By Karen Sutton  

2016 Emmy® Gala Chairperson

      The 45th Northern California Area Emmy® Awards Gala is coming to the Bay Area!

      The Gala will be presented Saturday, June 4, at the SFJAZZ Center, a cultural landmark in the heart of San Francisco.

       This year's program will be an intimate and memorable experience. The black-tie evening begins with a reception at 6 p.m. with hors d'oeuvres of charcuterie and cheese platters followed by hearty hors d'oeuvres served from 8 to 10 p.m. Later in the evening, there will be a presentation of dessert stations from 10 to 11 p.m. No-host bars and food stations will be provided throughout the evening in the lobby and on the second floor. Attendees may take drinks into the auditorium. 

      The program begins at 7 p.m. in the Robert N. Miner Auditorium with reserved seating. The Marcus Shelby Trio will be performing live jazz music throughout the evening beginning with our own "Emmy® Etiquette Sing-a-Long".

      Recipients of the Emmy® statuette will be presented by the Board of Governors of the San Francisco/Northern California Chapter of The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Recipients will then be escorted from the stage to the Joe Henderson Lab for Red Carpet photographs and interviews, co-hosted once again by Da Lin of KPIX 5, Kim Stephens of KMPH Fox 26 and Kevin Wing of ABC News.

     A  dual webcast will be broadcast, allowing online viewers to watch LIVE streaming content of the Emmy® Gala and the Red Carpet interviews on www.emmysf.tv.

     Real-time, individual recipient speeches will be posted to NATAS' YouTube, Facebook and Twitter pages. Please share your memorable moment with your family, friends and colleagues. Add #EmmySFTV to all of your Emmy® Gala posts.

     All seats are by reservation only. Tickets must be purchased in advance. Center and floor seats are $90 each; all other seats are $80. All prices increase $10 on May 26. 

LINK TO PURCHASE TICKETS

        In the June issue of Off Camera, to be published before the 45th Northern California  Area Emmy® Awards Gala in San Francisco on June 4, you can expect to find all the very latest details about the Chapter's biggest and brightest event of the year!!

        Curious to know who will be walking on stage this year as Emmy ® presenters? We'll reveal who they are, along with more on your co-hosts holding court on the famous red carpet to conduct Emmy ® recipient interviews. And, finally, we will have details on who the major sponsors are for this year's Gala!

        Off Camera has a lot in store for you! Stay tuned for the June issue of your Chapter's award-winning monthly newsletter!

       

       Have you received an Emmy ® Award for your work in television in our Chapter? Do you remember how excited you were? If you are a previous Emmy ® recipient, we would like to hear from you! In the June issue of Off Camera, we will feature a handful of previous Emmy ® recipients who recall how exciting it was for them to receive television's most coveted award! In 50 words or less, we'd like to know what it felt like for you after the envelope was opened and you walked on stage to receive your Emmy ®!!

      If you're interested in sharing your story, please write to Off Camera Editor Kevin Wing at kevin@emmysf.com. Deadline is May 24. 

Emmy® Awards Gala Attendee 

Special Hotel Rate 

f rom the

Official Hotel Sponsor

of the 

2016 SF/NorCal Emmy® Awards

 

HANDLERY UNION SQUARE HOTEL

(415) 781-7800 or (800) 995-HUSH

$189/night Historic Rooms      

$219/night Premium Rooms       

(Subject to availability)         

Click here for SPECIAL EMMY® ATTENDEE RATE

       Chapter Members! Get ready to cast your vote! This year's Board of Governors election is coming up fast. Ballots will be sent to you on May 15. Be sure to vote. Make your vote count. Send your ballot in to the Chapter office no later than June 1. Off Camera's July issue will have special election coverage showcasing the newly-elected and/or re-elected governors as well as the new officers of the Board of Governors of the San Francisco/Northern California Chapter of The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. 

         The San Francisco/Northern California Chapter of The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences will award four undergraduate student scholarships in television reporting, videography, production and writing. Graduate students are eligible to apply for the graduate student scholarship for work in production, reporting, videography and writing.

       The deadline is May 13.  The scholarships are: the Jerry Jensen Memorial Scholarship, the Steve Davis Memorial Scholarship, the Peter J. Marino Jr. Memorial Production Scholarship, the Rigo Chacon Repoting Scholarship, the Sheldon "Shelly" Fay Memorial Videography Scholarship, the Kenneth Sloat Langley Memorial Scriptwriting Scholarship and the "Miss Nancy" Besst Graduate Memorial Scholarship. 

