Cleveland Regional Chapter Serving Bloomington, Ft. Wayne, Indianapolis, Indiana; Akron, Canton, Cleveland, Lima, Mansfield, Toledo, Youngstown, Ohio; Erie, Pennsylvania President's Message Greeting & Salutations Fellow NATAS Members, wish to congratulate our editor Charles (Bud) Ford on his extraordi- nary contributions to our Chapter’s I PR efforts. He and his team of re- porters and writers have done an outstand- ing job of giving you, our members, the opportunity to see what is going on throughout our regional chapter. We are always looking for your feedback and input. If you’ve got a story or want to make recommendations on how we can incorporate additional items or features in our newsletter, don’t hesitate to contact me or Bud. Now, on to current events. As you have noted over the past year, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has been getting a lot of national attention for its events, and develop- ment of new categories. We in the Cleveland Regional Chapter are poised to follow suit, and you will be seeing some changes and new categories coming up in next year’s call for entries, but Spring 2006 Spring before we look at next year, how about this year. The judging has been completed and the nominations are set to be announced June 8th at Cleveland’s Tequila Ranch. The party begins at 6 PM with the announcements starting after 7 PM. I hope you have marked it on your calendar. It promises to be a fun evening for all including the unveiling of the new regional Emmy statu- ette which is quite dynamic. For those of you who can’t attend, we are working on making the event available through streaming media. This has not been finalized but we are putting a con- certed effort into “making it so.” Plans for the upcoming Emmy Awards Gala are well under- way and the big event is scheduled for September 9th at LaCentre by Signature in Westlake, OH. The venue is outstanding and we have some great things lined up including the presentation of a new special award for stations who have organized and contrib- uted airtime and personnel to disaster relief in the wake of the Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. More info will be forthcoming, including the announcement of this year’s host. As always, the Chapter is only what you, our members, make it. Your participation and continued support of the board’s efforts are crucial. We welcome your involvement in events and ongoing efforts sponsored by the Chapter. I hope you will take the opportunity to join our team in making our Chapter the best chapter in the country. Best of luck to all of you in the May Book and I look forward to a rip roarin’ good time at the Emmy Awards Nominations Party at the Tequila Ranch on Thursday, June 8th. Confession of an Editor in Search of Authors t hasn’t been writer’s block. No, it’s been more like that much used expression in business and news re- porting: Transparency. Transparency to the “nth de- I gree.” Recently, your friendly NATAS Newsletter editor has been so transparent, there are those who claim he’s invisible. A moving target is hard to hit, but a transparently invisible one – impossible to reach. I could cop the usual plea that I’ve been on assignment, but that would not be transparent. Bud Ford My critics would at least like to see an outline of the Newsletter Editor physical me so they can take some shots at my transparent entity. In answer to "Where is your transparent newsletter?," I can only say that all 150 pounds of my protoplasm is back and batting out this edition for all to see. Rest assured this Editor’s transparency will be evident in all that we write and report. We have nothing to hide … no hidden agendas. We’re only trying to get out a newsletter every month or two to let you know what’s going on in our Chapter region with our NATAS members. We hope all of you who read this newsletter, will be forthcoming with some very visible (albeit transparent) leads to stories and events occurring in your stations and production companies that we can write about. I especially need to hear from our members in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Toledo and Youngstown. We’re also looking for authors who would like to express their thoughts in a commentary, editorial, opinion piece or straight reportage. Keep those e-mails, cards, letters and phone calls rolling in to: [email protected] - 216-767-0331. Hi Def Doc Premieres on WGTE-TV oledo’s WGTE-TV has produced a new 60-minute high-definition television docu- mentary entitled “Lake Erie: Ohio’s Great Lake”. In the making for over a year — with principal digital videography starting T late in the summer and continuing into the winter months — over 70 hours of high-defini- tion footage was shot of the lake, the communities and the people who live along the water, the indus- tries that sprang up because of easy Great Lakes transportation, and the sport and commercial fish- ing enterprises spawned by Lake Erie. In addition, over 25 interviews were videotaped with historians, scholars and residents all over the state. Following extensive research, this original footage was augmented with archival photographs and historical film that was edited into the 60-minute final version of the documentary. This documentary was made possible, in part, by a grant from the Ohio Humanities Council (OHC), a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and while it profiles the importance of Lake Erie’s impact on the history, recreation and industry in Ohio, it also highlights how this invaluable natural resource influences virtually every aspect of our lives. In March, WGTE-TV hosted premiere screenings in Toledo at the WGTE studios, in Cleveland at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and in Port Clinton at the Lake Erie Islands Regional Welcome Center. Audiences engaged in a question and answer session following the screenings with Greg Tye, Senior Producer/Director of the program; Larry Nelson, Adjunct Assistant Professor at Bowling Green State University – Fireland’s Campus; and Dr. Randall Buchman, Professor Emeri- tus of History and Archaeology at Defiance College. Those audi- ences loved the documentary, and — depending on their special interests — would have liked it to include more of just about everything. Invited film students had plenty of questions about how the documentary was shot and edited. “Lake Erie: Ohio’s Great Lake” premiered on WGTE-TV on April 27 at 8 PM, and the docu- mentary has been made available to all public television stations in Ohio with some stations already committed to airing it. Senior Producer/Director Greg Tye, a ten- year veteran at WGTE, used a wide-net approach to the conception and development of “Lake Erie: Ohio’s Great Lake” in an effort to make this high definition program as inclusive as pos- sible. Greg summarized his thoughts with: “We feel that this documentary will help inspire re- flection on the historical importance of the lake and its land- scapes in shaping Ohio’s culture, industrial base, ethnicity and future.” The program ex- amines the geology of how the lake was cre- ated, the Native Ameri- can presence, the settle- ment of the state, the rec- reation the lake provides, and our impact on the lake itself. The documen- tary also illustrates the impact on our freedom, religions, economy, agriculture, recreation and industry by Lake Erie today. We learn that more fish are caught by sport and commercial fishermen on Lake Erie than all the other Great Lakes combined. There are more boats docked at Port Clinton than in San Diego. Lake Erie is a great tourist attraction with more charter boats than any of the other Great Lakes. Dr. Brian Redman, scholar at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, describes the early woodlands people who populated the shores of Lake Erie, the Iroquois Nation pushing out the Wyandotte, Ottawa and Delaware tribes, and the early white settlements leading up to the War of 1812. The program documents Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry’s capture of a squadron of British warships in the Battle of Lake Erie on September 10, 1813 — a victory that secured control of the lake for the United States and led to eventual peace talks ending the war in 1814. The whole future of the region and the nation was dictated by that significant event. During the course of production, the WGTE hi-def crew shot considerable footage from the decks of a replica of Perry’s sailing ship “Niagra.” But when Greg Tye went into editorial, he found that high defi- nition enhanced the feeling of motion so much that it made viewers seasick, so all that footage had to be scrapped. Shots of the Niagra replica from land are included in the documentary. WGTE-TV has been shooting programs in high definition for about a year, and this challenging documentary was shot by Phil Seija, a twenty-some year veteran videographer who has been associated with the station for over a de- cade. “Telling the story of Lake Erie is essential in the efforts to improve quality of life for all Ohioans while advocat- ing for the preservation and enhancement of the lake’s natural, historical and cultural resources,” con- cluded Darren LaShelle, Executive Producer and Di- rector of Television Broadcast Services for WGTE. Greg Tye has produced a variety of programs for WGTE over the past decade. A graduate of the University of Toledo, he first worked at WSPD radio.