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Both shows air weekly with the same episode shown several times. With only 30 minutes to work with, neither show can go into much depth on any subject. But for RVers, both are well worth a half-hour of couch potato time. RV Today comes from the same people who own Trailer Life and the Good Sam Club. It's a weekly half-hour of feel-good features skewed a bit more toward RV travel than technical issues. Host Stew Oleson and cameraman Chris "Boze" Anguay are on the road half the year gathering their stories. Neither man has a family back home in Southern California, which is good because those kinfolk would be mightly
Stew shares co-hosting credits with Tracy Lehr, but it's not a 50-50 deal by a long shot. Lehr is a TV anchor in Santa Barbara, Calif., and shows up at scheduled times in Southern California to join Stew in lifestyle segments. In the mid '90s, Stew was a morning show host at the Fox TV station in Sacramento, Calif. Boze was still in high school and became addicted to the program. "It was like watching David Letterman in the morning," he said of Stew. After high school, Boze studied communications at California State University Sacramento and interned for "Good Morning Sacramento." A few years later after both had moved on to other jobs, the RV Today opportunity came along. "Boze was working in Las Vegas," said Stew. "I called him up and said, "how'd you like to join me on an RV show?" They were off and running a couple of weeks later. They're both a bundle of energy, shooting video dawn to dusk -- models of efficiency.
When they return home, Oleson heads into the studio where he edits each show on a Macintosh computer using Final Cut Pro, a $900 off-the-shelf software program. He does all the editing himself, making RV Today a remarkable example of what two people who love what they do can produce with today's ultra portable and relatively low-cost production equipment. They recently picked up a palm-sized $1,000 video camera that is virtually indistinguishable from consumer models, enabling them to grab video virtually everywhere they go, looking all the while like two camera-happy tourists. Yet dispite its barebones "do-it-all" crew, the show has picked up an impressive 10 national Telly Awards for Excellence in TV Production against some heavyweight competition. RVTV: Traveling in 52-feet of luxury RVTV host Rob Engman and cameraman Paul Cruickshank also spend about half the year romping around Northern America from their homebase in Toronto, Canada. The show is slower paced than RV Today and its feature segments longer. In addition to the RV show, the ex-college buddies also do a weekly cable TV show about cooking with wild game. Rob's wife and producer Karla Dudley sometimes travels with the crew as well.
They set out on each trip with stories in mind, but usually find plenty more along the way. "When you get on the road stories just fall in your lap like apples from a tree," said Rob. When Rob and Paul return home to Toronto, they hand off their video tape to editors at their Bullet Digital and Bullet Entertainment, a production company they founded 15 years ago that caters to a wide range of clientele from commercial broadcasters to corporate documentary and TV producers. All together, about eight people work on RVTV. Three years ago, said Rob, tired of being in the office, they hit the road to produce the first episodes of RVTV. The initial year aired only in Canada. For this season's episodes, RVTV is airing in high definition TV, which will provide viewers with crystal clear images of Rob and Paul's travels in their super deluxe motorcoach.
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