What’s going on world? AP Charles here.

The word has trickled down from the powers that be: I have been re-assigned to another show. I will now be working on “Morning Express With Robin Meade”. So when you are asleep in your warm, cozy beds at 3 A.M., I will be in the office helping put together a great show for you Monday through Friday. If Grayson allows me, I may get to be a guest blogger for the "News To Me" blog.

I can remember my first day working on this show. I was on a shoot with the guys and we were at Georgia Tech. Teague and Mike asked me to dance on camera (funny because I ran into some of my frat brothers and was stepping with them earlier that afternoon). From there on it was my staple to be “the weird random guy” in a number of shots. Unfortunately, not all of those made it to air. I’m going to miss searching the Web for great content. I’m going to miss the production meetings at “The Creek” (our production house), most of which primarily consist of us eating doughnuts and figuring out where we are going to shoot that weekend and what’s going in the show that week. I’m going to miss our Turner audio guys Gerald and Chris. I need to hang out with these guys. Gerald, I am not a lackey!!!

To the NTM Crew:
Thanks for all you guys have taught me. You guys have shown me so much and I know we will all accomplish great things.

Teague: Remember when I fell asleep on the way back from the NASCAR shoot and you decided to wake me up while filming me? Payback is coming…lol

Eric: Anytime you need a little advice on how to be the smooth ladies’ man, holla at me!

Mike: I know I am probably still going to get a few e-mails asking me to crank out a [transcription] real quick for probably the next week or two. It’s ok.

Aaron: Looks like your back on music reporting. Dude, hit me up if you need anything. “No Worries.” I’m stuck saying that now thanks to you.

Grayson: Dude, you are ultimate hook up guy. I swear you are like the concierge for "News To Me." Keep those contacts. (Sorry about Craft).

To all the viewers and readers of this blog, keep sending in your stories and pictures. It’s you that keeps this show going. ["News To Me"] exists solely because you guys can’t put a camera down. And we love it! I thank ya’ll. And who knows, you may see me on a shoot with the old crew sometime in the future.

Holla!!!

Associate Producer Charles behind the shades

What Up NTM World? Associate Producer Charles here. Every Thursday a different "News To Me" staffer is going to suggest three things on the web he or she thinks is something you might get a kick out of. This week, I’m on deck with my Thursday Three.

I think I need to mention that I am the youngest guy on this show. I’m only 25. That being said, I watch a ton of TV. Like you know you watch too much TV when you Tivo 2 things and then go into another room to watch something else at the same time. And while I can’t watch TV at work, I do take time out of my busy schedule to watch some of my favorite Web shows. So here are three shows that are in my “Web tivo” queue:

Up Stairs Girls
Two Words… “Working” Girl. Don’t worry, it’s all PG, but it’s damn funny.

Down Stairs Guys
These guys remind me of my roommates and my frat brothers when I was in college. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Hooking Up
Facebook, college life, and some of my favorite vloggers all in one place. It’s like having a huge bowl of jambalaya… just a bunch of good stuff all thrown together.

So now you know what’s in my Web show queue. Tell me what’s in yours. Have a site you think we should be considering? Leave it in the comments and we’ll check it out!

All of us who work on "News To Me" are pretty pumped about this weekend's show!  Producers Mike and Teague have been putting in serious hours creating what we think will be really compelling TV.  It's a story we have been "teasing" for over a month now and one that we have been working on for several months: The great Georgia Bigfoot Hoax.  No need to get into the background of the hoax here... we'll do that this weekend on "News To Me," but if you are a skeptic, suspicious, paranoid, wearing a tin-foil hat or someone who makes fun of those kind of people you will really dig the first two blocks of the show.

Interestingly enough, seems like the whole "News To Me" crew has memories associated with Sasquatch.  Do we believe?  Not necessarily, but buried deep in our grey matter we all have something that clicked when we started working on this story...

Eric Lanford:
In a previous life, as host of a different TV show, I actually went HUNTING for Bigfoot.

Coordinating Producer Michael Kane:
When I was an “Indian Guide” – that was a youth group in the ‘70s for losers who were too wimpy to make it as a Boy Scout – we went on a hike up to the top Atlanta’s Stone Mountain, the largest exposed slab of granite on Earth.

The trail to the top is pocked with large holes and craters. One of the older boys pulled me aside to warn me that some of those craters were actually Bigfoot tracks. I believed him, swallowed hard and soldiered up the mountain in a cold sweat. The mountain still haunts my dreams.

