Special Olympics NC honored WRAL-TV Anchor/Reporter Ken Smith (standing, right) with the 2017 James E. Long Commitment to Excellence Award for his volunteer work with the organization. He received the surprise honor at the Opening Ceremonies for the SONC Summer Games on Friday, June 2, 2017.
WRAL-TV Anchor/Reporter Ken Smith has been a dedicated volunteer with Special Olympics North Carolina for years. While he emceed the annual Opening Ceremonies, as is his tradition, SONC surprised him with a special award. Smith received the prestigious James E. Long Commitment to Execellence Award on Friday, June 2, 2017.
He was completely caught off guard! said WRAL-TV News Photographer Andrew Cumbee.
Although Smith was surprised, the reasoning behind his being honored left no room for doubt of his deserving the honor.
We are so pleased to present Ken with this award, said SONC President & CEO Keith Fishburne. In some regard, this award goes to an unsung hero (volunteer) who works quietly behind the scenes to help us in our mission of providing sports training and competition to children and adults with intellectual disabilities.
As background for the award, Fishburne explained that Jim Long was one of the founding members of SONC almost 50 years ago. Long, an attorney, filed the paperwork to earn nonprofit status for SONC. Long went on to have a successful career as an attorney and served as NC's State Insurance Commissioner from 1985 to 2008. Long died in 2009 after suffering a stroke, and SONC decided to honor him by creating an award in his name, to celebrate his commitment to excellence to SONC as a volunteer who provided great leadership for our athletes and the Special Olympics mission.
Smith has served on the SONC Board of Directors for four three-year terms and has served as emcee of the annual SONC Summer Games opening ceremonies for most of those years. Smith was the first TV news reporter in NC to participate in the Over the Edge fundraiser in 2010, rappelling 30 stories from the Wells Fargo Building in downtown Raleigh.
Special Olympics NC honored WRAL-TV Anchor/Reporter Ken Smith with the 2017 James E. Long Commitment to Excellence Award for his volunteer work with the organization. He received the surprise honor at the Opening Ceremonies for the SONC Summer Games on Friday, June 2, 2017.
With that adventure, Smith established a tradition at WRAL-TV for one on-air staff person participating each year since.
Smith is happy to support SONC.
This is a class organization that I thoroughly enjoy volunteering for and helping out whenever I can, said Smith.
The SONC staff, volunteers, and particularly the athletes, thoroughly enjoy Smith's contributions.
Although Ken's leadership on our Board is an important role, he is best known to our athletes for his volunteer role as emcee of the annual Summer Games Opening Ceremony, said Fishburne. His enthusiasm and energy gives wonderful life to our ceremony especially as each county delegation enters the building in our Parade of Athletes. Ken gets the entire audience excited as he calls out each county delegation by name, making the delegation wonderfully proud of the communities they represent in our state level event. And as tradition has it, Wake County enters last because it is the host delegation of the Summer Games and Ken always gives them a long loud Waaaaaaaaaake County' introduction that brings the house down with more than 3,000 cheering in the audience!
The presentation to honor Smith took place during the 2017 Opening Ceremonies which took place at the newly renovated Reynolds Coliseum on the NC State campus in Raleigh.
I was pleasantly surprised and humbled by the recognition, said Smith. In my capacity as a volunteer, I'm just following the lead of President and CEO Keith Fishburne and his entire dedicated staff at SONC. They work tirelessly, giving up countless weekends and nights to ensure Special Olympics athletes get to compete at the highest level and in a number of sports.
Smith refuses to take all the credit for his award.
Special Olympics NC honored WRAL-TV Anchor/Reporter Ken Smith (standing, right) with the 2017 James E. Long Commitment to Excellence Award for his volunteer work with the organization.
When SONC honors me, the organization also honors WRAL because I couldn't do what I do without the support of this great station, That's why I'm equally grateful to be among the SONC honorees this year.
SONC is equally grateful for Smith.
Ken's service to Special Olympics North Carolina defines what commitment to excellence' is all about and we are so very lucky to have Ken a part of the Special Olympics family, said Fishburne.
Thanks to WRAL-TV's Leesa Moore & Andrew Cumbee for these capcom photos.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Special Olympics NC honored WRAL-TV Anchor/Reporter Ken Smith (standing, right) with the 2017 James E. Long Commitment to Excellence Award for his volunteer work with the organization. He received the surprise honor at the Opening Ceremonies for the SONC Summer Games on Friday, June 2, 2017.
