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Exclusive: Konversations with Keeme: A Chat with Keith Kountz
20K views
Nov 2, 2022
Thirteen year old Ajibola Tajudeen, better known as Keeme, is the host of New Paradigm Theatre's brand new web series debuting here on BroadwayWorld. 'Konversations with Keeme' is show where Keeme interviews seasoned television and film professionals like Tamara Tunie of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and Renee Lawless of Tyler Perry's The Have and the Have Nots, as well as Broadway veterans such as Emmy and Grammy winner, Paul Bogaev, Emmy-nominated Scott Bryce, and Broadway pros Christine Dwyer, Kelly Grant, Juwan Crawley and more.
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Hello, my name is Ajabola Tajuddin, but you can call me Kimi, and today watching Conversation
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with Kimi, a show where we ask stuff and we make stuff. Today my guest is a well-respected anchorman on News 8 and has been working there for more
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than 30 years, since 1987. Please help me in welcoming Keith Coombs
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All right, Keevy, thank you. My pleasure being with you. What interested you as a teen
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In the news business, getting into the news and broadcasting. Well, I was always the kind of person who loved learning about new things
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And I also, as a child, was kind of addicted to the radio. Now a lot of kids are on the internet and watching TV
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When I was a kid growing up on Long Island, I used to listen to the radio all the time
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I fell in love with the radio, with radio news. When I was a kid in middle school, I was involved in the school paper
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And then when I was in college, I was on the school radio. And I've just been really lucky
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I've been able to do what I've loved my entire life, make a living at it
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Wow. So you've been here for more than 30 years, right? Yeah
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I started here in 1987. September 7th, right? Yeah. Wow. You better deny it. Yeah
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So I left Connecticut in WT&H for a couple years in 1998
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My wife and I and my daughters, we went to Jacksonville, Florida. I worked for the ABC station in Jacksonville for a couple years
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And I was lucky. News 8 called me back a couple years later
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asked me if I wanted to come back here in a little bigger role So working in the news industry what do you think has changed over the years Well I have to tell you the technology has changed incredibly
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I'm sure for somebody of your age you can't, you really can't understand what it was like back in the old days
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Now we work completely on computers. All of our scripts are on computers
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Back in the old days everything was done via typewriter. if you know a typewriter is yeah I'm sure a lot of people your age don't even
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know so we work with paper scripts if we were here at the station and we had to
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communicate with somebody out doing a report we had a two-way walkie-talkie
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radio now we've got texting we've got cell phones we've got a lot of ways to
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get in touch with people back when I first started here we had in the studio
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we had manual camera operators, so we had a person standing behind every camera
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Now if you went in our studio, you would see our cameras are robotic
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Yes. So from a technical point of view, things have really changed
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If you could play any sport professionally, what would it be? I'm a tennis player. I've played tennis pretty much my whole life
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Wow. So, if I could play at Wimbledon for the French Open, it would be a dream come true
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Wow. So, I know a lot of people would probably say pro basketball or football, but I kind of always like one-on-one sports
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I never like to really rely on a team. So, I always like to play tennis
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How do you fit the timing to play tennis with being a newsman
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I tell you what my schedule now my hours are are a lot of people would think they tough I like them actually I do the morning news and the noon news so I get up at 2 o in
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the morning to be here at 315 in the morning yeah that raises every's your
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eyebrows a little bit and I normally am done my day is over at 1 o'clock in the
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afternoon which is great because that normally gives me a couple of hours to
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run around and play tennis with my buddies or go to the gym get a little
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workout in. What did your children feel like having a father who was in the news industry
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That's interesting I think I think they over the years kind of accepted it as
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it's just dad's regular job. I think in the beginning when we went to a
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restaurant and they you know people come over and you know say hello or want to
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take a picture but it was a little different to them but after a while I
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think they got used to it and I think at this point I'm just dad. They don't
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care which is a good thing. This year with NPT we're doing a show called
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Hunchback of Notre Dame on the 18th and the 19th of August and you know the theme of Hunchback is
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being an outcast yes and I heard that you applied for 500 news companies and only got 400 you got
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499 rejections yeah that was right when I started to want to get in the business and it's always
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been a competitive field but back when I wanted to get in after college in 1984-85, there
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were no cable outlets There were only three TV stations basically that did news in any particular setting so you had a lot of people applying for a very small amount of jobs
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so obviously breaking in was really really tough so we're coming to the end
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of our interview today so I would like to ask you yes what would you say to
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young leaders out there who want to lead in that community people need to know
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that there's a tremendous amount of opportunity out there for all people. And
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I gave a commencement speech to a high schooler here in New Haven earlier this
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month, and I told the young people that when I was coming up and 40-50 years ago
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there were no people like Oprah Winfrey. There were no people like Barack Obama
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There were great athletes like Michael Jordan, but there weren't athletes that
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that were also their own brand and dominated in the business world
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And I just really want to emphasize the message to young people
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that in the year 2018 and moving forward, there's really no excuse not to be everything you can be
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because so many barriers have been broken and you really can't accomplish anything
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Ready? So we're going to show our work. I'm giving yours a 10, mine about a 3
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Thank you very much. Thank you very much for being a guest on Conversation with Kimmy
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My pleasure. Best of luck to you. Thank you. Best of luck to you too. And I would like to say to you young leaders out there
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make sure you know your voice is your power. So use it. Kimmy out
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