Reporters presenting their stories live is a hallmark of local television news.  Most of the time live shots go off without a hitch.  But every now and then the unexpected happens.

Last New Year's Eve, I decided we should go live in downtown Reno for the 11 o'clock news.  On paper, it seemed like a great idea -- people could check out the festivities on TV, just an hour before 2007.  My photographer was somewhat apprehensive though -- he was concerned some people may have had too much to drink and could misbehave the moment we started broadcasting live.

We compromised and decided we would go live a few blocks from the main celebration.  Zooming in, we could still give people a live look of at festivities, but we'd be away from the main crowd.

I edited my tapped piece, and we jumped in the live truck and drove downtown.  When we arrived at the live shot location, I was somewhat disappointed -- there was no one around.  We were far from the main event.

But at least we were in a controlled environment -- so we thought.

The newscast started, and I was in place and ready to present my story.  I heard the anchor toss to me in my ear piece.  As she did, I could see several people approaching in my peripheral vision.  That's when things went really wrong on live television.

One of the people approaching began screaming, ran into the live shot and seemed to be trying to put his mouth on the camera lens.  At this point I all I could think to do was read my script and hope the control room would take away to something else!  Eventually the director did.  But that was probably the longest 30 seconds or so of my live!

The next day I came into the newsroom to find that everyone had watched a recording of the live shot, and thought it was hilarious!  I still haven't lived this down to this day!

Immediately after the shot I was terribly embarrassed, but now I can look back on the event and laugh.  It just goes to show things can go very wrong on live TV, very quickly.  This New Year's Eve, I'm hoping for a great live shot everyone will remember instead of what happened one hour before 2007.