Monday, June 18, 2001
'One Day' profiles people in unique jobs
By John Kiesewetter
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Today's One Day: Cyber Cincinnati special sounds like a tour of the city's new digital companies in Over-the-Rhine, but it isn't.
In fact, most of the hour features people and places miles from the inner city.
What we wanted to do was define "technology' as broadly as possible, says Jim Friedman, the local independent producer who created, wrote and produced the special (8 p.m., Channel 9).
His second day-in-the-life WCPO-TV special includes University of Cincinnati students designing a Formula One race car; armored car designers in Fairfield; a roller coaster engineer at Paramount King's Island in Warren County; Procter & Gamble Co. scientists; a Children's Hospital Medical Center heart specialist; and the Cincinnati Zoo Center for the Reproduction of Endangered Wildlife.
Cyber Cincinnati,taped April 24, talks about the Digital Rhine, but doesn't spend much time there. You'll see Mike Love and David Hanna from Microsoft Solutions and some folks at Kaldi's Coffee House, and that's about it.
Technology changes daily. So if we focused on the technology, the show would be obsolete quickly, Mr. Friedman explains. What we thought was interesting were the people.
As with all of his specials, Mr. Friedman has found Tristate people with fascinating jobs:
Mike Reynolds of Fairfield's O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt Armoring Co. designs armored vehicles used around the world.
The biggest challenge we have for common passenger vehicles is to make them look like they're not armored, so they don't stand out in a crowd, he says.
Brandon Berry, a Hughes Center senior, who serves 250 Internet clients from his bedroom computer.
Brian Meade, a Taft High School student whose involvement with the Cyberstar computer repair club kept him from dropping out of school.
Terri Roth, the Cincinnati Zoo scientist waiting for a rhinoceros to give birth.
Mike Snyder, a Fairfield City Council member who shares his love for the theater by doing descriptive audio for the blind at Playhouse in the Park. It's like a play-by-play announcer on the radio. What we're doing is just filling in the visuals for people, he says.
Joe Harkins, the Cincinnati Reds employee who logs every pitch from every at-bat in a computer so each player can see his performance with one click of a mouse. (You can't see the players actually do it, because the Reds were in San Francisco April 24.)
Mr. Friedman also turned the cameras on One Day soundtrack composer Wes Boatman, as the Emmy-winner recorded music in his Anderson Township basement for NBC's Passions.
One Day was produced in cooperation with the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce. It will be presented bywww.cincytechusa.com, the chamber's Web site for the Regional Technology Initiative.
Enquirering Mind: This Enquirering mind wanted to know: Why does WLW-AM (700) talk host Scott Sloan say everyone deserves another chance in a station promotional spot?
Because Mr. Sloan, the Toledo-based talk host who airs 9 p.m.-midnight when the Reds aren't playing, was suspended from Toledo's WSPD-AM in November 1999 for saying that the Rev. Jesse Jackson wanted to be assassinated.
Yes, that's right: WLW-AM replaced J.R. Gach, the guy who made racist remarks about the Japanese (yellow monkeys) with Mr. Sloan, who made insensitive remarks about the Rev. Mr. Jackson.
Mr. Sloan said on his Nov. 17, 1999, show that the Rev. Mr. Jackson intervened after a racial incident in Decatur, Ill., in order to be a martyr like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The civil rights leader was shot in 1968 while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.
Mr. Sloan then called the Lorraine Hotel in Miami and asked if the rooms had balconies. All we need now is a shooter, he said on the air.
Executives at the Clear Channel station suspended Mr. Sloan for a week without pay and ordered him to attend a two-day sensitivity seminar. While leaving the seminar in January 2000, he made an obscene gesture with his finger at a Toledo newspaper photographer.
Darryl Parks, director of AM operations for Cincinnati Clear Channel stations, hired Mr. Sloan to replace Mr. Gach in February. He does his late-night WLW-AM show from Toledo, after his local Toledo show.
Asked about the Toledo incident, Mr. Parks says: I have made mistakes, so has he (Mr. Sloan) and you. Certainly we all grow with life experiences. And he has.
TV notes: CNN's Charles Bierbauer will retire when the current U.S. Supreme Court term ends, probably later this month. Mr. Bierbauer, 58, was ABC's Moscow bureau chief before joining CNN in 1981.
The fifth season of Richard Dean Anderson's Stargate SG-1 premieres June 29 (10 p.m., Showtime). The series is based on the 1994 film Stargate.
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