Producer/Editor Teague Kennedy:
Round about 1994 I was driving down a dirt road just after dark in search of a campsite in a woodsy area in central Florida. I had seen no people or cars since entering the forest perhaps 15 minutes earlier, when up in the distance I saw in my headlights what looked to be a naked man running through the woods. Needless to say we didn't pitch tent in the area. True story.

Associate Producer Charles Gilbert:
When I was 14, my friends and I thought we saw Bigfoot’s print in some dirt behind a house in our neighborhood. The footprint was huge. Then we looked closer. We noticed that it wasn’t Bigfoot’s print. It was mine. I am 6’ tall and I wear a size 15 shoe. Damn I felt dumb.

Corey the intern:
I got scared by watching "Harry and the Hendersons" when I was a little kid. Seriously, Bigfoot has never really interested me. I'm more fascinated by UFO pictures experts can't explain.

Associate Producer Grayson Thagard:
My Grandpa Red used to take me and my little brother out on his air boat into the Florida Everglades. "The glades" was a creepy place at dusk when the shadows got long, especially for a 7 year old. As we skimmed along the shallow water Grandpa saw something out of the corner of his eye and all of a sudden he shut down the giant fan pushing the air boat. In the absence of that roar we clearly heard what can only be described as a moan coming from the thick vegetation about 20 yards away. Grandpa told us in a whisper, that it was the sound of a Skunk ape, the "Bigfoot" of the swamp. It was a typical sweltering Florida July but I clearly remember hearing the sound again and suddenly being ice cold. That was my last trip to the Everglades.

Associate Producer Aaron Rustom:
When I was about 10 or 11, my best friend’s dad took us out to their cabin in East Texas so we could go fishing. As we got closer to the cabin, my friend’s dad started telling us about the “Alabama-Coushatta” tribe, who were native to the area, and the creature who lurked among them… a creature named "Sasquatch." He also told us we would be okay, if we kept "stink bait" in our pockets. Stink bait is used on trot-lines to catch catfish. And as the name implies, it stinks! It stinks so bad that even Bigfoot is repulsed by the odor. That whole weekend, every noise, every crackle, every time the trees blew, we rubbed more stink bait on us.

The funny thing is… there actually have been Bigfoot "sightings" in that area!

Ok, so those are OUR Bigfoot memories... do you have a bigfoot / ufo / ghost / unexplained mystery / story? Tell us! It IS Halloween after all!

In the meantime, sleep tight... we'll see you tomorrow at 9:30pm Eastern and Pacific on Headline News!

Murphy’s Law is defined as anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. That was the case on this shoot. It was one of those shoots where all you can do is laugh at this situation because you would otherwise pop a blood vessel due to stress. This will probably not be the only post about this shoot however; it will be the only one from my perspective.

Earlier in the week I spoke to Mike and he said we would meet at the Dawsonville Outlet Mall at 10AM. So I wake up Saturday morning and stumble out of bed like I always do. I put on my jeans and a shirt as I always do and headed to the shoot. This is where it all began to go down hill.

See what happened after the jump »

We here at "News To Me" go to great lengths to inform and to entertain. And, sometimes, the entertainment finds us. Our shoot last weekend had all the makings of a good action movie. But how you ask?

Eric is a professional. I mean, come on, he's got his own show on Headline News!! But even professionals screw up every now and then, especially when they are trying to deliver their lines. Hence we have to do numerous takes to get a single shot. In this particular case, it was basically like hitting the rewind button a good 15 or 20 times.

So anyway, Eric is saying his lines over and over... and over again. Oh yeah, while crossing a busy street!!! Now, one would think that we would wait until the coast is entirely clear. Not this team. Eric would start delivering his line while the last car would come within inches of him. He must have been using the power of the "dark side" to avoid getting hit. Whenever he would mess up, he would stop in the middle of the street, turn around, and walk back to the curb. I forgot to mention that the traffic light was green and he DID NOT have the right of way. So yes, technically, he was jaywalking. But I mean it's jaywalking. It's one of those things that's only illegal if you get caught... right? Well, we did.

keep reading »

I am a music lover. I pretty much listen to everything, especially R&B and hip hop. So I am on this random myspace page and I hear this song called, “Intruder Alert.” I wanted to know who the song was by so I did a little digging and found out it was off Lupe Fiasco’s new album. I “YouTubed” the album (I made that word up) and I came across the newest music video off the album called, “Hip Hop Just Saved My Life.” I was digging the song but was curious who the artist was singing the hooks. I found out her name was Nikki Jean. So being the nerd that I am, I “YouTubed” her as well. Come to find out she’s an artist who was looking for her first big break - and she got it on this CD.

Read the rest of the story...