As you know, I've been intensely in the middle of planning & executing our annual July 3 Fireworks Extravaganza (where the fireworks go off at 9!!). A big part of that is promoting it. 

We send out press releases, and the media covers it, but the TV stations require pitching. We have to convince the producers that we can bring something audio/visual that will be interesting for their viewers. After 14 years of the same fireworks event, it's a challenge to throw out fresh twists that people have not seen before.

Our hope was to have our headline acts, Darren Benitez or Jake Shimabukuro, do morning show appearances. However, Jake is traveling and Darren wasn't returning phone calls, so the suprising new shot-of-the-week became Hooters' wing eating contest, which we will have at 6 p.m. on July 3.  (It's free to enter, everyone who enters gets a day pass to Hawaii Athletic Club, and the winner gets a free wing party for eight people.)

No problem! I told Hooters GM Dave Hart of my plans, and told him to get me some wings on June 30 so I could take them to KGMB on July 1. I didn't want him to have to wake up early!  But noooo. Dave insisted that the wings be made fresh, lest the quality of the wings gets compromised. So he was there in the kitchen at 6:30 this morning, frying a large batch of wings and hand-tossing them in their special sauce. He also made his marketing manager, Tia Spence, drag herself in to talk about the contest.

We talked about the whole event and then held our own wing-eating contest with Taizo Braden, Grace Lee, and Steve Uyehara. Steve is touted as the guy who likes to eat, and he did--complete with sound effects and everything! I can't get the video to load into my blog (I haven't learned that yet) so click here to see the carnage.

This news team is definitely a lot of fun, and game for just about anything. Not that other news teams are not!...but it was good to see it first hand, since this was my first time working in-studio with the KGMB Sunrise group.

At the end of the newscast, Grace proclaimed Steve the winner and presented him with a Hooters T-shirt. Big fun!

I just want to add a last industry "inside" comment, so to all my fellow flacks (and some journalists) who know my background, I think you will all agree that the transformation is complete: I have become Jim Boersema.