Gold & Silver Circle Annual Induction Luncheon will be held on

Saturday, October 24, 2015

       "I am so grateful and so pleased to have founded this new non-profit charity to help deserving Bay Area children in need," adds Ashley, who anchors KGO-TV ABC7's evening newscasts. "My hope is that Rock the CASA will be a fun annual event that music fans, and fans of doing good, will look forward to every year."

      Work is in his blood - heart and soul - even while vacationing. Sacramento CBS13 Investigative Consumer Reporter Kurtis Ming is always on the job. His nose for news just doesn't stop. Ming recently returned from taking some time off, visiting beautiful Puerto Vallarta, one of Mexico's most popular destinations. Great weather this time of year invites warm ocean water snorkeling, fishing, and sailing.

KOVR's  Kurtis Ming

       However, Ming, while on that Mexican Riviera vacation, took a couple of days to work, sidestepping the gorgeous waterfalls, mountain ranges, and coastline for a couple of days to help a Sacramento area consumer in trouble. A possible time share fraud may turn into another groundbreaking, investigative story that could help make this world a better place.

       "I went to Puerto Vallarta with a coworker," Ming said. "Right before we left, I got a call from a viewer who needed me to investigate a time share fraud and it was in Puerto Vallarta. My co-worker said no way she was going to work while on vacation but I felt compelled to check out what was going on. Seems I am married to my career. I take vacation to work and work to vacation."

        The CBS13 investigative consumer franchise is Call Kurtis. The 36-year-old Ming has been with the Sacramento CBS O&O for 12 years now. He started consumer reporting at the station in 2006 and his segments run in both early and late newscasts. "I think what's neat is that it's a direct tie to the community," Ming said. "In my unit, we hear directly from viewers through emails or phone calls. It's very rewarding."

        Ming, along with a team of two producers, two photographers, and more than a dozen volunteers turn about two-hundred stories a year. He emphasizes that cracking consumer stories takes a team. "I am fortunate to work for a station that invests the resources and has been so supportive of helping viewers," Ming said. When all is said and done, the consumer segment has advocated on behalf of thousands of consumers and resolved countless disputes.

       A native of south San Francisco, Ming began his broadcasting career in radio. He's worked behind the scenes for Dateline NBC, KCOP in Los Angeles and KGO-TV in San Francisco. He started on-air in Redding, reporting, anchoring, and doing the weather at KRCR. After three years there, he worked as a reporter/anchor for CBS station KTVN in Reno.

       "I travel and visit my family in the Bay Area for fun," Ming said. "I'm kind of a boring guy." That's how Ming may describe himself but boring he is not. The past two years, he's taken a couple of those working vacations, one teaching broadcast journalism in Vietnam. The other, an east-west exchange program two-years-ago in Pakistan. "That was it," Ming said. "My mother put her foot down, saying she was worried about me throughout the whole time I was in Pakistan. No more dangerous travel she said."

       Ming and his investigative team have saved millions of dollars for consumers in the Sacramento region. He said that his most rewarding segment was about the California Medical Board's doctor drug and alcohol diversion program. "We started hearing from patients butchered at the hands of one doctor who had gotten a DUI," Ming said. "The doctor diversion program was failing audit after audit and patients were being harmed. Our investigation shut the program down."

       The reports became up close and personal for Ming. "I knew these victims very well," Ming said. "They were cancer patients having mastectomies and getting massive infections. The patients wanted the state to get rid of the program and all our hard work finally brought attention to the issue."

       Ming realizes the media has power and that he has a responsibility to help the community. He takes that responsibility seriously. His consumer reports have garnered him eight Emmy Awards and 24-nominations. "It's obviously an honor when peers recognize you for your work," Ming said. "I enter the work and prestige comes with the Emmy. But what I'm most passionate about is the work I do as a journalist whether we get a trophy or not."

