THE VERY LATEST

Here's 'the very latest' at this time, about 9:30 Sunday night.

FLOODING:

There is NOTHING wrong with the Ft. Hunter bridge. (Jessica Layton, twitter)

The Mohawk River is projected to crest by mid-afternoon Monday, at least six feet higher than the highest recorded level in 1914. Police are asking ALL residents of Schenectady's Stockade (below Erie) to evacuate. (AP and TUCapCon, twitter)

TRAFFIC: (NYS Thruway authority)

CLOSED: NYS Thruway both directions from milepost 173.6 to 182.2 between exit 27 (Amsterdam) and exit 28 (Fultonville), all traffic must exit between Exit 27 and Exit 28.

CLOSED: Southbound between milepost 148.1 - 18.7, From Exit 24 (Albany I-90/I-87) and Exit 12 (Nyack), all southbound traffic is currently banned between Exit 24 and Exit 12.

STATE OF EMERGENCIES:

This just in from Montgomery County: The county has declared a state of emergency for all of Montgomery County. (Amsterdam Recorder)

More here.

DEATHS:

State police have recovered the body of a woman who apparently drowned after she fell into a creek swollen by Irene's downpour in upstate New York. (AP)

Hurricane Irene had led to the deaths of at least 21 people in eight states as of Sunday evening.(WTEN, twitter)

Here’s what I think you should know about what happened today.

The Big Story: Hurricane Irene Strengthens. Just one day after an Earthquake ravages (ok, not really) the East Coast, Mother Nature is gearing up for round #2. Ding! Parts of North Carolina have already been evacuated and the governor of New York has decided to take action! Shocking, a politician taking action before a natural disaster!

Anyway, here’s the latest on Irene; such a nice name for such a scary storm. And here's Al Roker incase you don't know how to read a graphic:

In Other News:

Late-Breaking: Steve Jobs Resigns.

East Cost Quake: While there were rumors at first, it appears the Washington Monument actually does have a crack in it, but here’s what no one’s asking…so does the Liberty Bell and no one seems to care. Anyway, the Left Coast doesn't understand why we were all freaked out over a ‘little’ earthquake…..well you know what California, just wait until Mother Nature drops 18 inches of snow on you.

Travers Post Positions: YNN had Live Coverage of this event this morning; here is everything you could possibly want to know. Also, the Travers will be live on NBC at 5pm this Saturday.

Movie Shoot Continues: FOX23 News continues to do an excellent job of stalking covering the so-called celebrities in the Capital Region. Watch here.

Check This Out:

What were you doing on August 23rd at 1:51 when the earthquake hit? Well, who cares, you weren’t filming it, so it must not have happened. These people were, so it was on the news:

Schenectady was mentioned on ‘The Late Show with David Letterman’ last night when someone who no one recognizes Rose Byrne talked to Dave about ‘The Place from the Pines,’ which os currently filming in and around the city:

A Tip of the Hat: To FOX23 News, yesterday they broke in, expanded their 5:00 newscast and had complete team coverage at 10:00pm of the ‘East Coast Quake.’ If you’re not watching this news station; you’re really missing out. So tune in tonight at 10 and/or 11.

Pictures from: @twcspacewx, ushistory.org.

What's Making News: August 22nd, 2011.

The Big Story: Libya. NBC's Richard Engel has the story:

In Other News:

Visitors flock to MLJ memorial. NBC's Kristen Dahlgren reports on the monument that is set to honor the leader on the civil rights leader. Here are photos of the new monument, which will be officialy dedicated this Saturday.

Tracking Irene.

Hurricane Irene has churned into a stronger Category 2 storm and has cut a destructive path through the Caribbean as it heads toward the U.S. coast. [AP via WSVN]

Here are the forecast cone and model from WSVN. [Photo: WSVN.com]

Travers 2011:

Restaurant Week. Began today and ends on Thursday, August 25th. Over 50 restaurants in the greater Capital Region will be offering three-course meals for a special $18.64. See a list of the participating restaurants here. [WTEN]

Post Positions. NYRA will air the drawing for the post positions of the raceonline this Wednesday beginning at 11:00am.

Special Reports. Friday at 7:00pm on WNYT/NewsChannel 13, WXXA/FOX23 and 8:00pm on WTEN/News10

Decision 2012: Former Governor Pataki might be running. The AP report and a report by NewsChannel 13's John McLaughlin are here.

Must See Video: Terrifying gas station crash caught on camera. Here's the video from KTRK-Huston.

A new type of Morning News.

In 2006, FOX23 debuted a new type of morning news. It was called "Daybreak" and featured 2 anchors; Mark Baker and Diane Lee.

