A little summary of what took place last night with the Golden Snowball competition and the Weather Channel. Earlier in the week the weather channel contacted me about perhaps doing an interview sometime on the Abrams and Bettes show. I thought about it for about 2 seconds and said sure, it sounds like fun. Well yesterday afternoon I received a phone call from a man named Pete. A super nice guy saying they wanted to do the interview that evening. For the record I did try to pass this off to Dennis Brogan but couldn’t reach him. He’s use to the media and handles it well 🙂
Calm, cool and smooth. That’s me. NOT! Knowing the show was live panic set in as soon as the phone rang at around 8:42pm. It was Pete telling me to get ready, about a minute to go. I told Pete what a sissy man I am, he laughed and the next thing I know I was talking (stuttering) with Mike Bettes and Stephanie Abrams live on the weather channel. I would of loved to gotten a lot more in about the contest but at least the weather channel knows about it now. It would be fun to hear them mention our contest when they mention our city’s during the forecasts.
I mentioned to my forum members that most likely I will be saying Ummm a lot. I did that during the press conference in December when we awarded the trophy to Jeff, the man in charge of our DPW. One of my forum members said to just pause instead. I told him I would try that but if he hears a long pause, that means I probably passed out from the pressure 🙂 The worse thing was that while I was on the phone doing the interview the call waiting was beeping like crazy. Talk about losing concentration.
The biggest screw up (and there were many) other than the heavy breathing which I will explain in a minute was be trying to mention about how we kid and razz each others city’s and mentioning how someone from Buffalo made snowmans. 1 snowman + 1 snowman = 2 snowmans Yeah I’m an idiot and normally proud of it except for when it comes to national attention on one of my favorite stations, the Weather Channel. As soon as I said snowmans I just rolled my eyes. I did recover the next sentence though and said snowmen. Have I mentioned yet how attractive Stephanie is and man what a smile. Sorry, I’m wondering off a bit.
As for the heavy breathing on the show I blame that on my back. Really! It’s nothing to do with my bad habit of cigarettes. I pulled my back out several days ago from shoveling some of the heavy snow that came down last week. I did send Pete an email apologizing for that and told him that I can’t help it I get excited when talking about snow and the Golden Snowball award.
Ok, enough about last night and a big thanks to the Weather Channel, Stephanie, Mike and Pete for giving us a chance to explain what our contest is. In reality the weather channel is on here most of the day. I’m a little skeptical about putting a link up to the video but what the hay. For those of you who missed it last night and need a chuckle check it out at the Abrams and Bettes section on the weather channel at http://www.weather.com/aboutus/television/abramsandbettes/index.html?from=footer Just scroll down to the video section.
Also Sean Kirst from the Post Standard has a new blog now and he is looking for some feedback about the Winterfest and the Golden Snowball contest at http://blog.syracuse.com/kirst/2007/02/the_golden_snowball_and_winter.html You might of heard me mention Sean’s name. No doubt he is the person most responsible for getting and keeping this contest in the news and growing. Have a super weekend all!
General, I could never leave your snowmans, err snowmens, umm snowmen out of it 🙂
Anon, I missed the city screw up. I’ll add it to the list of many 🙂 The worse thing is I come from a family of teachers and have a lot of Friends that are also teachers, go figure
Hey Anne-Marie, speaking of teachers. I’m glad you got to see my moment of fame. I think! I see that the Poughkeepsie area finally got a decent amt of snow several days back. Looking at whats coming from the South you might be get a couple more inches unless it’s too warm there. I’m glad you stopped by to say Hi and I look forward to seeing you at Marks and Lina’s wedding 🙂
Hi Pat,
I saw you on TV the other night. Donna told me that you were going to be on The Weather Channel. Congratulations on your new celebrity status! You did a great job! What a cool contest. Hooray for Syracuse and the Golden Snowball Contest!
Anne-Marie
The plural of “city” is “cities”–but that one doesn’t matter on the air!
Nice interview Pat! Kudos! If anything the two of them kinda left you hanging at times, but you did good getting word of what the contest is out! And my snowmans got mentioned on twc, awesome!
Great Job!
Jill, as long as you got a laugh out of it then I did my job well 🙂 I did just watch it again and I suppose it wasn’t all that bad and thanks again for the pat on the back. As for watching it while it was on I didn’t. I paced in front of the computer just in case I needed to look something up and I think I would of freaked watching it as I was doing it. My son and his GF were here and they said it was on as I was talking. Thanks again Jill and your right it was a great opportunity to get the contest noticed.
Kai, I watched the video you made right after you posted it on Sean’s forum. It was awesome and a great job for it being your first time putting one together 🙂 That was definitely cool watching Jim in the city and telling the world how well we deal with the weather here.
Sre, Thanks and when I watched the video the second time I did what Jill did, laughed and just shook my head. It was fun. It could of been worse! It could of been an in person interview 🙁 Thanks all for the kind words.
When you consider “snowmans” as your biggest screw up, I’d say you did very well. 😉
Congrats on that interview! I watched the clip. I especially enjoyed that final scoreboard they put up! I put together a compilation of the Jim Cantore reports during the storm at: http://newkai.com/mt/archives/2007/02/valentines_day_1.html
You’re being too hard on yourself! What do they say about being one self’s worst critic? I caught the ‘snowmans’, but it made me laugh – it just came across as nervousness, that’s all… and I didn’t catch too many um’s. And even if there were a million um’s in there, would you have passed up the chance for the interview? Of course not! You did a great job of helping to get the word of the contest out 🙂 It’s just too bad that we weren’t able to see Buffalo in first place 😛
Just out of curiosity, tho’ – were you able to watch the interview on TV as you were talking to Mike and Stephanie? Like in real time? Or did you just stay on the phone with no other distractions? I know on radio they have a seven-second delay, but I’ve never heard of that with TV interviews… Just wondering!
Again – you did a great job! ~thumbs up icon here~