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Hawaii News Now: KHNL/KGMB has won two regional Edward R. Murrow awards and is the only Hawaii broadcast news organization to get awards this year from the Radio Television Digital News Association.
Hawaii News Now was cited for "overall excellence" and for "breaking news" for its coverage of a tsunami warning in October. The winning entries now go on to compete for national recognition, with judging to take place over the summer.
"This really is … a real honor for our Hawaii News Now team," said Rick Blangiardi, general manager.
The competition pits stations against one another depending on market size, and, as Honolulu is the No. 71 market according to Nielsen, Hawaii News Now won its awards in the competition among smaller-market stations within California, Guam and Nevada.
In a letter accompanying the entry for overall excellence, news director Mark Platte discussed the "extraordinary" work the stations did in 2012.
"We had hospitals close on Oahu, a car crash on Maui that left five dead and massive flooding on Kauai. We had brush fires and shark attacks, an 8-year-old served booze on a cruise and an entire island — Lanai — sold to Oracle founder Larry Ellison," he wrote.
Platte enumerated other high notes of the stations’ work including sending reporters to the mainland and abroad for news and sports coverage, as well as the all-hands-on-deck work for the tsunami warning issued the Saturday before Halloween.
"We had all reporters and anchors working Saturday night while notable competitors were off the air," Platte said of the tsunami coverage. "Our coverage was picked up by the following news outlets during the evening: CNN, MSNBC, CBC, CBS, and Eurovision picked up our live Web stream. Reporter Tim Sakahara provided live shots for the following outlets: CBS, NBC, CBC and a live phoner with … North Carolina (station) WBTV," which got the stations’ coverage seen nationally and in Canada.
KITV did not enter the competition, while KHON did submit entries, according to officials at those stations.
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On the Net:
» rtdna.org/content/2013_regional_edward_r_murrow_award_winners
ALOHA, ‘ALOHA SHORTS’
"Aloha Shorts," a program of local literature and music on Hawaii Public Radio’s HPR-2, is going on "indefinite hiatus," according to an email from the show’s longtime volunteer producers.
The emailed adieu thanked "volunteers and listeners for your many years of continuous support and encouragement," and expressed that producers enjoyed "creating this program with so many talented writers and performers."
"We all will miss the ‘Aloha Shorts’ tapings and the broadcasts," the email said, indicating the shows are being archived on the Bamboo Ridge Press website.
Show host Cedric Yamanaka explained that finding the stories, recruiting the volunteer talent to read them, taping the readings and editing the show for broadcast took "a huge amount of time — countless volunteer hours — and (the producers) got to a point where they needed to invest that time in other projects."
The show had been on the air since June 2004, according to HPR.
Hawaii Public Radio will continue airing previously broadcast "Aloha Shorts" shows on KIPO-FM 89.3 (and across the rest of the statewide Hawaii Public Radio network) through April.
Judy Neale, HPR director of promotion, said, "If they ever decided to begin production again, I bet we’d be more than happy to put them back on the schedule. It’s a wonderful show, and it had a lot of fans."
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On the Net:
» bambooridge.com
» www.hawaiipublicradio.org
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Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com, or on Twitter as @erikaengle.
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