There was also a traffic reporter, Kaitlyn Barto. A live reporter, Kathryn Hauser and a meteorologist, Brandon Hertell.

Today, Mark Baker remains the only original team member. Come Monday, that's all about to change.

The next chapter of FOX23 News in the Morning will premiere. Stephanie Schelkun and Jason Caterina will team up to "bring you the latest news, weather and traffic to get your day started on the right foot, plus a little something extra."

They have a new Facebook page outlining what new features viewers will see. Hopefully these are the start of some changes to come. Two anchors and a live reporter would also add more depth to the show.

However, for now, let's reserve judgment until we see what the new show looks like. I'll be watching Monday from 6 - 8 on FOX23.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day TV Highlights

Here’s a look at what Christmas specials will be airing on Capital Region television stations as well as some of your favorite cable stations.

Christmas Eve:

ABC:

8:00pm: Disney Prep and Landing

8:30: Phineas and Ferb Christmas Vacation

9:00pm: The Santa Clause 2

NBC:

8pm It's a Wonderful Life NBC

CBS:

6:30: Take a Break (WRGB)

7:30: Melodies of Christmas (WRGB)

CW:

10:30: Melodies of Christmas (WCWN)

ABC Family:

12 Noon: Holiday Classics Marathon

Christmas Day:

ABC:

Noon: Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade

WRGB:

8:00 am, 5:30pm: Take a Break (WRGB)

8:30am, 1:00pm, 4:00pm, 7:30pm: Melodies of Christmas (WRGB)

CW:

2:30pm, 5:00pm 9:00pm: Melodies of Christmas (WCWN)

ABC Family:

7:00pm, 9:30pm: Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas

USA:

8:oopm, 9:30pm: ELF

Holiday Specials Begin This Week on TV.

• This Thursday, November 18th, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving will air at 8pm on ABC, it will re-air next Thursday, Thanksgiving, at the same time.

• This Friday, Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966), will air on TBS at 8pm.

• This Sunday, 2 episodes of Elf will air back to back on the USA Network beginning at 7pm.

• ABC Family's Countdown to the 25 Days of Christmas begins Sunday.

This website has a pretty complete list of Christmas specials and when they're airing.

Is it Too Soon?

Did you know what happened 6 days ago? Halloween. But, living in the Capital Region, you would have thought it was mid November. Stores have decked their halls with balls, garland and tacky Christmas lights.

And two local radio stations, Buzz -or should I say- Santa 105.7 and 98.3 WTRY have flipped the switch to 24/7 Christmas music. 98.3 says they have “gotten the vibe” that people are ready for Christmas." I don't know what vibe they are picking up.

Interestingly, The Business Review reports that an Indiana radio station starting playing Christmas music on October 18th!

John Gray put it best last night: "Wasn't it Halloween like 10 minutes ago?" In fact it was John. Watch:

Why are we always rushing the Holidays? It's one thing to start buying gifts and decorations for Christmas, but 24/7 Christmas music and mannequins holding red packages in Macys? Yes, it is too soon.

Welcome Back!

As the leaves start to turn and busses start popping up around the region so do new shows and different television schedules. While there are some amazing new shows coming to the ABC, CBS, NBC and other television networks, there’s also some new syndicated programming coming to a local television station near you.

The biggest local change this year is to be found on the CW, after being known as “The Capital Region’s CW” for a while WCWN is changing its name to “CW15” –lame, right?

Anyway, the CW15 will also be airing some different shows in their nightly syndication block. Currently at 5pm the CW15 airs the King of Queens, and My Name is Earl. On Monday, the 13^th, the CW15 will begin to air one hour of The New Adventures of Old Christine. Currently at 7pm, the CW15 airs The Office and Seinfeld, but starting the 13^th you will be able to watch an hour of How I met Your Mother.

Over on local ABC station WTEN, the only syndication change will be in the 10am slot, because of The Bonnie Hunt Show being canceled WTEN will now air The Nate Berkus Show.

There are some syndication changes coming to WXXA, FOX23 on Monday the 13^th. At 10am the Real Housewives of Orange County will air and at 3pm an hour of Swift Justice with Nancy Grace for your viewing pleasure.

New episodes of all of your other syndicated favorites, Dr. Phil, Ellen, Jeopardy, Wheel, Oprah and the rest also begin Monday the 13^th. It doesn’t appear that WNYT or WRGB is changing its syndicated lineup.

As for the network side of things, there are some great shows coming to ABC, CBS, and NBC this fall. Here's Buddy TV's look at the new fall season.

Travers 2010

In case you've been living under a rock, you know Travers is tomorrow.

