As a blogger, I was pleasantly surprised to see Isiah Carey AKA The Insite get his own blog segment on Fox 26 KRIV. That's right, at 5pm everyday (and in other KRIV newscasts at times too), the Isiah Factor comes on the air.
"This is the most fun I've had on TV in a while," Carey told mikemcguff.com. "It gives me a chance to tell the quirky stories and all of the crazy things that happen behind the scenes. So far I've had the McDonald's customer who went off on an employee over a Hot and Spicy burger and the news crew who looks suspect."
Speaking of news crews, any Insite reader will be able to tell you that Carey always has a great behind the scenes look into the Houston TV news world and his own KRIV stories. For example, you can watch the above clip where Carey and photographer Torrey T-Dub Walker were shooting a story in Meyerland and the cops were called on them. Here is the blog version.
"It wasn't my idea, but the brainchild of my News Director Tom Doerr and General Manager D'art Bebel," Carey told me. "They said, 'Isiah, we want you to put some of the stories from the Insite on TV.' I was like a kid in a candy store when they said that."
I'm impressed that KRIV has such a supportive role in this. Most stations around the country would not let a reporter have their own blog segment on air, much less about a personal blog. If a segment like this was actually allowed, most likely a station would want that blog to be on its own website so it collected the ad money.
I used to work for a TV station where a manager would stop me in the halls and say they were reading my blog everyday. That actually sent a chill down my spine because I knew they weren't reading because they liked it. Those types of incidents put a chilling effect on your blog and work. In fact, now that blogs have been around awhile and we can look back in hindsight, I would recommend to TV station employees (and anyone at a corporation) not to write a personal blog. It's probably not worth your career.
Back to Carey, you might have recognized the Isiah Factor branding from a promo the station launched earlier this year.
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