Interviews

Glee's Sue Sylvester, the sassy cheerleader coach, is getting married on the November 23rd outing of the popular Fox series. Sylvester's real life alter ego, actress Jane Lynch won't say who her character is marrying, but she is talking about the wedding gown, or rather, wedding outfit.

According to Xfinity, Lynch stated, "The dress is so awesome. It’s by Ali Rahimi, the guy who actually did my whole outfit and [my outfits for the] Emmy and Golden Globe awards. He’s a great designer. He made a Sue Sylvester tracksuit wedding dress.”
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Darin Brooks is one of the most exciting young actors to come along since Tom Cruise skidded to box office gold in "Risky Business". He stars as Alex Moran in "Blue Mountain State", Spike's hilariously vulgar football themed comedy, a show so sexually charged you should wrap a condom around your remote. I spoke with Darin Brooks in conjunction with the release of "Blue Mountain State" season one on DVD just as season two is getting underway and earning big ratings again for SPIKE.

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I asked Darin to describe "Blue Mountain State".

Darin: Wow. I don't know how to describe it, it's in the vein of "Animal House" and "Porky's", like "Van Wilder". I'd say it's our generation's version of "Porky's" but with more raunch and edge to it. I play Alex Moran, a second string quarterback who goes to this all football college, Blue Mountain State University. He's got the talent to be first string but he just wants to sit back and ride the bench so that he can party and drink and get laid and have fun as much as he can without the responsibility.
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I am honored to have a friend, Mojopo (her well known internet name) that recently began to attend Second City Training Center. She was kind enough to take time out of her schedule to grant me a short interview.

Second City is not only a nickname for the City of Chicago, Illinois, but the name of an improvisational comedy enterprise, that started in 1959 in Chicago. They also have a presence in Toronto and Los Angeles. Many of you may remember the spin off television show Second City TV started by the group in Toronto that premise was to be a small independent TV station. I having worked in TV most of my life, found it to be excellent play on real life at working at a small station. Most though of Second City Training Center's fame is now their long list of famous graduates. Many of the stars you know on Saturday Night Live studied there. A small list includes Tina Fey, where she met Amy Poehler, who have both gone on to star in their own TV shows, 30 Rock and Parks and Recreations. All of the memorable original cast of SNL attended including John Belushi, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner and Dan Aykroyd. The list goes on and on, but there is little doubt that Second City Training Center has shaped much of the television comedy over the last 40 years.


What is Second City?

The Second City has specialized in sketch comedy and improvisation for 50 years, here in Chicago. I am a student at the Second City Training Center, enrolled in the writing program. Second City has companies based in Chicago, Toronto and Los Angeles.
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I'm pleased to announce an exclusive interview with Jake Newkirk of JakesDTVBlog.com. Jake's in-depth coverage of the digital transition and over-the-air broadcasters in Kentucky and surrounding areas has been second to none. Before we begin, I'd like to thank Jake for taking the time to answer these questions.

Firstly, Jake, can you tell us a little about yourself and your website?

I've always been interested in television. Fascinated would probably be a better word. When I was a kid, TV was just amazing. I'd ask, "How does this stuff work?" And, while I drifted into a different kind of media when I got older -- I was a newspaper reporter for a couple of small newspapers -- and tried several other lines of work, TV was always my hobby, along with computers.

My website, JakesDTVBlog.com or JDTVB for short -- which started out, as you can find if you look back through the "archives" there, pretty primitively -- was basically just to chronicle my own experiences with DTV. It then just sort of "blossomed" into covering the Evansville, Bowling Green, Louisville and Nashville markets by accident, really. I'd e-mail a station and, lo and behold, they'd answer my questions, and I'd think, "Man, this should be a blog entry!" And so it went.

Now, of course, I've taken a lot of inspiration from and get a lot of great info from a number of websites. Trip's RabbitEars.info is at the top of that list. If you want all the info on the technical side of a station, you absolutely have to start there.

What got you interested in digital television?

I can't remember exactly when it happened, but when I was in high school, I saw a TV show that demonstrated what HDTV was all about. I thought, "Well, this is really something." But it wasn't until about five years ago that I actually bought a digital TV. It was one of those monstrous Sanyo 32" sets from Wal-Mart that gave everyone such trouble. I think I paid about $750 for it, and as folks found out what junk it was, it dropped in price and they eventually quit selling them all together. Mine didn't last long, but anyway, once I saw what DTV was all about and what our local stations offered with it, I was hooked.

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I'm happy to announce DTVUSAForum's first ever interview with webmaster Trip Ericson of RabbitEars.Info. If you ever want to know what DTV stations are available in your city/market, visit Trip's Digital TV Market Listings area. Before we begin, I'd like to personally thank Trip for taking the time to answer these questions and help out at DTV USA Forum.

1. Trip, please tell us about yourself.

I am a 20-year old student of the University of Virginia who is studying Electrical Engineering. I've held an interest in TV for as long as I can remember, ever since one time around age 4 I saw stations in the newspaper listings that we could not receive on the TV and wondered why. At age 6, my family moved to Virginia from New Jersey. In rural Virginia, stations from surrounding cities were very common catches, and did a lot to help promote my interest in television.

I got into digital TV when I was a fan of a TV show that got moved from the local Fox station to the local WB station. The WB station was digital-only, so I purchased a Hauppauge WinTV-D in early 2003 and was able to use it to watch not just WB, but WDBJ had subchannels as well. Later in 2003, I bought a Zenith HDV420 and a USB analog receiver to use in the car, which was probably among the first "mobile digital TV" rigs outside professional circles.

Once I started RabbitEars, I became better known and now I have many contacts with many station engineers. I'm presently interning at WDBJ in Roanoke where I spend a decent amount up on Poor Mountain and I spent some time taking phone calls right after the transition. I'm hoping to become a broadcast consulting engineer or broadcast lawyer or something along those lines, given how much time I've spent reading and understanding FCC filings and docmentation.

2. I also understand that you're a licensed Technician-class ham radio operator. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

I met the President of the Ham Radio Club at UVA through Slashdot.org. They had a story about digital television in which I posted a comment. He visited my website and discovered that I went to UVA. I met him and he introduced me to ham radio, which is basically non-commercial point-to-point communication. A few months later, the club held a testing session and I am now licensed as KJ4IEA. I am the Secretary for the club in the upcoming school year.

Ham radio is quite an interesting thing. There are ham bands all over the spectrum, including near the AM and shortwave bands. With very little power, it's possible to communicate with people around the world on the right frequencies. My interest, however, lies more with VHF and UHF. Of course, not all ham radio is audio, there's also sending images, slow-scan TV, packet (sending data), and on UHF, it's possible to do amateur TV. As long as it's non-commercial and involves RF, you can probably do it with ham radio.

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