Yay team

The 12 News team won a few awards recently in the Northwest Broadcast News Association Eric Sevareid Awards Competition. The reporters each entered stories, but our sports department actually came out on top.

Our sports department is pretty unique. Not only do they produce material for the regular newscast, but they produce an hour-long show every week on prep sports in the Northwest Metro area. Then, they broadcast several games live on the station. A special production crew sets up the game and then our guys go out to do play by play and produce stories. It's a quality operation and it's a great service for the Northwest Metro area. People actually work here who grew up with 12 and remember watching to see the replay of the game after playing in it.

The Documentary Special deserved the recognition as well. The news department produced this half hour edited documentary that featured the 25 years that the nine metro cities have funded NorthWest Community Television or 12 News. Ironically enough, I was assigned to profile the longest running show on our neighbor, the access channel, called Seniors on Screen. In it, seniors have produced, hosted, and broadcast 1000 episodes. Since I spent 3 years in Shreveport on a seniors beat, I couldn't help but smile when they gave me my assignment. The best quote in my story came when I asked a lady who had to be all of 85, "What would you have said if I had told you 40 years ago you'd be working in TV?" "I woulda told you you were nuttier than an 8-pound fruitcake."

Documentary/Special (the News dept did this one)
25 Years of TV

Sports Play-by-Play
Osseo vs. Champlin Park Football

Sports Play-by-Play
Wayzata vs. Rosemount Football

Sportscast/Program
Sports Jam

This place is a diamond in the rough in the news biz, and this is just one of the many reasons why.