Sunday, March 07, 2010
Arts & Extras: 'Our Blue Ridge' off to fresh beginning
Courtesy of WSLS (Channel 10)
Jay Prater and Natalie Faunce host "Our Blue Ridge."
Arts & Extras column
Mike Allen, arts columnist
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Arts&Extras blog
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As Natalie Faunce and Jay Prater bantered back and forth Monday during the opening minutes of "Our Blue Ridge," they resurrected a style of local entertainment show that hasn't been seen in the Roanoke Valley in decades.
After years of competing noon news programs, the switch by WSLS (Channel 10) to a localized version of "Live with Regis and Kelly" might strike some as surprising. Some viewers may find it a refreshing change, while some might go searching elsewhere for news. Nonetheless, in the studio during the first live broadcast, everybody involved appeared to be having a good time.
Hosts Faunce and Prater seemed to play off each other well. WSLS vice president Warren Fiihr said that for a pair who had only been working together a very short time, they picked at each other like brother and sister.
The show wasn't without bugs. When an animal handler bringing adoptable pets to show off arrived a hair too late to get on the air, the hosts switched to a joke segment about fan mail. (Prater had a giant box ready for Faunce. Faunce made a tiny one for Prater.)
Faunce is a TV veteran formerly seen on Fox's "10 O'clock News," but Prater, most recently a radio disc jockey at WROV, was making his television debut. He joked with his co-host that he has "a face made for radio."
On the first show, the pair interviewed Center in the Square President Jim Sears and aired a taped segment with a member of the Harlem Globetrotters. You probably can guess which one talked about basketball and which one talked about a planned butterfly garden downtown.
Perhaps even more telling was how the show began, with the hosts not only introducing themselves, but also their families, complete with home video of Faunce's daughter and even a photo of Prater's three cats. This is definitely meant to be a casual and folksy affair.
There's certainly precedent for such daily talk shows on Roanoke news stations, but you have to flip the calendar back to at least the early 1980s to find it.
The first show of this type in the Star City actually appeared on WSLS in the 1950s, when Betty Bond, referred to in newspaper clips as Roanoke's "first lady of television," hosted "The Betty Bond Show." In the early 1960s, the station aired the award-winning "Profile," hosted by Priscilla Young and Kit Johnson. Greta Evans had a show on WSLS in the early 1980s that broadcast once a month on Sundays.
Rival station WDBJ (Channel 7) didn't begin the tradition, but the station's version was much longer lived. "Panorama" began in the late 1950s with host Ann Howard and continued past her tenure into the 1960s with Lorrie Gregory and then Kathy Thornton. The show contained a short news segment, wherein ABC White House Correspondent Ann Compton got her start. Polly Ayers took over from Thornton in 1975 and was still host when the station shut down the show in 1983. Channel 7 launched its noon news program later that same year.
News clips in the earlier decades tend to blithely refer to these talk shows as "women's programming."
My thanks to news researcher Belinda Harris and copy editor Jerry Stone for helping me toss in those details.
Faunce and Prater's show, with its slower pace and chatty style, looks like a latter-day incarnation of those predecessors.
No doubt a few things have changed: For example, an "Our Blue Ridge" segment had viewers watching a cursor move around the show's Facebook fan page for five minutes while Prater narrated.
It will be interesting to see how today's audience responds.
Center cuts 1 job
Center in the Square employee Michelle Bennett, who worked for four years as a graphic designer for Center's administrative outreach program, sent word out via e-mail Tuesday that she's been laid off.
In an phone interview, she seemed sad but understanding, saying the reason for the layoff was entirely budgetary.
"I've got nothing but good things to say about Center and about Jim Sears," the organization's president, she said. "It's been a possibility for quite a long time. I get it, I understand, and it's not like I'm leaving the planet."
Sears said Bennett did a great job for Center, and added that he hopes she lands somewhere that will make full use of her creative talent. Her last day will be March 31.
Before she joined Center, Bennett worked for 11 years as Mill Mountain Theatre's marketing director. She's been a high-profile participant in Roanoke's art scene for years, and says she has every intention of staying part of it.
The administrative outreach program helps other local nonprofits with administrative functions.
Bennett was one of two employees that handled marketing. Center has about 14 employees, some of whom are part-time. The administrative outreach program will be reduced from eight to seven with Bennett's exit.
Sears declined to comment on the layoff, but said generally that any staffing changes to the outreach program would come from long-term observations of how its services are used. Center charges nonprofits for the outreach program's services.
Taubman to sell property
Here's even more proof that times are tough for regional nonprofits.
Four years before it opened, the Taubman Museum of Art purchased the warehouse at 302 Campbell Ave. on the opposite side of Williamson Road for $437,500. The idea was that the building would house additional classrooms for the museum's education programs.
Museum external affairs director Kimberly Templeton confirms that the 26,250-square-foot building is for sale. An online retail listing prices the building at $580,000.
On the Arts blog
On March 13, the Taubman Museum will host a free family day from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in conjunction with new exhibit "American Naïve Painting from the Garbisch Collection at the National Gallery of Art."
Activities include 19th-century magic tricks and crafts. Admission to the galleries will be free all day. For more Taubman Museum news, visit my blog at blogs.roanoke.com/arts.
