Editorial: Evolution Of WCNT-tv And Kayaking Editor

I hope you’re continuing to enjoy watching our WCNT-tv — Wesley Chapel & New Tampa Television— segments on YouTube and Facebook. It at least appears that quite a few of your enjoy watching and sharing the segments, whether they’re “News Desks” with yours truly and my co-host Susanna Martinez or senior video editor Gavin Olsen’s outstanding slide videos, which continue to grow in popularity.

So, while we haven’t quite yet reached a million total views on Facebook and YouTube, we are approaching 700,000 total views and a total Facebook reach of more than 1.2 million people in a little less than two years (WCNT-tv debuted in June of 2016).

In fact, Gavin’s slide video a few weeks ago, about the “green” grocery store known as Earth Fare breaking ground at the corner of S.R. 56 and Wesley Chapel Blvd./S.R. 54, has been our most-viewed segment of 2018 to date, with a reach of nearly 30,000 people on Facebook, nearly 17,000 views and 1,100+ engagements (likes, comments and shares).

The most recent slide video Gavin put together for us (which also includes quite a bit of beautiful drone video footage shot by our friend Sergio Venegas of Eagle Fly Media) that was released on May 24 was about everything happening on S.R. 56 near and across from the Tampa Premium Outlets and had already reached nearly 6,000 people, with hundreds of engagements, as we went to press with this issue — only two hours after we released it!

The most recent WCNT-tv News Desk segment provides even more info about everything happening in and around the Tampa Premium Outlets. It was expected to be released shortly after Memorial Day, so I hope you’ll keep an eye out for it and let me know what you think.

The new News Desk segment also will include full captioning, so more people can watch it without having to have the volume on. Gavin and I believe that having the captioning of every episode will be a factor in finally getting us over the one million total views on YouTube and Facebook I’ve been hoping for since the show started.

Over the next couple of weeks, I also hope you’ll look for the return of WCNT-tv business correspondent Mollyana Ward, who held a North Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce Ribbon Cutting, after the Chamber’s own ribbon cutting at its new office, for Lagoon Realty, the local real estate company in Epperson, where the first Crystal Lagoons® amenity in the U.S. recently held its own Grand Opening celebration.

Also, over the next month or two, you’ll also see WCNT-tv segments updating the S.R. 54 and S.R. 56 areas near Wiregrass Ranch, and hopefully, an update from the new Bahama Breeze Island Grill opening this summer.

I also want to thank our webcast partner, the North Tampa Bay Chamber and CEO Hope Allen for continuing to support the show and this publication (see ad on pg. 12), even though it’s been a little while since Mollyana has gotten to host a Chamber Featured Business segment.

Please call (813) 910-2575 for email ads@WCNT-tv.com for information about promoting your business on our show.

Gary Won An Award? For Kayaking?

Although I was happy with how I fared in the first race I ever finished in my Neighborhood News/WCNT-tv “Banana Boat” surfski single kayak on April 14, I was even happier when I finished my second race on May 19 — The Florida Cup off Madeira Beach.

The planned 3-mile “open” race was reduced to 2.2 miles because of the inclement weather that was expected but never arrived that day, and I was thrilled to finish the race in 27:47 (less than 14 minutes per mile), which had me in 31st of 48 finishers in every type of paddling craft.

But, I was even more excited to have been the third 50+ male on a surfski single to finish the race, more than 5 minutes ahead of the fourth-place finisher.

Even so, Susanna makes fun of me again on the S.R. 56 WCNT-tv segment, but only because I scripted it that way. Check it out!