 

By Kevin Wing

Chapter Vice President, San Francisco

       Vern Hawkins, the longtime, venerable Bay Area and northern California reporter who capped his indelible journalistic mark on the northern California television industry with more than 20 years as a beloved and respected reporter for Oakland's KTVU from the 1970s to the 1990s, died March 10. He was 82.

      Hawkins, an Emmy ® Award-winning reporter, was a member of the Silver Circle of the San Francisco/Northern California Chapter of The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. He was inducted in 1993. 

      Hawkins joined KTVU in 1976, eventually retiring in 1998 after four decades in northern California television. Prior to joining KTVU, he worked several years at KPIX in San Francisco in the early 1970s, and before that, at KCRA in Sacramento. Early in his career, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Hawkins was an anchor and reporter at KVIQ in Eureka.

      Rita Williams (SC'2001), Hawkins' longtime friend and a retired KTVU reporter herself, remembers Hawkins as kind and sweet.

     "As the "youngster" at KTVU in 1978 among so many accomplished veteran reporters, I was touched when this handsome man showed me the ropes in the old station, sharing a typewriter, editing film, giving the typed script to a managing editor to approve," Williams recalls. "Of course, that was Vern. The mentorship lasted until he retired. 

      Don McCuaig (SC'2002), also a longtime friend and a retired KTVU photojournalist, says he learned a lot from Hawkins. 

      "Vern taught me a lot about travel and how to shoot," McCuaig says. "He was a shooter at one time. He was never pushy and had great patience with new and old crews. He also was a lot of fun."

      After their many years of working together at KTVU, McCuaig says he began to see a different side of Hawkins. 

      "At the end of his working career, I saw a side of Vern I'd never seen before. He had a great love of animals. Doing stories at the San Francisco Zoo became a his favorite job. When Vern passed, I wrote Nancy Chan, the PR person at the zoo in those years. She was heartbroken and told me he was her favorite reporter of all time."

      Chan is now public relations director at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo. 

      Fred Zehnder (SC'1991), who served as news director at KTVU from 1978 to 1999, worked with Hawkins throughout their careers in Bay Area and northern California television. Many years before KTVU, both of them worked at KVIQ in Eureka: Hawkins was an anchor and reporter there, and Zehnder was news director.  

    "Vern and I had radio station backgrounds," Zehnder says. "We were both just out of the Army in the late 1950s, and ended up at KVIQ, a small, understaffed TV station in Eureka where Vern was the " 11 o'clock News" anchorman as well as announcer and transmitter engineer, and I was the news department and the film director."

    Zehnder says the hours were long and the station didn't pay them much, but adds it was a lot of fun for both of them.

    "Probably the most fun either of us ever had working in TV news," Zehnder says. "If we'd kept discrepancy reports they would have run to several pages every day. He and I would relive some of those nightly disasters every time we got together after work. He was one of the few still around who had gone through that do-it-yourself TV era. I'll miss him a lot."

    Memorial services will be held at a later date. 

By Don Knapp

Special to Off Camera

       Bay Area television audiences only rarely, if ever, heard cameraman Jerry McEowen's name, but many saw at least some of the thousands of news stories he shot during his 30 years with San Francisco's KRON.  

       On April 7, McEowen passed away peacefully, surrounded by family members. He had been battling pancreatic cancer for the last 10 months.

       McEowen was 77. 

       McEowen always wanted to be a cameraman, his son, Shawn,  told Off Camera. He loved the job and gave as good as he got.  When Dwight Clark caught "The Catch" that led to the defeat of the Dallas Cowboys and sent the 49ers to their first Super Bowl in 1982, McEowen shot the video from behind the goal line. In 1985,  he was the shooter for the first live shots ever broadcast from Yosemite National Park. And, as son Shawn says, most importantly, his Dad was the first television cameraman to stand on Oakland's collapsed double-decker Cypress Freeway following the devastating Loma Prieta earthquake on Oct. 17, 1989. 

      Shawn McEowen says the earthquake gave him his first chance to see his father in action as a serious, resourceful, take-charge professional.  Jerry McEowen was working in the Oakland bureau when the quake knocked out the bureau's link to KRON across the bay in San Francisco. McEowen called his wife, Sandy, and told her he wouldn't be coming home, and that she should send Shawn with a bag of clothes to the collapsed freeway where rescue and recovery operations were ongoing. Shawn McEowen made his way over the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, along back streets and around damaged areas and police lines with the clothes and then acted as his father's assistant.          

