By Chip Chandler — Digital Content Producer
Chip.Chandler@actx.edu
I hope you tuned in last night for our first live pledge night of the March cycle. It was my first as an employee of Panhandle PBS, though as I was telling my coworkers last night, it wasn’t technically my first pledge night.
Years ago, I was asked to host a night with Janice Perkins Easterday, a friend and longtime Amarillo actor and singer. Though spending time with Janice is always a pleasure, that was my first time reading cue cards and my first time on live TV, period. Let me put it this way: I never got asked back.
Last night was far smoother. I kept our Instagram feed hopping with behind-the-scenes photos, and colleague Karen Welch did the same with our Twitter feed. From our vantage, we saw our new team working like a well-oiled machine – from efficiently training the volunteer phone bank operators from The Craig Senior Living, to Ellen Robertson Green smoothly interviewing several live guests, to all the (to me, frankly magical) work the engineers, camera operators, producer and director did to get our live cut-ins on the air. A ton of fun for me and, I hope, our viewers.
Pledge programming continues tonight with the season finale of “Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr.,” in which he charts the ancestry of actors Mia Farrow and Dustin Hoffman, and “The Art of the Love Song with the Annie Moses Band.” The band, a six-piece act of sisters and brothers, combines folk, pop, gospel and classical traditions, and in this special, they look back on some classic romantic tunes like “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” “I Only Have Eyes for You” and “Evergreen.”
If you like what you hear when the special airs at 8:30 p.m., the band will be performing in Amarillo at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 9 in the Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts, 500 S. Buchanan St. If you pledge $100 or more, you will receive a ticket to the concert and admission to a meet & greet with the band as a thank-you gift.
Don’t forget to tune into our next live pledge night on Wednesday. We’ll feature a special episode of “NOVA,” “Making North America: Origins."