I thought I'd give you a little "behind the scenes" of how we sometimes do interviews with big sports stars through the magic of satellite. Today I talked with 4-time NASCAR champ Jeff Gordon. He was in Indianapolis; I was at the WHAS11 studios.

Jeff was in Indianapolis to help drum up publicity for the Brickyard 400 coming up July 27th. Along with doing interviews with local reporters in Indy, the Speedway put together what's called a satellite media tour, SMT for short. Basically, they sit Jeff down in front of the trophy with the track in the background, hook him up to a satellite truck, and schedule as many interviews as possible with stations around the country. We had a slot starting at 2:38 pm. Yes they try to be exact. I give the production folks in Indianapolis a phone number to call in to our station, that's how Jeff is able to hear my questions.

Sometimes blow-hard sports reporters go over their time limit, other times technical problems delay things. But today, we were right on time. Before I start asking Jeff questions, I say hi and make sure he can hear me ok, then away we go.

I can see Jeff Gordon in our video monitor, but he can't see me. That's because the satellite feed is beamed from Indianapolis up to space, then back down to our station. No signal is sent back.

It's also interested to listen to the interview subjects talk between interviews. Sometimes they are annoyed about something, other times they are making dinner plans. Jeff didn't say anything juicy when I was listening. You can see the entire interview right here on WHAS11.com in sports section.

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