OKC to be on NBC Nightly news, Mon Apr 18

[HOT ROD]

Hello everyone.

As you may or may not know, NBC will host the nightly news from downtown Oklahoma City on Monday Apr 18, 2005. They plan to show how the city has turned out since the bombing 10 years ago.

Im sure they will highlight all of the downtown landmarks and districts, with emphasis on the OKC National Memorial, Bricktown, the Arts District, Ford Centre, SBC Bricktown Ballpark, the river, and the CBD.

I STRONGLY encourage everyone to spend time downtown during this time. We need to send out the image that our downtown is booming and happening. This may not always be reflected on a Monday evening, but since the city will be in the national spotlight - we should make up the difference.

I would say, we need people at each of the aforementioned sites, with emphasis on Bricktown, the canal, the CBD and the river. There should already be plenty of people at the Memorial.

We have an excellent opportunity to turn tragic memory in American History into a positive message about the Renaissance of Oklahoma City. Our city is truly amazing when compared to just 10 years ago and we need to get that message out!!

Patrick, do you want to develop a list of venues for people to "sit"during the hours of 4pm - 8pm? If people dont want to get out and walk or shop, then just drive your cars around downtown during this time!

Hopefully the broadcast locations will be easy to find, as such they should be primary points for us to bash with our presence!

Continue the Renaissance.

[Karried]

Hotrod, I'm with you, seriously, as strange as it may sound, this is an excellent opportunity to show how OKC has recovered and turned a horrible tragedy into something that Oklahoman's can be proud of...

Working together to prevent future tragedies and rebuilding our city together is something to be proud of......

Okay, everyone, please, please, no overalls, no mullets, no Rebel flags, put your teeth in before giving an interview and leave the mobile home parked at the mobile home park - put the gun rack down. Bring a can cover for your Bud Light while walking down the street.....and

practice saying, " I am proud of the diversity and acceptance that Oklahoman's are demonstrating on a daily basis"

Do not and I repeat, do not spit tobacco on the camera lens during an interview and please refrain from holding up a peace sign behind the reporter's head and shouting out
HI Momma! while he is interviewing a fellow Oklahoman.

Just teasing, I hope I can come downtown, I think it will be interesting .....

[mranderson]

I will add. Take a crash course in proper grammar and etiquite, no sound bites that go "that just don't happen here" (in a stong hillbilly drawl), leave the baseball caps, cowboy boots, belt buckles that are so large they cover your naval, put the lasso away, and address Cindy Lou as Cynthia.

[floater]

Lol. All good suggestions Thanks Hot Rod.

[Keith]

I am certainly going to try to be downtown Monday evening. I want the media to see how OKC has bounced back from a tragedy.

Plus, a reminder of what happened 10 years ago.



In loving memory of Kim Cousins, and the many innocent children that died that day.

In honor of Rita Cruz and Tom Hall who are still recovering mentally and physically from the wounds they received.

A special thanks to all of the medical personnel, and the tireless rescuers, who worked feverishly for weeks and weeks looking for survivors.

We will never forget you.............................

[HOT ROD]

Great to hear everyone!!!

It looks like CBS and ABC will be in the city also. There are already documentaries being air'd now, but I think Monday they will do a live broadcast at various locations downtown.

Yes, no pick-up trucks! Leave them at I-40 viaduct and walk into downtown! That will give us much needed pedestrian traffic!!!

I wish I were in the city!!! This will be a great exposure moment for OKC, to show what we have to offer while at-the-same-time remembering the past horror!

Continue the Renaissance!

[Curt]

Wish I could be there.

[Pete]

Have it all set up to TiVo.

Hope to get some good screen captures and video clips to post later.

[metro]

Don't forget to show up Tuesday and all week for that matter, not just Monday, even more cameras and crews will be downtown Tuesday and all week. Also alot on Saturday for the marathon. We need tons of pedestrian traffic!

[Karried]

Channel 5 will be doing a live feed starting at 5:00am for those out of state.....KOCO 5

[Luke]

I was there this evening. My mom and dad saw me on NBC Nightly News.