     The next day, Shawn McEowen returned to the collapsed Cypress Structure with fresh tape, and before his father sent him back to the station with all the tapes he had shot, he pulled out his wallet, gave his son all the cash, and told Shawn to find whatever food he could find, and bring back as much as the money would buy for the news crews.           Shawn McEowen says the experience left him with a great memory of his father and  "...the thrill of the whole news thing, helping get out the news."

    Friends recently writing on Facebook frequently remembered Jerry Mceowen's good humor, his sincerity, and his smile. The word "sweet," comes up a lot, as does "compassionate," and "good guy."  

    After Jerry and Sandy McEowen were devastated by the death of their 22-year old daughter, Erin, Sandy became involved with a support group for families who had lost children. Jerry played a lesser role, Shawn says, becoming a quiet consoler.      

      Dennis O'Donnell, KPIX sports anchor, wrote on Facebook of arriving at a funeral for a 4-year-old child and being surprised to see Jerry greeting people at the door.  Jerry did not know the family of the child, Dennis wrote, but "he came to help the family heal because he understood the pain more than anyone else in the church. Such a good man."

     When another KRON cameraman, Rick Greenwell, died in 2014, McEowen again stepped in. He told Greenwell's wife, Pat, not to worry about getting all the family members to the celebration of his life, saying he would take care of it. The day of the celebration, McEowen arrived at her house in a van and picked everyone up and, after the service was over, he took them home. Pat Greenwell says it was a huge help on a day that was just a blur and she will always remember McEowen as a sweet man who stepped up and helped her with his gift of kindness in a time of great need.

     Besides his wife, Jerry is survived by son, Shawn, and his wife Chandos, and their three children.

Don Knapp (SC '09, GC '14) is a former Bay Area-based correspondent for CNN and a former news reporter for KTVU, KRON and KPIX. Knapp was a friend of McEowen's and a KRON colleague.

        San Francisco's KRON, which already broadcasts more news than any other television station in the Bay Area, is adding a one-hour, 10 p.m. newscast that will air seven days a week. 

       The new newscast, KRON 4 News at 10, launches May 16. It will go head-to-head with others in that time slot, including the venerable 10 p.m. newscast at Oakland's KTVU, which has been on the air since that station's inception in 1958. 

       KPIX also produces a 10 p.m. broadcast, which airs on sister station KBCW.

       It is not the first time that KRON has aired a 10 p.m. newscast. During an "early prime" programming schedule experiment in the early 1990s when the station was an NBC affiliate, KRON started its network prime-time schedule an hour earlier, at 7 p.m., leaving room at 10 p.m. to compete with KTVU in the news arena. With its CBS schedule, KPIX also participated with the "early prime" experiment at that time as well. Both stations eventually resumed their respective network prime-time programming schedules to start at 8 p.m.

      KRON's new 10 p.m. broadcast will be anchored by station veteran, Pam Moore (SC' 10). Moore joined the station in 1991. Co-anchoring with Moore will be Steve Aveson, recently hired by the station. Longtime sports anchor Gary Radnich, with the station since 1985, and meteorologist Brittney Shipp, who joined the station in January, will join Moore and Aveson. 

      The station's 11 p.m. newscast will be shortened to 15 minutes to become a fast-paced broadcast of the day's major news developments. At 11:15 p.m., KRON will air Inside Edition. 

      "We are committed to being 'The Bay Area's News Station' and providing this additional coverage is both an important and exciting opportunity," says Ashley Messina, KRON's vice president and general manager. 

 

Editor's Note: In this month's Gold & Silver Circle Profiles, we salute Stan Atkinson and Herbert Zettl, who, individually, will be honored with the Governors Award at the 45th Northern California Area Emmy® Awards Gala on June 4 in San Francisco. Atkinson's profile was originally published in Off Camera in November 2008; Zettl's profile appeared in May 2011. This month, we feature excerpts from the originally-published profiles. 

Stan Atkinson

    During the more than 45 years when Silver Circle inductee and three- time Emmy ® award winner Stan Atkinson was a popular, well-known television anchor and reporter, one could say he was also a foreign correspondent of sorts - not for a network news division, but for some of the local stations his work impacted during that time. 

     Atkinson traveled regularly to the world's most turbulent, politically charged nations to bring a deeper insight to his local nightly newscasts. From Bosnia and Afghanistan to Somalia and El  Salvador, he nearly did it all, risking life and limb to help viewers better understand what was going on in the world and how it was going to affect them.