      Ming has been approached by other markets but said that he's going to ride the CBS13 wave as long as it feels good. And right now, he said that he loves the job. "I'm fortunate to have that passion and to have something that's rewarding to me every day," Ming said. "It's fantastic."

     Joyce Mitchell is a Governor representing Sacramento on the Board of Governors of the San Francisco/Northern California Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. A former executive producer and producer at KCRA and KOVR in Sacramento, she is president of 4 U Productions. 

         If you think getting Alzheimer's disease is a just a consequence of bad genes or bad luck, think again. Researchers suggest you could have some control over your getting the disease.

         A UC Davis study revealed that healthy cholesterol levels not only keep your heart healthy, but your brain too. It is the first study to specifically link cholesterol to amyloid plaques in the brain of living human participants. Deposits of amyloid plaque (detected by a brain scan) are indicative of Alzheimer's disease.

         What is Amyloid Plaque? 

         Amyloid beta (or beta amyloid) is a protein necessary for normal brain activity. But, in the early stages of Alzheimers, this protein forms deposits, known as amyloid plaques, which disrupt communicationbetween nerve cells in your brain.   

         Cholesterol Levels Linked to Alzheimer's Risk 

         The study revealed the following are associated with higher levels of amyloid plaque deposits:

• High levels of LDL or "bad" cholesterol
• Low levels of HDL or "good" cholesterol

         Get Your HDL Up and LDL Down  

         Unhealthy patterns of cholesterol could directly contribute to Alzheimer's disease just as it promotes heart disease. Modify your lifestyle, diet and statin drug therapy to achieve these cholesterol levels (ideal for people at very high risk for heart disease):

• LDL (low-density lipoprotein): <70 mg/dL
• HDL (high-density lipoprotein): >60 mg/dL

        Fit Tip: Eating a diet high in soluble fiber can help reduce your LDL levels. Also, studies have shown that eating ground flaxseed can lower LDL's by 10%. Regular cardiorespiratory (aerobic) exercise is one of the most effective ways to raise your HDL's.

*Associations between serum cholesterol levels and cerebral amyloidosis. Journal of American Medical Association Neurology. Dec 2013.

        Karen Owoc is a former Governor of the Board of Governors of the San Francisco/Northern California Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and is a clinical exercise physiologist at a San Francisco Bay Area hospital cardiac rehabilitation program. She produces/hosts The Health Reporter, a new half-hour health program, and a series of short-format healthy living TV segments. http://TheHealthReporter.tv 

       I got my job at KPIX, and my first job in commercial television, in February of 1976. The opening came as the result of a tragedy. My predecessor had shot and killed someone he had mistaken for an intruder, and had precipitously moved back home to Florida to put his life back together. The following day I made my periodic "pester" call to Ruth, the engineering secretary, and was hired on the spot. My assignment: Thursday through Monday videotape graveyard shift. I'll take it!

      I had learned to operate an Ampex VR 1200 while working at KPBS in San Diego. The station is owned by San Diego State University, where I had gotten an MS in mass communication. Other than the Ampex experience, a First Class FCC license, and some master control hours, I was clueless. But I had my foot in the door.

     At the time, KPIX was housed in a building, now gone, at 2655 Van Ness Avenue, on the southeast corner of Greenwich Street. It had been built in the early fifties by Westinghouse, which owned the station at the time. It was, shall we say, compact. So KPIX later leased a number of "outbuildings" in the neighborhood, including a very large Victorian mansion down the street on Lombard and Van Ness, called "The Grey Building," because it was painted a very un-Victorian grey. When I got there it housed the programming department. I'll have more about that in a later Off Camera article.

     One of the design features of "2655" was a large garage door on the Greenwich side which led directly into the larger of the two studios, Studio 'A.' Its purpose was to allow automobiles to be wheeled directly onto the set for live commercials during the news shows. Car ads were the financial bedrock of local television, then as now, and videotape was then a half decade from being invented.

