Snowstorm

By Kevin Lovell, General Manager, KVIA-TV

I awakened last Saturday to a pile of snow in my upper Westside backyard. Doppler Dave Speelman had accurately predicted snowfall but I didn’t expect this much.

My background is news and when I see news or severe weather, as in this case, I always turn in my general manager’s suit for the news reporter lunch pail.

I began by closely monitoring the remainder of Good Morning El Paso Weekend. Here’s where we absolutely kill our news competitors. News Comes First at ABC 7 and no other media outlets in El Paso produce weekend morning news. We had anchors Martin Bartlett and Ashlie Hardway giving all of the necessary snow updates and traffic reports on this wintry November day.

Weathercaster Troy Barrett joined Martin outside to report the forecast and elaborate on the weather conditions. Two live reports in the field plus solid in-house coverage with very limited available resources made me proud to be part of KVIA-TV.

I called in with a few pats on the back and recommendations. I later discovered that at least five employees came in on their own volition during their day off to bolster our coverage. Operations manager Chris Swann brought in snow video and established morning live shots. Assignment editor Chris Babcock provided home video from Horizon City. News director Eric Huseby, executive producer Fran Tucker and producer Andy Cohen came in.

Our coverage wasn’t perfect. We failed to provide as many weather updates during the afternoon as I would have liked. We were handicapped because we didn’t want to unnecessarily disturb the college football viewing audience. I noticed that other El Paso news competitors had mobilized their weather reporting forces by Saturday afternoon.

We cannot be the news source for everyone and it’s important that all news media alert the viewing public to potentially hazardous weather events. If it’s all the same to you, I’m hoping we return to our normal weather pattern and I can watch my football in peace this weekend.

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