Check out my blog for pics.

http://theoklahoman.blogspot.com

[metro]

Karried, I think you meant to say, for those out of state, www.channeloklahoma.com has a live video stream

[Karried]

Metro, You took the words right out of my mouth - thanks -

I forgot, we have to use our best manners and punctuation since we are in the National Spotlight.


What do you think of the coverage so far? It still looks a little barren. We are going down tomorrow to add some pedestrian traffic.

[HOT ROD]

OKC looks great; NBC did a wonderful story tonite (Tue).

[JOHNINSOKC]

Did NBC Nightly News show any views of our city other than the area around the Memorial? How about showing the physical progress that the city has made since 1995?

[metro]

From the stations I watched, CNBC, CNN, FOXNEWS and the local stations, I did not see any other shots other than the memorial area which is not exactly a great view of downtown since it is kind of on a hill and alot of the downtown area does not make it in a photo shot.

[mranderson]

From the stations I watched, CNBC, CNN, FOXNEWS and the local stations, I did not see any other shots other than the memorial area which is not exactly a great view of downtown since it is kind of on a hill and alot of the downtown area does not make it in a photo shot.

Plus, a lot of the area surrounding the memorial is not a good reflection on Oklahoma City.

[floater]

The Cleveland Plain Dealer ran John Kifner's New York Times article and featured this front-page headline under the fold: "Oklahoma City retains wounds even as it thrives 10 years later". From the top to the headline was a huge photo of a mother and daughter mourning in the midst of the memorial chairs.

It was from this paragraph:

"The bombing was devastating - "Oklahoma City will never be the same," a reporter, Penny Owen, wrote on the front page of the next morning's Daily Oklahoman under a banner headline "Morning of Terror." But this is now a bustling place, with a spruced-up business district packed with new hotels, stadiums and a convention center; a renovated factory area called Bricktown attracting crowds to restaurants, bars and shops; and an annual arts festival, canceled the year of the bombing, now running alongside the weeklong memorial."


Anyway, in terms of coverage, only Bill Weir's report on Good Morning America showed present-day footage including Bricktown (from what I saw). CNN ran a good documentary-type feature Monday night that will be re-shown this weekend. I missed the ceremony inside the Methodist church, but C-SPAN replayed it last night. All in all, I wish there was more coverage of present-day OKC, but you can understand the media for focusing on those touching individual stories.

[NewPlains]

ABC last night mentioned briefly that "the city itself has prospered" with some nice shots of busy downtown streets and the new library. I think maybe the idea that the 10th anniversary would be a PR coup for the city is a little overblown; reporters want to cover the story, and the story isn't bricktown or the ford center or MAPS for Kids, the story is the bombing. There is nothing unusual or noteworthy about an entertainment district or a large arena to someone who lives in manhattan, and most of the people coming here now weren't here 10 years ago and have nothing to compare it to, so the angle of the city's recovery isn't going to be obvious to them. If any of those other things even make it into a story it's usually going to be as an aside, with the WSJ article being a notable exception. I think that there are two important things the anniversary will do from an image standpoint: the first is simply to remind the rest of the country about the bombing and our city's incredible response to it, the second is that we were hopefully able to leave a good impression on the hundreds of reporters and other media types who flew in for the anniversary. That might not seem like much, but a good impression on a few influential people can go a long way.

[floater]

ABC last night mentioned briefly that "the city itself has prospered" with some nice shots of busy downtown streets and the new library. I think maybe the idea that the 10th anniversary would be a PR coup for the city is a little overblown; reporters want to cover the story, and the story isn't bricktown or the ford center or MAPS for Kids, the story is the bombing. There is nothing unusual or noteworthy about an entertainment district or a large arena to someone who lives in manhattan, and most of the people coming here now weren't here 10 years ago and have nothing to compare it to, so the angle of the city's recovery isn't going to be obvious to them. If any of those other things even make it into a story it's usually going to be as an aside, with the WSJ article being a notable exception. I think that there are two important things the anniversary will do from an image standpoint: the first is simply to remind the rest of the country about the bombing and our city's incredible response to it, the second is that we were hopefully able to leave a good impression on the hundreds of reporters and other media types who flew in for the anniversary. That might not seem like much, but a good impression on a few influential people can go a long way.

You hit the nail on the head, Newplains.