      Atkinson, inducted into the Silver Circle in 1986, is likely best known for his many years as the principal news anchor for KCRA in Sacramento. His newscasts on KCRA dominated the ratings so much that the combined ratings of the station's competitors couldn't even equal the numbers for Atkinson's newscasts.

     It has been nine years since Atkinson retired from the television news business, leaving the anchor desk at KOVR in 1999. Five years before, he had jumped ship after spending 18 years at crosstown rival KCRA. He'd also worked at KCRA  early in his  career.  His many years in Sacramento, the Bay Area and Los Angeles made Atkinson a household name across the Golden State.

     "I've had the most wonderful life and career," Atkinson said recently.

     Atkinson's TV news career is legendary and nearly unprecedented. In the 1950s, after studying journalism at Pasadena City College and a U.S. Army tour of duty during the  Korean  War, he got into radio as an announcer and newsman. But, Atkinson was destined for television. 

     He started in Spokane in 1954. By 1957, he began working as an anchor at KCRA (his first of two tenures at that station).  Staying until 1963, he took what turned out to be a temporary respite from TV news, leaving KCRA to move to Los Angeles to work on documentaries with the acclaimed producer, David Wolper (of Roots fame).

     Atkinson produced and wrote three projects for Wolper, including TV specials about actress Bette Davis and crooner Bing Crosby. After a year and a half at Wolper, Atkinson partnered with a friend to form an independent production  company. The irony of Atkinson's move to Hollywood in 1963 meant that, as fate would soon have it, he would have no involvement in covering one of the worst tragedies in American history: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November of that  year.

     "It felt strange to be watching the events unfold on TV, and not to have a part in covering it," he remembered.

     Atkinson's production company didn't last.  Unsatisfied by what they were doing, he and his partner closed up shop. "I missed daily news," he recalled. In 1964, Atkinson moved to the Bay Area to anchor at KTVU in Oakland, where he'd remain until 1967.

      His experience at KTVU in the 1960s (he would return in the early 1970s) was "great." But, Atkinson added, the Bay Area didn't care much for news from KTVU at the time. "We were on at (what was considered then) this cockamamey hour of 10 p.m. We produced an excellent newscast, and we had interesting people reporting the news. But, it was the heyday for the affiliates and we got no respect." Eventually, Atkinson said, advertisers warmed up to KTVU's 10 p.m. news.

     He remembered how interesting it was to anchor on Friday evenings. The KTVU newscast followed wrestling throughout the 1960s. "The wrestling was live in the studio every Friday night. We'd go into the men's room before the show to put makeup on. By then, all the sweaty bodies, using the same restroom to take showers in, had steamed it up like a sauna. Made it impossible to get the makeup on without a layer of your own sweat underneath."

     Leaving KTVU, he was offered a Ford Fellowship (known today as the John S. Knight Fellowship) at Stanford University. Atkinson wanted to develop a skill as an environmental  reporter. At that time, there was only one TV environmental reporter in the coun try. In 1969, Atkinson headed south to Burbank, where he was hired as KNBC's environmental reporter and weekend  anchor.But, destiny had something else in mind. His beat would dramatically change with the murders of actress Sharon Tate and the La Bianca family, a crime that terrorized Los Angeles. Soon after, authorities arrested Charles Manson and, for the next 16 months, Atkinson covered Manson's and his "Family's" murder  trial.

     "There was craziness in the courtroom," Atkinson recalled. "It was just absolute weirdness, punctuated by much drudgery."

     "It was a fascinating time for me. Working at KNBC became my greening years as a television reporter and as an anchor, too. Professionalism at KNBC was very high. I was working with a lot of immensely talented people. (Tom) Brokaw was there, as well as Tom Snyder and Bob Abernathy ."

     After KNBC, Atkinson returned to northern California, becoming one of the founding partners of KFTY Channel 50 in Santa Rosa. Atkinson had always loved northern California's Wine Country. A colleague at KNBC pitched the idea to launch a station. They raised money with limited partnerships and a"stellar list" of local investors, got the FCC to grant a license, and in 1973, KFTY took to the airwaves.

     Starting up KFTY and keeping it on the air came at a time when the nation was in the midst of a "huge recession, "Atkinson said. A year after signing on, KFTY went dark.

"It was one of the saddest experiences of my life," Atkinson said. "We had taught 35 staffers TV. It was really hard to tell them that we were going dark. That was a real  downer. I never though I'd go back into TV  again."

