So, I made it onto the Weather Channel...

For Garden Walk Buffalo this year, Visit Buffalo Niagara (VBN, our visitors bureau) and their media relations firm in NYC, Mardiks Public Relations, was able to finagle a live Skype interview, last Saturday, from my garden, on The Weather Channel – two segments!

Had I ever used Skype? No. I had to quickly set up an account. The Weather Channel was great though. They sent a link to a video that explained how to make a good Skype interview. Much was obvious tips, but it was useful. And then we did a dry-run just to make sure everything was working on the Thursday before.

My prep included input from the VBN along the lines of, "They'll keep asking questions, about the weather, your job is answer by turning it back to gardens and tourism – and dispel any weather myths."

Well there were no weather myths to dispel. They were great.

I am not a Weather Channel watcher, but my wife is big-time. She's an international flight attendant that commutes to Newark every week, and her job is so reliant on weather and forecasts that she even knew who some of the Weather Channel personalities are by name.

Each segment was about three minutes long, but that zipped by so quickly it seemed like less than one. The first segment happened at 8:50 a.m., before the Walk started. The second was at 10:20 a.m. In between I cleaned up my garden – expecting around 1,500 to come through on just that one day.

I had also drove to each Garden Walk headquarters and dropped off materials I had forgotten to drop off the night before when I was setting up. We did some local TV on one of the morning news shows on Thursday starting at 4:45 a.m. and I'd been loopy and forgetful ever since. Fortunately, I'm loopy and forgetful pretty much every day, so no one noticed when I was loopy-er and more forgetful.

Ultimately, the spots had a rough viewership of 300,000, with a comparable ad value of nearly $20,000. Great unpaid advertising for Garden Walk!