[HOT ROD]

ABC last night mentioned briefly that "the city itself has prospered" with some nice shots of busy downtown streets and the new library. I think maybe the idea that the 10th anniversary would be a PR coup for the city is a little overblown; reporters want to cover the story, and the story isn't bricktown or the ford center or MAPS for Kids, the story is the bombing. There is nothing unusual or noteworthy about an entertainment district or a large arena to someone who lives in manhattan, and most of the people coming here now weren't here 10 years ago and have nothing to compare it to, so the angle of the city's recovery isn't going to be obvious to them. If any of those other things even make it into a story it's usually going to be as an aside, with the WSJ article being a notable exception. I think that there are two important things the anniversary will do from an image standpoint: the first is simply to remind the rest of the country about the bombing and our city's incredible response to it, the second is that we were hopefully able to leave a good impression on the hundreds of reporters and other media types who flew in for the anniversary. That might not seem like much, but a good impression on a few influential people can go a long way.

Excellent point.

But I only wanted to try to use the national exposure to show OKC as a prosperous urban city. It is great to remember the past, but what about now?

Also, OKC had long enjoyed (reluctantly) a very bad image of destitution and people heading for Cali (in the Grapes of Wrath). Around the nation, there are still people with this image for Oklahoma, not so much OKC anymore - as nearly everyone knows OKC is a big city now.

BUT, I just thought it would be nice to show OKC in a positive light, at a time when we remember the past and have the national exposure. I notice that although events occur in OKC and are covered nationally, the media does not do enough to "show" Oklahoma City. They just shoot the arena and the event, not downtown or the city. I thought this could be different and perhaps the beginning of the end of the event only coverage for Oklahoma City.

But to everyone who went and is going downtown during the week - Thanks. You may not get covered during this week BUT any effort we can make to show OKC as a vibrant urban downtown will be remembered by those who came to cover the Bombing anniversary, as well as those who come downtown in the future.

It was not necessarily to seed downtown just once, but a plea for all of us to support downtown. Whenever I visit Oklahoma City, I stay in downtown hotels - I stay downtown nearly everywhere I go but make it a point to do so in OKC.

I hope you all feel (and act) the same way in supporting downtown Oklahoma City. You're right, people in New York may not care too much about urban Oklahoma City - but at the same time, most of them probably dont even realize that Oklahoma City has skyscrapers either!

[NewPlains]

You make some very good points; it's vital to support downtown, and vital to address our image problem; I think that at this point our main problem is not that people think badly of OKC, it's that people don't think about OKC at all, and in that way, the anniversary WAS a great opportunity for us. Oddly enough, I think that it's probably going to be easier to sell ourselves as a great city to places on the coasts that have no opinion of OKC (or at most a general but unfounded distaste for the middle of the country) then it will be to convince other regional cities like KC, Dallas and Tulsa. Regional rivalries die hard.

I didn't mean to knock the sentiment of getting out and supporting downtown, obviously vacant streets wouldn't have been a good thing for the national media to broadcast everywhere, but they were sent out here to cover the bombing anniversary, and that's what they did. I think the best PR we got out of this will be all of the AP staff reporters and NBC news cameramen and second string anchors who probably stayed downtown or near downtown, probably went out to dinner in bricktown, maybe went to a museum or wandered around the arts festival- when they go home and someone asks "how was okc?" and they say "actually, it seems like a great place", that's as important as any televised shot of the canal.

[HOT ROD]

yes, we agree.

[Karried]

I agree as well, I just thank God that CNN didn't broadcast over and over, our poor elderly bagpiper falling down the stairs in his kilt - while leading the crowd out of the church to the Memorial ....

[mranderson]

Since this has turned into a thread about national coverage in general, I will mention the following.

I was cruising the channels last night and ran into "Nightline." They were interviewing Jim Couch. They dedicated the entire program on Oklahoma City. Part was telling about what we had done since. Coverage was very intensely focused on Bricktown, and showed some great shots we can all be proud of.

In addition, they interviewed some members of the fire department who were there at the time of the bombing. One was interviewed in front of engine 51, I do not recall his name, but he was one of the most professional interview subjects I have seen in years from Oklahoma City.

Thanks "Nightline." We are proud of you and greatful for the great coverage.