Breakfast with Mark and Kim... I love them!!!

Took a while for me to type this up, but Wednesday was a great day...

On Tuesday morning I heard on Kost as I was running Steph to school to e-mail the station if you want to attend a breakfast with the morning DJs Mark & Kim on Wednesday morning. I listen to Mark & Kim every morning and they were at the new CBS/KCAL broadcast center. I figured that would be a once in a lifetime thing to see, so I shot them an e-mail. I want to go into journalism/broadcasting, so I couldn't pass up the possibility of getting to do this. I got a call at 3p.m. on Tuesday saying I won and am invited to go. Told my parents and there was some jealousy.

Anyways, I went to bed at 9 Tuesday night, fell asleep by 10, and was up at 3:30a.m. I figured out I could have slept another 45 minutes, but because of all the freeway construction I played it safe. Anyways, I got to the CBS studios at 5:45, 15 minutes early. I was the 2nd person to arrive. Went to the conference room and soon enough people started showing. Surprisingly it was people my age for the mostpart- a junior who goes to CSUF, her friend, and another girl who I recognize cuz I've seen her enough at Disneyland (I think that's sad when I've gone enough, I know the employees on a certain ride). I thought the target age of Mark and Kim's audience was 25-44 or something like that. There were about 10-15 of us. Mark and Kim did their radio show and came back and forth while all of us were in the conference room. They talked to us and made random smalltalk. They served bagels, muffins (good muffins at that), grapes, strawberries, and a bunch of other fruit. I was kind of expecting eggs, sausage, and whatnot, but it was neat and it was nice that they fed us, so I had no complaints.

At 6:10, they asked us to go into the broadcast center with Mark and Kim because we were going to be on TV. They had us line up behind Mark and Kim who were sitting at the news desk and they talked back and forth to the anchors. I was behind Mark's head the first time. The 2nd time around we were on air from 6:50-7:00a.m. when Suzanne and Kent were talking to Mark and Kim. I was behind Kim this time, so everyone could see me. I was on TV today... yay!!!

CLICK TO SEE ME ON TV--- IT IS THE LAST 2 LINKS ON THE RIGHT OF THE PAGE.

At 7:00a.m. Suzanne Rico came out and talked to Mark and Kim on their radio show and talked to the guests (us). She was sooooooooo sweet. She really was. She was full of energy and just the sweetest lady. I will admit, seeing her on TV at times, I got a different vibe, but she really was so sweet. She wanted to take us all, show us the anchor desk, the weather green screen, the control room, EVERYTHING. She did. We got to see her do her Early Show cut-in for the weather, traffic, and news. Vera Jiminez, the traffic reporter was just as sweet and showed us how she does the traffic and all the technology that she has now that they are in HD. We also saw the KCAL 9 studios.

I saw Kent Shocknek in the hall, Jaime Garza walking to and from his desk, new reporter Dave Malkoff, Rick Chambers, Randy Paige, and Dave Gonzalez (all anchors and reporters who I've watched for many years). After seeing those people and getting to walk around, we came back to see Mark and Kim, they had KOST goodie bags for us with t-shirts etc. (very cool), and CBS also did commemorating their new studios. Very cool also.While sitting there I also got to see Jackie Johnson and Sandra Mitchell. Sandra Mitchell was also just as sweet as can be. She seems like she is on camera, but this just confirmed it. It was amazing to see all the work Mark and Kim are doing during the breaks operating the computers and stuff like that... it was just crazy!!!

By this time it was 10:00a.m. and time to leave, but it was so cool. YAY!!! It was so worth getting up at 3:30a.m. I'd do it again if I could. It was just amazing. I'm mainly just describing who I saw because people who read this blog probably know the names more than anything, but the technology was incredible. The control room and all the computers, all the desks for the news writers, the HD studio, the SIZE of the new studio for KCAL and KCBS both are about 5,000 square feet. All the technology for the traffic- it sometimes changes as Vera does her traffic reporters. The feeds she gets will say traffic is moving at 65mph in an area, then suddenly 35, so it changes as she was on air. All of the cameras at KCBS/KCAL are now remote control and so nobody is operating them, which was an incredible thought all in its own. Got to see the teleprompters in motion and how sometimes they go really fast, and other times really slow. It was crazy. Something I may get to read one day... heh... we can hope. Totally worth missing a day of work... 3.5 hours to go to this...