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30th Anniversary of the Eruption of Mt St Helens

F

formeraa

May 18, 1980 -- Who remembers this date?

I do remember the television coverage of Mt St Helens live on split screen with the normal Sunday sports events.

Later on KING 5 News, they called in a much younger Jean Enersen to join weekend anchor Mary Ruth Carlton. Back in those days, it was extremely unusual to see two women anchoring a newscast.

In his pre-meteorologist days, then-science reporter Jeff Renner was on scene from Mt Margaret (?), which gave a clear shot of Mt St Helens' eruption.

This was a somewhat difficult story to cover in the days before routine live reporting. In addition, Mt St Helens is in a somewhat remote area, quite a distance from Seattle. I know that KING leaned heavily on KGW in Portland for reporting as well. Also, since the ash was primarily directed away from Seattle, we never had the "what the heck do we do with this white stuff that doesn't melt" issue. Some of the pictures from Spokane were much more interesting.
 
Anyone have any significant specials coming up on Tuesday? Nationally, doesn't look like anything on Discovery or History. Although History does have a scheduled volcano doc...on Krakatoa! Ironic.
 
Just checked the local listings for Seattle/Tacoma. Nothing scheduled. Perhaps a few 2.5 minute pieces on the local news. I guess that is all we can expect in today's "give me what is I care about" world. Kinda sad, but understandable.
 
I believe KING 5 is doing a special that Tuesday evening at 7:30. Don't know how long, but I'm guessing by the start time its 30 minutes.
 
I'd like to see the movie "St. Helens" with Art Carney! Is that on DVD at all? I need to check Netflix. Fun movie!
 
KING's doing drop-ins on weekend morning news today with D. Bounds & Seattle Times reporter who was main force behind a multi-page spread in Times today.

Today (Sunday) feels more like the anniversary because it blew on a Sunday morning (same weather as today, etc.) -- REALLY testing the news media as skeleton crews on, radio barely had weekend news talent (better than now), and not like choppers were standing by, etc. Much like our recent Lakewood thing -- major news breaks on Sunday morning and interesting to see how people react and respond given the scheduling and resource challenges.
 
LITTLEBOYBLUE said:
Today (Sunday) feels more like the anniversary because it blew on a Sunday morning (same weather as today, etc.) -- REALLY testing the news media as skeleton crews on, radio barely had weekend news talent (better than now), and not like choppers were standing by, etc. Much like our recent Lakewood thing -- major news breaks on Sunday morning and interesting to see how people react and respond given the scheduling and resource challenges.
Click to expand...

So true! In 1980, there were certainly no weekend morning newscasts. Most of the weekend evening newscasts consisted of a news anchor and sports person. I don't believe that the stations had regular weekend evening weather anchors at that time. I believe that they ended calling in the main weather anchors on that day. Was David Grant the main weathercaster on KING at that time?
 
Hucksters are all over it. Saw an hour "special" today that really was an hour long commercial for their DVD and wilderness school.
 
formeraa said:
LITTLEBOYBLUE said:
Today (Sunday) feels more like the anniversary because it blew on a Sunday morning (same weather as today, etc.) -- REALLY testing the news media as skeleton crews on, radio barely had weekend news talent (better than now), and not like choppers were standing by, etc. Much like our recent Lakewood thing -- major news breaks on Sunday morning and interesting to see how people react and respond given the scheduling and resource challenges.
Click to expand...

So true! In 1980, there were certainly no weekend morning newscasts. Most of the weekend evening newscasts consisted of a news anchor and sports person. I don't believe that the stations had regular weekend evening weather anchors at that time. I believe that they ended calling in the main weather anchors on that day. Was David Grant the main weathercaster on KING at that time?
Click to expand...

Yes, I believe David Grant was KING5's main weather anchor, as he moved into the new facility in '81 before heading off to the weather channel, then Tampa, wanna say '83 or so. Perhaps Jeff Renner's excellent reporting on St. Helens had a lot to do with him replacing Grant eventually.

My bad on no local coverage. I keep forgetting that when I look up Titan listings for other markets, it still gives me my local time zone (mountain), so I missed that. My hope would be this special will take a different angle, and not just the same old footage and stories. What that angle is exactly, not sure, but as these stories develop over time new info is sorely lacking in many cases.
 
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