     By the time I arrived, videotape had been around for 20 years, but was confined to large, two inch, reel-to-reel formats. KPIX had four Ampex VR-2000 machines, plus a pair of ACR-25 2" cassette decks, which were used mostly to play commercials. Although the ACR's were fairly new then, they were finicky creatures that needed constant attention to keep them from breaking down. In my graveyard shift boredom, I learned how they worked and how to keep them humming. This would prove an advantage in the future.

    The center of the videotape room was filled by four RCA "TK 26" telecines, devices which converted film and slides to video. Each had one slide projectors and two film projectors. They had been used to play commercials prior to the arrival of the ACR-25's. For the most part, TV ads still were delivered to the stations on 16mm film, and then had to be dubbed to videotape, which was one of my overnight jobs.

    The telecines' new primary use was to air movies, old westerns, and of course news. This was just before the advent of the mini-cam, and news was still shot on 16mm film. In this pre-automation era the person directing a news show was also responsible for orchestrating the commercials during the show. There were no "go to commercial" breaks in those days.

    KPIX originally had only three telecines, and rather than label them, say, 'A,' 'B,' and 'C,' someone thought to call them 'front,' 'middle,' and 'back,' ordered from the entrance to Master Control. Thus, when the fourth was added, it became the 'back-back.' An A-B roll of a news film piece with music and supers would require using all four telecines simultaneously. Talk about a mouthful for a director to get out! "Roll middle and back. Take back. Audio up on middle. Roll back-back. Audio under on back-back. Change slide on front. Super front."

    Then came the mini-cam, and "Electronic News Gathering," ENG. I still like the term "gathering," it seems so quaint.

    This new technology led to rounds of squabbling over union jurisdiction. The news film cameramen (yes, they were all men then) were represented by IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. The station technicians were members of IBEW, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. (We did, however, have a few "sisters" in the "brotherhood.")

    IBEW claimed jurisdiction over the new cameras, as they were electronic. IATSE countered that since they were replacing film cameras, the jurisdiction should be theirs. After protracted litigation, The National Labor Relations Board ruled in favor of IBEW. After the film cameras were phased out, the only staff members represented by IATSE were the stage managers.

    When Evening Magazine was launched in Fall, 1976, Westinghouse categorized it as public affairs programming. This meant that the show's staff could be non-union. IBEW protested, but lost that battle.

    By 1977 my ability to fix things got me off the graveyard shift. I then worked two days in videotape, two in Master Control, and one doing maintenance and backing up the studio crew.

    I'll tell you about studio operations at "2655" in my next installment, and I'll have more about Evening Magazine in a future article.

    John Odell, contributing to this month's "Back in the Day" column, serves as secretary on the Board of Governors of the San Francisco/Northern California Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

         We are also ready to start incorporating your nominations for the NATAS Trustees' Scholarship.  You'll recall the Trustees reestablished the scholarship at the Seattle meeting last year, awarding $40,000 to a "best in show" scholar drawn from McKay/Wallace finalists and chapter winners from the prior year.

        To be eligible, chapter nominees must:

- have been awarded a scholarship by your chapter in calendar year 2014 or January 2015

- have been a high school senior at the time of the award

- be currently still in high school or enrolled as a college freshman pursuing a broadcast/communications-related major

        If you have students who meet this criteria, please send their name, e-mail address, information on what scholarship they won, and any additional commentary you'd like to share about them to [email protected]. 

       We will then send them a special link into our entry system.  (Beginning with next year's program, chapters who use the national system to manage entries/judging for regional scholarships will have winners auto-advanced into the national system.)

       We will soon also be reaching out to you to seek your time as volunteer judges in the McKay, Wallace and Trustees' scholarship reviews.  It is all done online in mid- to late-March.  If you already know you or another chapter officer (elected leadership, trustees, committee chairs, etc.) will be around and interested, let us know that too at 

[email protected].