The Logandale Fairgrounds is a flurry of activity these days. A small army of staff, contractors and volunteers are working long days to prepare for the opening of the Clark County Fair which, this year, is on Thursday, April 7.
Fair officials have pumped a significant marketing budget into advertising and promotion aimed at a large regional audience. They have worked to get the word out to southern Nevada, Utah and Arizona; and are hoping to draw a banner year turnout for 2011.
But even while this has been going on, a perfect storm has been brewing around the Fair. A maelstrom of misunderstanding and misinformation has aimed winds of confusion at the same regional audience that the Fair has been trying to bring. Like any perfect storm, there is no single element to blame. Rather it’s a host of things working together just right to possibly result in a disastrous outcome.
First on the scene was the ongoing drama of the Nevada State Fair. Late last year, State Fair officials announced that the Reno event was in serious financial trouble. Then, about a month ago, they stated sadly that their show would NOT go on.
Of course, this news was bound to somehow get mixed up with the Clark County Fair. For the general public it would be all too easy to hear news of the State Fair and mistakenly apply it to our own Clark County Fair. The idea just needed a little mixing and amplifying to get the winds of confusion howling.
This was aptly provided by the Las Vegas TV news media. Several recent gaffes have reportedly involved television news anchors making casual, unscripted; yet ill-informed and ignorant; remarks which confuse the State Fair’s woes with the Clark County Fair. This irresponsible bungling occurring on several different news programs resulted in a cyclone of public confusion about the Fair. Apparently, many people are now unsure whether the County Fair is happening at all, despite all of the Fair’s paid advertising to the contrary.
The staff at the Logandale Fair office has been thrust right into the eye of this storm. They report receiving torrents of phone calls from people all over the region who are confused about the status of the Fair. Even more alarming, senior Fair staff members have had to carefully reassure some of the Fair’s biggest sponsors who have called in a panic after hearing rumors that the Clark County Fair has packed up and left town leaving them high and dry. Such situations tend to cast a rather sickly light when it comes time to renew sponsorships next year; even if the rumors were never true.
So scarcely a week before opening day, Fair officials are now biting at their nails. They are wondering just how much all of this will hurt attendance. They are worried that, having become befuddled by the whole mess, people in the region just won’t come. And all this is occurring at a time when the Fair could really use high attendance numbers to replenish reserves.
Of course, if the Fair had a professional public relations team in its corner this could all be cleared up in no time. A few calls to well-placed and familiar contacts along with the submittal of well-worded press releases would, no doubt, yield the quality coverage needed to clear up the impending bad weather. Even now, there would be time to repair the damage.
Trouble is, the Fair doesn’t have a professional PR team. The continued long life of the Fair has been largely due to the vigorous engine of local volunteerism that has always been called out to run things cheaply. There are no inside, in-tight contacts at Las Vegas news outlets. Instead the folks at the Fair have been left to weather the storm equipped only with their local staff and volunteers.
To their credit, though, they have tried diligently to clear things up with what resources they have. Fair officials have tried repeatedly to reach the offending regional media outlets requesting that something be done to correct the damage. But they report that, while numerous messages on senior editor’s voicemails and emails have been sent, no real response has been given; not even an acknowledgement of a problem. Unfortunately, without the contacts and expertise (and, of course, the hefty expense) of a professional PR team, that is about the best they can do.
It is seldom that Moapa Valley gets any regional news coverage. Every four or five years when a flood threatens to hit us, we get inundated with reporters in vans and helicopters. They all rush out here, take pictures of the river, get a few soundbites from locals in Overton, and then go back to town to report gross inaccuracies and incomplete information. Other than that, Overton is occasionally mentioned in the TV weather reports.
But it has been quite some time since any reliable advance reporting was done on the Fair. In times past, TV stations would send a weatherman out on opening day to let the people know of the small town fun available for them here that weekend. Newspaper stories in the Friday editions used to prime a regional readership to come out of the city and enjoy the Fair. But in more recent years, any such advance newspaper coverage has been laced with criticism of the Fair and baseless scandal-seeking.
The 10,000 people of Moapa/Logandale/Overton are a segment, albeit small, of the marketing audience of these media outlets. Perhaps we ought to raise our voice as a community of readers/listeners and expect better than this. We deserve the same coverage of our main community event as is afforded to events in Summerlin, Henderson, Boulder City, Las Vegas or anywhere else.
Below this article appears contact information for the News Assignment Desks for several major media outlets in southern Nevada. We encourage our local readership to make contact with these organizations. The simple request would be that they send reporters to Logandale on Thursday, April 7, to cover the first day of the Clark County Fair.
Of course, contacting these folks is not the same as mailing one’s elected officials. These are senior members of the free press. “The people” can’t claim any real power over their decisions (on second thought, maybe it is something like mailing one’s elected officials). Still, each of the media outlets below, makes a point of openly seek story ideas from the public. As a segment of their audience, we have a valid story idea to share. We can at least make our suggestions known, as their valued audience.
Be advised that this type of correspondence should remain courteous and dignified in tone without a lot of emotional accusations. Instead, the calls/notes should simply express concern about the apparent widespread confusion in the region regarding the Fair and then request help in this problem through coverage of our small-town event. Who knows, maybe if multiple requests are received, we’ll get what we ask for and can dodge this perfect storm of public relations mishaps.
Then we can all just go back to worrying about what challenges the real weather will bring to us over Fair weekend: yet another thing entirely outside of our control.
Las Vegas news media:
KTNV Channel 13……..702-871-3345 kmovesian@ktnv.com
KLAS Channel 8……….702-792-8870 rcomings@klastv.com
FOX 5…………………….702-436-8256 5newsdesk@kvvu.com
MY News 3……………..702-657-3150 news3@mynews3.com
Review Journal……….702-383-0264 Submit story ideas at www.reviewjournal.com/about/print/press/
Las Vegas Sun…………702-385-3111 Submit story ideas at www.lasvegassun.com/contact/feedback/
