He Gone. Hassel Beaming Off To the Mothership

Farewell, Chris Hassel. (photo from @poundHassel )

Say goodbye to Cooter Ray. And Gary Dolphin. And Mad Fran. Plus the guy from HR and whatever other character Chris Hassel dreamed up in his 5.5 years at WHO-HD.

He’s now on his way to “The Show.” The pride of Muscatine is headed to Bristol, CT and ESPN News’ “Highlight Express.”

I’ve known Chris since his days at St. Ambrose University in Davenport. He was a student who also anchored the Sunday night sports on the Fox 18 KLJB broadcasts. He was still in college and was anchoring on professional station. During his senior year as a Bee, he cleaned up at the Iowa Broadcast News Association awards banquet in Clear Lake.

Chris won almost every category in student TV and radio plus professional TV and radio. He was also calling games for WOC-AM in Davenport in addition to working in the news and sports departments.

Then-News Director Mark Minnick told the crowd, news directors specifically, to hire this guy.

Mark was right.

Chris landed at 1801 Grand and made an impression immediately. His humor was boundary pushing. His editing, precise. But it may be some of the  segments on SoundOff that will be his legacy.

This is still one of my favorites. Chris and Andy pair up for pure genius in this Stivers Ford behind the scenes segment. http://youtu.be/Nt6NSBml-wo

He even took a shot at Marty Tirrell, the Mouth of the Midwest.

Chris Hassel tees off at the Legacy Golf Course. (DM Register photo).

But it was the “Little Lick, Lotta Bite” that may have put him in the most hot water.

His Hazzle Dazzle production on Todd Lickliter’s ruffled a few feathers. Lickliter was the head men’s basketball coach at the University of Iowa.

Chris will tell you most of the things he’s done are from the brain of Keith Murphy, sports director at WHO-HD.

Before Chris, it was Andy Fales who turned Murph’s ideas into reality. The trio was incredibly talented in so many areas. Sports almost seemed their secondary specialty.

Here is the Little Lick clip.

Chris is a known night owl and those odd ESPN hours will likely suit him just fine.

One former professor told me recently no student came more prepared for their assignment than Mr. Hassel. I think that’s holding true again as he makes this move.

And now he’s just been named 2012 Iowa Sportscaster of the Year. That’s a nice parting gift.

Nice work, Gus

The Wartburg College Communication Arts Department added a national Emmy to the walls of history tonight.

Scott is the shorter one in the photo not named Emmy.

ESPN producer Scott Harves ’97 won his first national sports Emmy to his resume Monday night. The ceremony has been a lot like the daytime Emmy’s for Susan Lucci. The “All My Children” star was always nominated, but only won once. Scott had been nominated double-digit times before. This is his first statuette.

The Mother Ship’s Outside the Lines took home most of the hardware.

ESPN won four Sports Emmys for its excellence in journalism. The network’s acclaimed investigative series Outside the Lines won three Sports Emmys across three categories – Long Feature: The Man Behind the Red Bandana; Short Feature: Time Out of Mind; Editing:Joplin, City of Hope. Additionally, the prime-time news magazine show, E:60, was cited in theShort Feature category for “Together.” This is the 11^th consecutive year ESPN has received a Sports Emmy in at least one of the two categories for Features.

Scott was the producer on the Joplin, City of Hope. He spent time in Joplin after the football team after  the deadly tornadoes as they prepared to begin a new season in a changed town.

He was nominated in 4 categories Monday night at the New York City ceremony.

Nice picture with Scott Shaquille Rashaun O’Neal. Prior to this win, one of the biggest highlights he had at the ceremony was sitting next to Kelly Rippa’s husband.

Here is a trailer for Scott’s piece.

Emotional night in the spotlight for Iowa

Thomas family on stage at the ESPYs. (image from espn.com)

Wednesday night’s ESPYs on ESPN were only worth tuning in for 2 things.

One to see the UNI Panther’s win the ESPY for Best Upset. The other was a TV network showing what is one of the best things about television, conveying emotion.

Seeing the feature on the Ed Thomas was powerful. It was narrated by Kiefer Sutherland.

Brett Favre introduced the set up piece and the presentation of the award to the Thomas family.

Todd, Jan and Aaron Thomas at the ESPYs. (image from espn.com)

The speech by Aaron Thomas was better than any Oscars acceptance speech. The Aplington-Parkersburg athletic director did his school, state and most importantly his father proud.

Here’s the link to the speech. It is well worth your time to view the speech.

You could see people in the crowd wiping away tears and a very somber tone was visible in the Nokia Theater.

I do have a copy of the feature piece done by ESPN, but until ESPN posts the story, there won’t be any copies online because you can’t upload copyrighted material. You will have to watch the replay of the broadcast. The first re-airing of the event is Thursday, June 15 at 8p Central on ESPN2. The next replay is Sunday at 2p Central on ESPN2.

UNI Men's basketball coach Ben Jacobson on stage at the ESPYs. (image from AP)

The Northern Iowa basketball category will be after the monologue and about the 3rd award given. The Thomas feature which includes a conversation with the Becker family will be shortly after that. Our IPTV interview with Joan Becker is here. We talked about forgiveness with her.

Here’s a link to the Des Moines Register story on the event.

Here’s a link to the Des Moines Register story.
Here’s the Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier story.

WOI-TV in Des Moines had sports director John Walters and Dave Zawilinski in Los Angeles for the event. ABC5 is doing an entire show this Saturday at 630p. It will be a look behind the scenes at the ESPYs from the Iowa perspective. Dave says they have an interview with Favre.

KWWL-TV was there and is planning some behind the scenes stuff as well. We will post that when it becomes available.

Also give Sean Keeler’s blog a look at his takes from what the World Wide Leader did with the Iowa stories from Ali Farokhmanesh and Adam Koch to Todd and Aaron Thomas.