Wow...what a week. 76 hours of hard labor for this girl. I am totally wiped out.

I worked from 3 am to 12 pm at WKST all week. Working on weekdays is especially challenging because I have to have 9 newscasts in by 6 am! Finding stories to fill them is pretty tough! Luckily, there was a lot of juicy Dr. Moonda stuff going on.

I also worked my usual Saturday and Sunday. Those days seem super easy compared to weekdays!

I made time to drive down to Pittsburgh and spend a day at FSN Pittsburgh, and the summer intern pretty much showed me the ropes of the job. The coolest thing was that there was a Pirates game going on at PNC Park while we were working...and when we were done, we got to walk down to the game (it's just a few blocks down the road) and sit in the FSN luxury suite and watch the game for a little while!

Today was actually my first day as the lone media relations intern. The supervisors took it easy on me, but I did get a lot of stuff done. A lot of what I did today was administrative work, but it was fun and it made the day fly by. Wednesday's going to be a busy day - it's NQA day (I have to send out a press release containing "Notes, Quotes, and Anecdotes" about the week's programming on FSN), I'm releasing the program listings, and I'm helping create ads for the Pittsburgh Penguins' IceTime programs.

I get to relax this week - Titan Radio is undergoing construction to put the new antenna up, so the summer staff is off. I am trying to put together the radio news schedule before the end of the week...I just have to wait for people to get back to me!

I guess that's about it for now. :)

My internship with FSN Pittsburgh begins in one week, and I just thought I'd share with the world the reasons why I am in love with this place. (I credit most of these to the "Who We Are" packet they gave me during my interview!)

• They have exclusive coverage of 118 Pittsburgh Pirates games and 66 Pittsburgh Penguins games each season.
• They televise press conferences, pre-game analysis, and in-depth coverage of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
• They also cover college football and basketball, specifically featuring Pitt, WVU, Penn State, Duquesne, and Robert Morris
• High school football is highlighted each week during the season with the telecasts of the McDonald's Game of the Week and WPIAL Championships
• They have two programs completely dedicated to Pittsburgh sports:
  
• Savran on Sportsbeat, featuring well-known Pittsburgh sports broadcaster Stan Savran, is televised every weekday at 6:30
• Pittsburgh Sports Tonight, the region's only exclusive sports newscast, is televised nightly at 10:00
• Well known national programming such as Beyond the Glory and the Best Damn Sports Show Period complement the regional packages on FSN Pittsburgh
  
• FSN Pittsburgh has more than 2,000 hours of live sports programming!

And last, but certainly not least...

FSN Pittsburgh locally reaches more than 2.3 million homes - with an 85% cable and satellite penetration in the Pittsburgh DMA. That's the highest penetration of ANY top 25 market in the country!

Helloooo! I have finally succumbed to the madness of blogging. I figured it's better to start now than in the next two weeks - which, by the way, may just be the craziest weeks of my life.

Okay, so I suppose I should update everyone on how my summer has been. Well, there's really only one word to describe it: busy. I haven't had much free time at all.

The "non-important" (or, I guess, non-broadcasting) things that have happened:
-I got a new car!
-I turned 21 in July.
-I went on a mini-vacation with my family and dog to...Cleveland, Ohio. It actually wasn't that bad. :)
-I took an Internet course through Butler County Community College and finally got my science out of the way.
-I found a new love in spinning classes at the New Castle YMCA.

Of course, I've been busy with my two jobs as well. I have been working at Titan Radio as a disc jockey and news director five days a week, six hours a day. That takes up a lot of my time. Summer news has gone pretty well, actually. We have had a lot of decent sound, despite all three of us (Alex, Pam, and I) having to produce, report, and anchor our respective newscasts by ourselves. I'm also providing the updates for the web, so TitanRadio.net is still being updated!

I must say that I'm very much looking forward to news this fall. I can't wait to have a full staff!

Titan Radio did a live remote from the New Wilmington Arts and Heritage Festival last weekend, and it was a blast! We were out there all three days, and we got a ton of great interviews and a lot of promotion for Titan Radio! New Wilmington loves us, I'm telling you.

I'm also still working hard at Newsradio 1200 WKST in New Castle. I've done my usual morning news on Sundays and every other Saturday, and I've filled in for our news director on weekdays as well. Next week is going to be absolutely insane. I'm filling in for Wade all week (which means I'll be there from 3 AM to 12 PM), then I have to go to work at Titan Radio from 2-6 PM. The good thing is that I can bring my news from WKST with me and use it for my Titan Radio newscasts, too. That makes things a lot easier.

I also start board opping high school football games on WKST soon. Actually, I like when the announcers call me the "producer/engineer." That sounds a lot more impressive than "board op."

This fall I will also get to showcase my work in print journalism, as I will be the layout editor for the Holcad. I'm extremely excited about that, as I initially came to Westminster wanting to be a print journalist. I absolutely love writing, and for that reason I decided to pick up a writing minor last semester.

But wait...there's more. (I've been watching too many infomercials!)

Anyone who knows me knows that I live and breathe Pittsburgh sports. Pirates, Penguins, Steelers...I love 'em all. I volunteered to work at the Major League Baseball All-Star FanFest in Pittsburgh this past July, and I had an absolute blast. Ironically, the station I was assigned to work at was the FSN Pittsburgh FANtasy Sports Desk, where fans got to sit at the FSN (Fox Sports Net, for those of you who don't know) broadcast desk and be the anchors of a fake Pittsburgh Sports Tonight show.

Well, I got to meet some interesting people through doing this. I was able to speak with FSN's Media Relations Director and Marketing Administrator, as well as a couple of interns and two of the station's main anchors. (The picture is of FSN anchor Dan Potash and me)



I received some contact information, and I kind of put it aside for a while because I was over my head with work and schoolwork.

My class ended last week, so I figured that it would be a good time to e-mail Jacqui, FSN's Marketing Administrator, and express my interest in an internship. I honestly didn't think anything would come out of it, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to try.

Lo and behold, I received an e-mail from Jacqui requesting that I come in for an interview. I did just that this past Tuesday, and I was offered the internship yesterday! I'm absolutely ecstatic. I have to go in next week to shadow their current intern and fill out paperwork, and I start on Monday, August 21!

So, that's life in a nutshell at the moment. Yes, I am going to be beyond busy this fall with my internship, my job at WKST, being news director and layout editor, and classes...but I will find a way to make it work.

Now that I've written the longest blog entry of mankind, I'll stop here. :)