Here's some of the Highlights from local coverage.

This, by far is the best Travers report, by Torie Wells. It starts at about 1:40 in the video:

Watch the rest of Fox23's Travers special in the 'Local Sports Video' section here.

Here's part of YNN's special. It will re-air tomorrow, Saturday morning at 11:30 on YNN.

NewsChannel 13 also had a special, but I can't find it online.

@clairecmc: 'catastrophic incompetence'

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

@Benita Zahn reports:

I just wanted to share this amazing story with you. It's from NewsChannel 13's Benita Zahn

Let’s Get Social

Last night I got this question on twitter, from an up-and-coming journalist

Who does the best social media? Including both Twitter (official station account and individual reporters) and Facebook.

I responded by saying:

That's a VERY tough question to answer. I don't think I could tweet in 140 or less, to be totally honest.

Each station has their own twitter and Facebook accounts and some reporters have their own twitter and Facebook accounts as well, but some news outlets are using the social media sites better than others.

Before discussing the Albany market, I want to shine a spotlight on the Boston television market. Almost every reporter at WHDH, 7News, has their own twitter account. But, there is also a main account –@7news– this account is updated continuously throughout the day with retweets of what reporters are talking about on their twitter accounts, updates of breaking news from Boston and beyond, as well as links to live video. This seems to be the perfect model of how to use twitter. 7News competitor @WBZ’s bio reads “No RSS – just real updates from real people at WBZ.” This is a concept I wish more Albany news stations would implement on their twitter accounts 'real people' no RSS.

WTEN, WNYT, WRGB, WXXA and YNN all rely too much on the dreaded twitter feed. Twitter is supposed to be about making connections and conversation. How can a follower do that with a feed? Having said that, I do not want to give the impression that no ‘real people’ ever tweet from the five Albany news stations' twitter accounts, they do. However, it seems there could be more consistency in how the twitter accounts are updated.

In a B&C article, YNN news director Gary Holems says, to him, twitter is like a wire service. Meaning, followers of news accounts want the most up to the minute news. There needs to be more breaking news, and followers should be able to depend on twitter accounts for up to the minute information. For example, Tuesday afternoon at one o’clock in the afternoon while there was a scheduled press conference in Amsterdam, I kept an eye on twitter to see who tweeted what. There were continuous updates from @cbs6albany an update from @fox23news and an update at the end of the press conference from @wten. I was expecting many more twitter updates about that press conference. Another example, captured by Rob Madeo on his Times Union blog involves how a breaking news story was –or was not– covered, on twitter, in May.

Overall, the main News10 twitter account seems to have the most updates from ‘real people,’ but that is not to say they have the best social media coverage. By my count, YNN has the most individual accounts; 26 reporters, meteorologists, and kid critics tweeting and continuously updating their followers. One the Facebook side, most of CBS6 Albany’s anchors have pages (in addition to the station's main account) where viewers get to interact with Liz, Jerry, Teresa, Greg and Marci. Which is why it’s so hard to answer the question “Who does the best social media?”

So what can be done to improve local news stations’ twitter accounts? Here are some of my thoughts:

• Twitter must be a requirement for everyone in newsrooms. Reporters/anchors, meteorologists, photographers, producers and assignment editors should use twitter to update followers on breaking news, post links to interesting stories and links to live video and promote what’s coming up on the evening news. WHDH Boston even uses twitvid to tweet a promo for their evening newscasts. Something that I think is a great idea, and should be adopted by local news stations.

• Create more accounts and use the retweet feature. While NewsChannel 13 has their own twitter account for weather, the others do not. So instead of tweeting about weather from the main account, a separate account should be set up for the weather department, assignment desk an individual reporters. When individual twitter accounts exist the main account should retweet important updates from the individual accounts.

• And finally, get rid of twitterfeed, or have a separate account for the feed. Local blog, All over Albany, has a twitter account just for a feed of their site and another account for ‘real people’ tweets. That’s not to say a twitter account should have no news articles, but simply barfing up everything from a website to twitter makes it cumbersome to uncover the important tweets/breaking news as apposed to other news stories.

Twitter shouldn’t seem like an extra, but an extension of how the story is told.

A legend Dies, a Car Accident and the Stimulus Didn't Work, plus more..

It was a very busy news day today. Yankees owner George Steinbrenner died. Locally, it was a shooting that topped the news. In the political circle people are all a-fluster over a car accident.

The Big Story: The death of "the Boss."

Watch WABC's Scott Clark's George Steinbrenner Obituary:

WABC also has a lot more coverage on there site. And, locally WTEN's John McLouchlin went to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown to report on the passing of the legend. WRGB reminded us Liz Bishop was the first female to report from the Yankee's locker room, as well as passing along local connections.

