Well, it's been a few weeks now since we did the big switch over to local HD. So, it's time to breath again.

Not only did we switch over to HD, we went tapeless and we're using a new graphics system. Sort of like a fresh coat of paint, sprucing up our look a bit.

With tapeless, it means we no longer put stories on video tapes and hit the play button to show them to you. Remember the scene in "Broadcast News" where they had to sprint the tape to the control room? That stuff really does happen. OK, may be that was more dramatic than in real life, but yes, tapes do get run to the control room. Now, they get edited on computer and sent to a server. The, the behind-the-scenes folks just click play on a computer screen. A major step foward, but it required us to learn something new.

Our new graphics required us to get re-trained as well. It wasn't a major switch, but it's another thing where what used to do without thinking we now have to stop and think about. Hope that makes sense and hope you like the new graphics. I think they're a lot brighter. Along with our set which got new backdrops, I hope we've done away with the appearance we're the "dark and dreary" station.

We have to give a big shout-out to some of the folks who worked really hard behind the scenes to get this done. Mikel Lauber, who is a technical geek (that's meant as a compliment) in an anchor's body and engineers Chad Myers and Phil Hejtmanek.

Perhaps the biggest kudos have to do to our directors: Nate Shallue, Garrett Schumacher, Nick Kobach, Jim Reuter and director-in-training Dave Dickenson. While the rest of us could make our mistakes before we went on the air and correct them, these guys did their training pretty much during shows. With the occasional minor glitch, they all looked pretty good.

Hope you like the changes. And as for HD, if you don't have an HD TV, now you have an excuse to run out and buy one.

J