I'm offended by Ralston's simplistic, petty and personal version of "media criticism" precisely because it lacks the guts and balance and any introspection whatsoever, all things he applies to the rest of his journalism. But he swung for the fences this weekend and bashed it over the wall.

* LOSER: Sherm Frederick. Sunday's Opinion section of the R-J was soaked with pieces explaining why Reid would lose. The worst offender was the publisher, who suggested Reid would need a "Dewey Defeats Truman" moment to pull it out. So, when Sherm turns out to be wrong, does he at least show a little class and humility and offer a mea culpa to Ralston or his entire readership? Boy, that's a funny thought, isn't it? No. Instead, he keeps referring to it as a "surprising" Reid victory and quotes that same Dewey-Truman column to compliment himself for foreseeing the House flipping red even though he merely got that impression from pollsters and journalists elsewhere whom he saw on Fox. Reid's victory wasn't that surprising to the people he tried nastily to discredit before the election - Ralston and Reid's people. Sherm just spent YEARS viciously attacking the senator and eviscerating the public's ability to respect or trust his reporters' work. He laid waste to any claim he had of being able to read Nevada's mood and sank to a shocking low by giggling when Sharron Angle gave the sneaky slip to reporters asking reasonable, important questions. He even wrote of Reid at about 10 p.m. last night: "Initially, he was up over 50%, which was hard to believe. But the margin of victory appears closer now, and more credible." Reid's final tally? 50.2 percent. Sorry, Sherm. As the kids say, epic fail.

* WINNER: KNPR. You might recall back in June, I was pretty peeved that Our World of News and Information was re-running morning chat shows as the votes were being tallied. That is, they sat out the first big act of the most significant Senate race in Nevada history. I'm a massive fan of KNPR and I put my prospects of being invited to appear on the air again at risk over that, and KNPR management wrote in the comments that such coverage was too expensive and not in public demand. My solution to the first part was to partner up with a local TV station and take the audio of live victory and concession speeches, maybe have some anchor in the studio talking to analysts and calling up candidates. I don't know if they did the latter, but in my drive from Venetian (GOP party) to Aria (Dem party), I did hear them taking KSNV audio of Rory Reid's speech. Given that the local race was a national one and the national NPR feed contained tons of Nevada reporting, that was pretty adequate. I'm delighted they did it, so I'll be sending an extra check real soon.

* WINNER: KSNV. This one's a point of personal privilege. Miles and the News 3 crew slaved and stressed for weeks to craft the NBC affiliate's election night coverage. I didn't get to see any of it because I was running around doing my thing, but I understand from many people that it was fantastic. And many people should know, because the station won the night in the ratings. Awesome.

* LOSER: Me. I've made more money in the past two months than in the dreadful second half of 2009, thanks to Reid, Angle and new clients such as CBS, Politics Daily, Tablet and The Daily Beast. But now it's over and there's no Sen. Sharron Angle, R-Cuckoo, to appallingly fascinate the political world. Proof of how fast the national media has lost interest in all this? I spent the morning pitching the idea of a profile of Jon Ralston, the only-pundit-who-got-it-right. Responses, and I quote: No, No, Who cares, Thanks but we'll pass. If this had been a big CA or NY race and it was one dude against the entire pollosphere, you know they'd snap that one up. So once my Daily Beast How-Reid-Won piece posts, I suspect that'll be all for now on this. I'll be on to covering the World Series of Poker, and I just don't think anyone's going to care nearly as much.