Kansas City picks a new leader. We dissect the election and examine what’s in store for Mayor-elect Sly James. Plus, how a tactless joke about shooting illegal immigrants put Kansas in the national spotlight. And why is Missouri U-S Senator Claire McCaskill simply “plane” embarrassed this week?
NEWS REVIEWERS
Micheal Mahoney
KMBC 9 News
Dave Helling
Kansas City Star
Steve Kraske
Kansas City Star/KCUR
Fred Logan
The Business Journal
NEXT WEEK: Debating the Earnings Tax…
WHAT HAS YOUR CONGRESSMAN BEEN DOING FOR YOU LATELY?
On Kansas City Week in Review Friday Nick Haines is joined by Kansas City Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, freshman Kansas Congressman Kevin Yoder and new Missouri Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler.
KANSAS CITY WEEK IN REVIEW, Friday @ 7:30 pm on KCPT. Rebroadcast Sunday @ 11 am.
A year ago, most of us were still trying to wrap our heads around the terms “Sporting Kansas City” and “LiveStrong Sporting Park.” They were unfamiliar, and some would say even bizarre phrases, describing our re-named professional soccer team and its, then, still un-built new stadium.
All the changes seem to have worked. Rave reviews poured in for the new venue in KCK. The team made the playoffs. Attendance went up 84 percent. Merchandise sales went up 475 percent. And team TV ratings went up more than 100 percent. How’s that for a turnaround?
This week, we’re joined by one of the team’s top star’s and biggest goal scorers, Kei Kamara.
Here is a look a look at his journey from Sierra Leone to Kansas City and his return to play for Africa’s national team:
Pencils, paper and laptops?
More than 5 years ago, the Kansas City, Kansas School District began giving free laptop computers to all of its high school students.
Three years ago, North Kansas City joined the gadget giveaway by providing free net-books to its high schoolers. And starting this school year, students receive 11-inch MacBook Air laptops.
Everybody loves technology, but what have these school districts got to show for their massive investment? Are test scores up?
We sent reporter Danny Wood on assignment to find out if the district’s investment is paying dividends.
You know our local theatres each tend to have their specialties–comedies, classics, family fare, or in the case of Kansas City’s Unicorn Theatre, cutting edge new plays that are in many cases Pulitzer Prize winners or world premieres.
This season, the Unicorn has already staged a punk rock musical about Andrew Jackson, a tele-evangelists’s last broadcast, and a dark comedy about addiction with a name we can’t say on TV.
We go behind the scenes at the Unicorn in this latest installment of our performARTS series in conjunction with KC Studio Magazine.
Join us at Lidia’s Kansas City on Wednesday, December 14, 2011 from 7 to 9:30 and experience a fabulous holiday dinner – Lidia’s style in the Loft Dining Room.
The dinner includes 4 courses and a selection of wines to accompany. Recipes from Lidia’s newest cookbook Lidia’s Italy in America will be featured in some of the courses.
Spanish is the official language in 21 countries around the world. Hundreds of dialects, accents and cultures make these countries, but the letter Ñ has the same meaning throughout the world.
From there comes the name and purpose of Ñ Magazine, the idea of uniting the diverse Hispanic population in Kansas City and keep them informed and connected.
The magazine debuted in April 2006 to provide content specific to the Spanish-speaking population of the metro.
The Managing Editor of Ñ Magazine, Rene Aguirre sat down with Nick Haines to talk about the magazine’s role in the Hispanic community of Kansas City.
Ñ Magazine is free and available at 500 locations throughout the metro, including supermarkets, restaurants and libraries.
Drivable Art: Art of the Car Concours at KCAI
The Fifth Annual Art of the Car Concours® will take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, June 26 on the Kansas City Art Institute campus. The show will feature more than 180 vintage, classic and special-interest vehicles, including cars, trucks, racing cars and vintage motorcycles belonging to collectors from eight states. Vehicles from Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Texas, Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina and Oklahoma will be on view.
Visual Magician: Bruce Branit
Branit creates visual effects for major motion pictures, television and advertisements for his company, Branit FX, in the Crossroads Arts District. He opened his business in 2004 after working in Hollywood for 10 years, but Kansas City is his home and he wanted to come back here to raise a family. Branit grew up in Johnson County, graduated from Shawnee Mission East and earned an industrial design degree from the University of Kansas.
Randy Mason sits down with Branit to discuss the world of Hollywood special effects.
Kansas City’s Most Wanted: Buyers for Vacant Schools
What on Earth should the Kansas City, MO school district do with 38 potential eyesores and dens of crime? We are talking about the 38 schools that the district now has to repurpose or sell. About 20 of them are from last year’s contentious round of school closings, but the remainders have been on the books for a lot longer…some for decades. The district is now providing tours of the schools to would be buyers, but are they getting any bites? The Local Show tags along on the one of the tours.
A Fond Farewell: The Lyric Opera’s Evan Luskin
Evan Luskin has announced that he is retiring as general director of the Lyric Opera…just as the company prepares to move to its new performance space at the Kauffman Center For The Performing Arts. Luskin, the Company’s general director since 1998, will be retiring on June 30, 2012. Mr. Luskin’s retirement will come at the conclusion of the Lyric’s first year of residence in the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, which will open this fall.
This week on The Local Show, we continue our ongoing performARTS series in conjunction with Studio Magazine with an inside look at the Unicorn Theatre. Board Chair of the Friends of the Arboretum, Dennis Patton, talks about some of the changes visitors can expect now and in the future. We begin a two-part profile of the innovative CAPS program in the Blue Valley School District which gives students first hand experience working with mentors from various fields. Finally, we look at how the metro is preparing for an electric car boom.
The Local Show is designed to highlight artists and entrepreneurs, leaders and overachievers from all walks of life – and in the process, help Kansas Citians discover substantially more about this place we call home.
“The Local Show is really going to allow us to tackle areas of the news that rarely get much television coverage in the metro. At KCPT, we tackle local politics and public policy well, but what about the arts and entrepreneurship, education, health and science? Finally, we have a place to regularly tell those stories.” Nick Haines, Executive Producer, The Local Show
Nick Haines is the show’s host and executive producer. Assisted by Randy Mason (and other guest interviewers from time to time), Nick will sit down for fast-paced chats with people who are making a genuine difference in fields as varied as education, health services, technology, and the arts.
The pilot episode, for example, features Kathleen Collins, retiring this year as president of the Kansas City Art Institute; and Bryan Hansel, whose company, Smith Electric, is manufacturing electric powered trucks right here in Kansas City. KCPT’s The Local Show will also spotlight “difference makers” in the community. In this first program, KCPT goes inside Operation Breakthrough, the nation’s largest low-income daycare facility. More than 600 kids a day are served at the facility on Troost Avenue. But with rising poverty, 1200 children are on the waiting list.
The Local Show will also feature segments showcasing items from the WWI Museum at Liberty Memorial, and from time-to-time, some aptly named “Start-Up Stories.” These profiles will peek behind the scenes at fledgling ventures across the metro, and then with the aid of expert analysts, pinpoint the companies’ strengths and weaknesses.
KCPT President & CEO Kliff Kuehl conceived The Local Show after spending much of his first year on the job meeting business and civic leaders all over town. “I was amazed at how many fascinating stories I heard, and how much of it might not be known by a lot of our audience,” he says.
As The Local Show launches in July and August, each half-hour program will air once a month. Beginning in September, it will have a more frequent presence on KCPT, agile enough to accommodate special editions of Imagine KC and other newsworthy topics as the need arises.