And, as the news of the passing of Steinbrenner came after the morning papers were published, the Daily News published a special evening edition of the paper, paying tribue to "The Boss." A picture of the Daily News special edition cover at right.

Finally, many people from politicians to celebs are remembering Steinbrenner. Sen. Chuck Schumer says this of the Yankee legend:

Like New York and like the Yankees, George Steinbrenner was a champion.

Read more statements here.

Politically Speaking: it was just a love tap.

NY1 is reporting that the driver of state AG candidate Eric Schneiderman hit a NY1 car. But Schniderman says, no he didn't, and the last name of that driver -Kagan. Yupp, the niece of the SCOTUS nominee.

CBS News Poll says: Obama's not doing enough.

Watch the CBS news report and read about the poll here. From that report:

Fifty-two percent say the president has spent too little time addressing the issue, and 63 percent say his economic programs have had no effect on them personally.

The Good News: a weather man's birthday.

It's WTEN meteorologist Steve Caporizzo's 50th birthday. Watch as a backyard of people sing Happy Birthday to him and a look back at Cap's 20 years at WTEN. Of note, a year ago today Pet Connection returned to the News Station.

The day the Local TV fanatic meets local TV legend

Today, my cousins and I took a trip to Albany. After leaving the state museum, we walked around the capital. While walking around the capital I saw the one and only John McLaughlin shooting a story for News10. John, as viewers know, often reports on political issues. And, he's been at WTEN for more than 35 years.

I yelled "John" and told him I'm a big fan of his and I watch everyday. Then I asked "so what's going on at the Capital today john?" He told me not much, adding that's what the story is.

Then he asked me if I'm in college. I said Yes, I go to St. Rose. He said are you going for communications? I told him, no I'm not. He said good, save your parents money. I told him I'm going for teaching, and he said good.

I don't think I even told him my name (the same thing I forgot to tell Benita Zahn when I ran into her at St. Rose). We didn't talk for long, as I knew he was busy and needed to get back to WTEN. But just getting to meet him was amazing!

While it was sad to hear a local legend speak of the communications industry that way, it's just another person pointing out what's happening at local TV stations across america. The communication industry, including the Albany area, is in disarray with people being fired to save companies money and companies fighting to come out of bankruptcy.

Picture and info from wten.com

Fireworks on TV...

After you've spent time with your family cooking, swimming, drinking and eating you’ll probably want to watch some fireworks on television. Here’s a look at what’s on Sunday July 4th 2010:

• 8pm/9:30pm: A Capitol Fourth 2010 PBS

• 9pm: Macy's 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular NBC

Nick Cannon and Alison Sweeney host Macy's annual Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular, with musical guests Justin Bieber, Enrique Iglesias and LeAnn Rimes as well as special guest appearances from the cast of Twilight Eclipse! [from NBC.com]

• 10pm: Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular CBS

If you actually want to watch fireworks up close in person, here’s a list of where you can view Fireworks in the Capital Region.

Your mid-day news update:

Here's some of what's making news today:

Paterson's Tax Talk

Soldiers Remembered

More than 2 million cribs are being recalled

Condoms available at Cape elementary school

America's most recession-proof cities

More Severe Storms Rock Chicago: Lightning Strikes Three Chicago High-Rises At Once (VIDEO)

A young female dolphin was spotted washed up on the sand on pensacola beach today

Rudy Giuliani on Obama's Oil Spill Response:

This morning, former New York City Major Rudy Giuliani was on Morning Joe, he had this to say of Obama's handling of the Oil Gusher:

This has been a gross failure in crisis management, could not have done it worse.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Here's what's making news....

There's been some really great reporting in the Albany market lately. I wanted to share some of it with you.

WNYT: Permit parking near Capitol in high gear for passage

The problem is space. Many State workers who can't or won't park in the State garages, grab the spots where people live and need to park.

WTEN: Don Weeks Interview

WRGB: Caring For Aging Parents

WRGB: Albany Police Chief Choice 'Imminent'

It could be just a matter of days before the Mayor makes his appointment for Albany Police Chief. Marci Natale has more.

Obama to speak tomorrow

President Obama is visiting the Gulf States right now and tomorrow at 8pm he will give his, first oval office televised speech to the "American People."

ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS and FOX broadcast networks will air the address live, as will, presumably the cable channels.

But, what will he say? That was discussed this morning on Morning Joe:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Image: whdh.com

DECISION 2010: 'Super Duper Tuesday'

Another big election night tomorrow. Here's more from NBC News.

Related: NBC changes their Decision 2010 logo.