While the rest of you rang in New Year in style and then gently awoke on New Year’s Day to sleep off a hangover… I was already at work. For the 4th year in a row, January 1 was just a work day. (People ask how I stay so young looking? THAT’s how. It’s still 2006 to me as I have not had a proper New Year since then!)
Once again, I covered the parade this year for WPHL and got to the broadcast compound around 7am, which also means I was asleep, AGAIN this year as the clock struck midnight the night before. Extra early wake up call this year because we were short a person on our production team.
And speaking of my team, the WPHL Mummers Team knocked it out of the park this year. Again. As much as it sucks to work a holiday, working with those colleagues that work on Mummers Day, makes it a pleasure. And we set all kinds of interactive records and got 1,000s of happy comments from the stream message board we set up, so… all in all, great Mummers Day. Here we are in our web den that Liz Naughton, the producer of the parade for the last 15 years set us up in… (Our success begins with her being kind enough to give us this space in the production compound!)
No finer team has been assembled! These folks are to event web production what Team Zissou is to scuba! (Seriously! Any big web event at the station they come up big…Mud Run, Wing Bowl, Polar Bear Plunge to name a few! ). They start when the event starts and work til it’s shot and published. No 9-5 mentality, which is the secret of our success. We do “soft news” HARD–because — even soft news is only news when people still care… in the 24/7 media cycle… that is not long at all.
Here are some other images and highlights from my Mummers day. It used to be a real labor of labor for me to sacrifice my holiday for a parade that I was never really into, but I have grown to really enjoy it. Great job as always by my friends at WPHL, Liz Naughton Parade Producer and of course, the people in the parade, and the voice of the Mummers, Steve Highsmith.
