One more snowstorm comes to The County. As such events go, it was interesting for a moment and a pain in the tuckus for the rest of the event.
More amusing was the antics of the weather teams. The local weather people still cannot figure out if the additional daylight is a gain or a loss. Since we are almost 90 days into advancing daylight hours it should be viewed as a gain.
While most of what is offered as local news only feeds the offal needs of the community, one area where WAGM does excel in local coverage is sports. In the four to six minutes allotted for sports in each newscast, one gets a solid picture of sports in Aroostook County. Local sports is a melange of many different events. Rene Cloukey goes throughout the county each evening. When the local newscast has only three stories Rene will double that and offer a broad range of reports too. Always looking for the local connection he introduces old sports and new.
A typical sportscast will cover the entire County. Doing local sports with the enthusiasm of a national sports cast, which makes up for the paucity of local news, Rene is Mr. Sports for The County. In a typical sportscast he will have reports on games from throughout The County. Five nights a week a consistent presentation of the great, the small, the normal, and the unexpected of the sports variety comes into our homes. One will meet few sportscasters in the field who eat, drink, think and sleep sports. From underwater hockey to modified street rods and balls of every type, Rene brings it all to the local sportscast with knowledge, wit and skill.
Rene enjoys jokes.
At a time when the County had more high schools in a line from Houlton to Allagash, it was theoretically possible to drive to every one in a single night. When high school basketball season was at its peak, the goal was to have video from every game being played.
When I was a videographer there, videotaping basketball for the evening news meant going to a game, getting pictures of a couple of baskets for each team and then skipping on to the next assignment. Make certain you get a shot of the roster and some crowd shots. After the last game on the list, hightail it back to the station and cut the tape for the late newscast.
Coming into work one night, I saw a list of contests posted and a start time for the games on the assignment board. Sure enough, eight communities from Fort Kent to Houlton appeared. One person’s name appeared beside each — and it was not Rene’s.
Gathering up every spare battery and loads of tape it was time to hop in the news car and head out. Ninety miles of county road ahead and a long, cold December night, and 16 basketball games to be covered. Half an hour underway, to the sounds of a roaring Rene from the newsroom, came word that it was a joke — probably one of the best practical jokes I remembered. Thanks to Rene, a memorable day at work.
Nice to see he still presents a great sportscast that is local.
Orpheus Allison is a photojournalist living in The County who graduated from UMPI and earned a master of liberal arts degree from the University of North Carolina. He began his journalism career at WAGM television later working in many different areas of the US. After 20 years of television he changed careers and taught in China and Korea.