     After KFTY came to an end (it returned in 1981 with new owners), Atkinson taught a summer graduate journalism program at Stanford. By then in his early 40s, the Stanford experience turned Atkinson around. The failure of KFTY went through his mind constantly.      

     Atkinson became a casual reporter at KGO-TV in San Francisco, hoping to get on full-time. That's when KTVU came calling again for a second anchoring stint. During his time at KTVU, he landed the first one-on-one interview with Manson, who, by then, was imprisoned at San Quentin." Charlie remembered me from  L.A.," Atkinson recalled." His mind was a jumble. The interview reflected that  madness."

     Fred Zehnder, KTVU's news director from 1978 to 1999, was working his first stint at the station as assistant news director and assignment editor when Atkinson rejoined it in 1973.

     "Stan was a real gentleman, just terrific to work with," Zehnder said. "He had strong standards about news, and he did some really groundbreaking things while at Channel 2. He loved to do documentaries.

     He was a great anchor and reporter, and a dream to work with."

     In 1976, Atkinson returned to KCRA. His legacy in Sacramento was about to take off. For 18 years, Atkinson, his co-anchors and the news team ruled the Sacramento airwaves, and he established his newscast tease trademark line, "We have news for you... next," as he folded a single copy of script. He also established his closing line at the end of his 11 p.m. broadcasts - "Sleep well, and have a good tomorrow."

     KCRA's principal anchor shared the news desk with many. But, Atkinson also wanted to get out from behind the anchor desk to cover foreign stories. He eventually would travel to 18 countries-in- crisis, in 31 assignments.

     "(The KCRA years were) really terrific because of all of the foreign assignments I got to do," Atkinson said. "For me, that was the best part of my career, the most memorable."

     Atkinson's war stories include being chased down by a Soviet helicopter gunship in Afghanistan (he was there in 1982 and 1985), and being held up and robbed by leftist guerrillas in El Salvador. While covering a story in Cambodia, he was shot at.

     Atkinson also reported from Baghdad just before Operation Desert Storm began, and later, from Kuwait, a month after it was liberated. In the early 1990s, he covered the collapse of a nation into anarchy in his reports from Somalia, right after the downing of two U.S. Blackhawk helicopters and the resultant withdrawal of American forces. He has slipped across Marxist-controlled borders with resistance fighters to produce documentaries in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia and Central America. Atkinson also covered the remarkable transition of South Africa. He also has a long history with Vietnam. He was there twice in the early 1960s.

     By the mid-1990s, KCRA "started pinching pen nies",  and Atkinson was told there would be no more foreign assignments. Feeling as if he'd done all that he could at KCRA, Atkinson, in 1994, dropped a Sacramento bombshell: he was resigning from KCRA, and leaving for rival KOVR.

     It was a year of change and tragedy for Atkinson, devastated with the sudden, unexpected death of his son, Lance, at age 34. Atkinson also has three sons and a daughter, two grown stepchildren and 14 grandchildren.

     He remained at KOVR for five years, retiring in 1999 after an illustrious television  career.

     "I've had great anchor partners throughout my career," Atkinson said. "Every one of them was a gem. I was really blessed in that regard. They all helped to make my career the way it turned out, in a substantial way."

     He has never forgotten his roots. Atkinson, who still lives in Sacramento with wife Kristen, is active as ever in community service. In fact, his Stan Atkinson Foundation helped to fund 'River Cats Independence Field', a multi-use sports and recreation facility in Sacramento that's designed for disabled youth and adults. Atkinson has raised more than $8 million for Sacramento-area agencies and charities. He's been honored many times for his philanthropy; most recently on Nov. 5 - National Philanthropy  Day. All of Sacramento's numerous non- profit and charitable organizations got together to award him the 'Lifetime Achievement  Award.'

     "I've really been lucky in so many  ways,"he said. "To stay active, even now, is so terrific. Right now, as a senior myself, I love the freelancing and the chance to make other seniors aware of options that can improve their lives. But for the death of Lance, my life has been blessed!"

Kevin Wing (SC '13) has been exclusively penning "Gold & Silver Circle Profiles" for "Off Camera" since 2007. He is editor of "Off Camera" and serves the Chapter as Vice President-San Francisco on the San Francisco/Northern California Chapter of The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. He is a Bay Area-based producer for ABC News' "Good Morning America."

 

Is Your Diet Causing You Wrinkles?

Click to view Job Bank