Carrie in the Sac

Few things get Fox affiliate producers as excited as an Idol story on an Idol night. But hey, can you blame them? When you have a show that takes the number 1, 2 and 3 spots in national ratings as your lead-in, it'd be stupid not to capitalize on the rabid fandimoniun. So capitalize we did, as we (and I) have done several times before. This evening, the News Ratings Gods graced us with a concert at Sacramento's Arco Arena, featuring former-Idolite Carrie Underwood opening for Keith Urban. Ca-Ching goes the Ratings-O-Meter!

And so I found myself attending a concert at Arco Arena for the second time this week. We were permitted to record 90 seconds of her second and third song, after which our connection to the soundboard was cut and my arm was tugged by the media relations lady. I couldn't shoot anything else, including happy fans or dancing hotties. Any time I tried to shoot outside of those 90 second windows, I got the arm tug, followed by a stern head shake.

Carrie was unavailable to the media, so we relied on a handful of MOS interviews, which primarily consisted of teenage girls talking over each other or 6 year old kids trying to sing her songs. Good stuff.

So at the end of the night, we hopefully reeled in some fans and fascinated them with additional stories of doom, destruction and other common evening news topics.

I've found that some people in the biz hate stories like this. They'd rather be chasing after police-involved shootings or watching a family's house burn down. Granted, this isn't exactly the shining example of investigative journalism, but I enjoy one of these stories every once in a while; I get to have fun with it, get paid to see something cool, and get a break from the usual carnage and mayhem that I'm forced to wander through on a daily basis. Give me a few more years and maybe I'll be jaded enough to complain about covering these "sorta-stories", but for now I'm happy to volunteer.

Now, just to be clear, I'm not a fan of Carrie Underwood, American Idol, or country music in general (although Cash's last couple of albums were excellent). But when you see an arena full of hot chicks dancing around in cowboy hats, well... it's hard to dislike country music.