On a 10:00 Friday night show, Heather Burns, Don Phelps and Gary Dobbs were wrapping up. Gary plugged the Guntersville Pork Festival occuring the following day. Without missing a beat, Heather innocently said, "If they're not fishin' in Guntersville, they're porkin' "
Another case of the Friday night sillies, Heather began the kicker with a question, "What do you have when you..." and listed items like several hundred pounds of corn meal, ham, gallons of ice tea. She concluded the list with 500lbs of dried white beans. Don replied, "Probably enough natural gas to heat the Tennessee Valley for an entire year. But if you're in Florence, you have Bean Day."
Other Events of Note:
About a year after Operation Desert Storm had concluded, ABC had sent down a refeed of its special report break-in it did the night it all started with Peter Jennings tossing to spectacular night video of Bagdad being bombed. Well, the switcher on duty did not see the file video slate prior to the start of the feed. When he saw ABC Special Report slate, he put it on the air. And we proceeded to scare the Tenneessee Valley by making them think we were bombing Iraq again. Phone calls poured in asking if we were attacking Iraq. After the mistake was realized and regular programming continued. ABC sent down an alert in big white letters telling its affiliates that its previous feed was file video only and was not for air. Apparently many other switchers in many other markets were also quick on the switching trigger to take the ABC Special Report.
We were shooting a Christmas feature for Pierre Kimsey at Parkway City Mall. The premise of the scene was to show the frenzy associated with Christmas shopping. So we were posing as shoppers and acting like we were choking each other over a parking space. As were were acting the scene on camera, I got to do the choking. Suddenly I felt to firm hands on my shoulders, and I was pulled back and separated from my chokee by mall security. They had received a tip from a shopper that there was a fight going on in the parking lot. Evidently, security did not see the large camera and tripod sitting in the back of a pickup truck shooting the entire thing.