Jason DeRusha: American Hero

Yes, it's true. Our favorite WCCO fixture fame-whored himself out at Target Field on Wednesday to sing the national anthem "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." He actually has quite a nice singing voice, if you ask us!

Jason took to his DeBlog to tell the tale. And much like Jason DeRusha Day last year, all the media mogul had to do was mention it and opportunity came a-knockin'.

JD didn't exactly get VIP treatment, however. He notes a couple lessons learned on his blog:

You don't get a ticket to the game (the singers are usually already there for pregame stuff).

You don't get a jersey or anything (my wardrobe was my own).

You don't even get a free hot dog (I paid $5.25 for my grilled big dog with onions and bag of potato chips).

There is no echo in the stadium, which is cool, and made it much easier to sing. But it's hard to hear the organ, and that's my excuse for why I sound a bit flat. "Pitchy" to quote Simon Cowell.

WCCO vids apparently don't embed, so click HERE to watch. Congrats Jason, you are LOL/OMG's American hero of the day!

Image courtesy of wcco.com

submitted by @letoilemagazine

Shelby leaves WCCO

Not to be outdone by Fox 9's news that Robyne Robinson is leaving, WCCO busts out with its own shocker: Longtime news anchor Don Shelby is retiring. Ok, well perhaps it's not such a shocker, as Shelby is a lot closer to retirement age than Robinson, and has been hinting at it for quite some time, but still! D-Shelb has been a local news fixture for as long as we can remember!

WCCO reports, "More than 32 years after Shelby's first newscast at WCCO-TV, Monday, Nov. 22 will be Shelby's last night of anchoring WCCO 4 News at 10 p.m. The following night, Frank Vascellaro will join Amelia Santaniello as the new co-anchor at 10 p.m."

Maybe we can start a rumor that Robinson and Shelby are running away together?

via Bring me the News on Facebook

Click HERE to download a life-sized Shelby mask. Totes commemorative!

Submitted by @letoilemagazine

WCCO Gets Wired

Thursday was a big day at WCCO TV as they finally released their social media/news platform called the Wire ( WCCO gave a preview of the Wire to about 50 social media junkies last October).

So, what is this thing exactly? It is several things in one actually and David Brauer from Minn Post actually came up with the best way to describe it: "news -buzz-graphical-interface-web thingie". Maybe add real-time? And Twitter. Oh, we give up.

How does it work? At first glance you might be a bit confused, so take some time and play with it. Or you can just read the FAQ on the Wire blog.

User reactions that we picked up from Twitter vary from cool to .. argh.


Not that this matters for WCCO peeps at all, but fake Senator Clay Davis (from the Wire, the HBO TV show) was very excited about this launch?

So,will you be using the Wire? How do you feel about the entire user experience?

Submitted by @marrina.