My family and I left Santa Maria, CA and returned to Las Vegas, NV to conclude our vacation. We stayed at a wonderful place called Summer Bay Resorts which became a "home away from home" for a few days. And with any "home" I stay in, I'm quick to set up an antenna and digital box as pictured below!
March 26th
One neat thing I saw upon returning to Vegas was a Taxi cab equipped with a mini TV showing highlights from ABC News! They featured one of my favourite ABC personalities, Vinita Nair.
Back at Summer Bay, my rabbit ears and Magnavox box were set up just in time to see another wacky commercial with an animated CGI car on KVMY. (I'm noticing more and more ads with real people being blended with questionable CGI animated figures....)
KVBC's NBC Universal Sports subchannel on 3-3 was offering live coverage of the World Ice Skating Championships and I saw Olympic gold winning Canadians Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir skate again! They didn't dance quite as well as their Olympic performance, but I really don't see how they could top that one!
I also saw an ad for Terrible's Hotel & Casino, which I got a shot of on the way to the airport before we left.
KVVU (FOX Las Vegas) has a weather subchannel on 5-2, and I was a bit surprised to see that Saved By The Bell (with Mark Paul Gosselar in drag below) fulfills their E/I requirements. Seriously? Saved By The Bell....educational???
The big news of the weekend was the "Showdown In Searchlight" aka the Tea Party With Sarah Palin. KVBC's promo was pretty visually appealing, though, with a saloon styled poster.
My tropo TV reception is always made more enjoyable by an appearance of Half and Half with a diva glare from Telma Hopkins. And here she is in Vegas on KVCW!
Here's a great, wacky commercial showing the stars and moon encouraging viewers to grab a snack and "Laugh All Night" with KVMY - My TV Vegas!
Las Vegas' CW also showed an ad for an important cause - AIDS Walk Las Vegas, which was held recently!
I took this pic of Ricky Martin on KLAS' subchannel 8-2 LATV, and thought "Wow...haven't seen him in awhile." The video involved Ricky dancing around and appearing on various billboards, being shirtless and pouring milk on himself. (You know, the usual...) Then when I got back from vacation I found out that he officially came out! Whooo!
March 27th
KVBC's newsteam included Gerald Ramalho and weatherman Jerry Brown. I forget who it was, but there was one Vegas weathercaster who got crazy intense about rabbits and how they should be roasting on spits (since a bunny was shown on the week's weather grid for Easter.) It was that weird kind of "funny" where you're not sure if you're supposed to laugh, or expect an invitation in the mail announcing their wedding to fellow rabbit lover Glenn Close. Maybe I just came in on the joke at the wrong time.... On a total sidenote, I love the NBC binder in the middle in the pic below!
KVBC was announcing the Las Vegas Review-Journal's Best of Las Vegas awards. That weekend I checked out Krave nightclub, which won for Best Gay/Alternative Bar!
I got to see the handsome Blake McCoy again and he won my heart with his coverage of the Tea Party in Searchlight, NV. After talking to a correspondent, he looked at the camera with a (Mc)Coy, knowing smile and asked "Did she just call them teabaggers?"
They were also covering the Tea Party rally on KLAS with the equally dashing Chris Saldaña.
In fact, I quite enjoyed both KTNV and KLAS newscasts. Both stations featured upbeat, enjoyable personalities who delivered the news, but weren't afraid to laugh and have fun! (Pictured below are KTNV's Ashlee Demartino with Blake McCoy, as well as KLAS' Chris Saldaña and Michael Berk.)
The competition for TV Garth's Favourite Las Vegas Newscast was heating up! It would be really exciting to see Chris Saldaña and Blake McCoy wrestle each other for domination....er....of the Las Vegas news ratings! That's what I meant.
Surprisingly Bottom Line is an investigative feature on KTNV and not a new reality show with women vying to be chorus girls in Las Vegas.
Sarah Palin was all over the news being called the "rock star" of the Tea Party gathering that weekend.
Tedd Florendo on KLAS was my favourite weatherman from the Vegas market. He was energetic and likeable during his forecasts. (And no rabbit hatred from what I could tell...)
March 28th
More fun with advertising, as I caught an ad on KTNV for Chad Golightly, and took a pic of his billboard that same weekend!
There was also a commercial for Circus Circus, which is followed by a pic that I took when I passed by their building!
Though I didn't see her live, American Idol Finalist Mikalah Gordon popped up on KVVU, rounding out a weekend where I saw finalists Trenyce and David Hernandez live at Krave nightclub! (The captioning hilariously calls her "American Mikalah Gordon"...)
Either it's the premise for a great new game show, or just a report about Ann Coulter, but KVBC titled their report "Conservative Or Controversial?" Look at the graphic - it's amazing! It was technically "CanCon in the US" as the stories were centered around Ann's talk at an Ottawa University getting canceled. (KVBC's Gerald Ramalho, below, introduced the story.)
During Earth Hour, I was watching TV and taking pictures....sorry.....
PBS (KVLX) was showing a great Nature special about mating habits of various creatures, including the spiders below.
March 29th
Other notable Vegas news personalities were Tina Patel on KTNV and Sophia Choi on KVBC (right along with that Vegas backdrop again!)
I really Juanted to see more of this solider! There was a ceremony in Las Vegas welcoming back some of the brave women and men who have been serving in the Army.
It was a great vacation, but unfortunately by March 29th, it was time for us to be leaving Las Vegas.
Special mention goes to KGNG, which I haven't photo recapped yet, but is a Vegas home shopping station that had SIX digital channels! I might recap them if I get around to making "Vacation Channel Guides" for Las Vegas and Santa Maria. All in all, I had a wonderful trip and enjoyed seeing what OTA reception looked like in cities I would never be able to catch at home! (Unless I finally achieve a digital E-Skip with Las Vegas' KVBC, which broadcasts on RF2...fingers crossed...heh...)
Click here for the full Flickr gallery of vacation reception for March 20-29, 2010!
Stay tuned to TV Garth for more reception reports and TV related fun!
You discovered one of the quirks of the FCC requirements in this country. Digital subchannels are required to carry the silly E/I programming just as primary channels are. KTHV 11-2 (aka "THV2") decided on April 24 to air theirs while severe weather was active (including tornado warnings) in Southeastern Arkansas.
ReplyDeleteThe E/I requirement although well intentioned is a joke. Old programs (such as "Saved By The Bell", and others got repackaged and got a E/I bug stamped on them. E/I also hastened the end of most US Saturday morning cartoons on OTA television (which were going out of fashion due to cable, aging audiences, but E/I was the big catalyst for the end of that era).
BTW: extra points for drag screenshots. Now if you can only DX Pandora Boxx :)
I remember the first time I saw Rochester's weather subchannel WHEC-DT, and wondered why they were running "Jack Hanna's Animal Adventures" mid-afternoon...heh.... I've heard the requirements for subchannels in Canada are even *more* strict that the US, which is why none of them have any at the moment.
ReplyDeleteI would love to DX Pandora...heh...what did you think of the Drag Race finale? I got so tired of Raven's hatred of Tatianna towards the end. Plus, the life of the show seemed to dampen when Pandora left. I'm tempted to Greyhound it down to Rochester to see her perform....plus it would be neat to see one of my fave DX cities :-)