KET is providing exclusive coverage of Fancy Farm 2015, with live coverage of the event and analysis.

Comment on Kentucky, hosted by Bill Bryant, will air live from Fancy Farm on Friday, July 31 at 8/7 pm on KET. Scheduled panelists include political reporters Ronnie Ellis of CNHI News Service; Joseph Gerth, The Courier-Journal; and Sam Youngman, Lexington Herald-Leader.

On Saturday, Aug. 1, Bill Goodman and Renee Shaw will broadcast live on Fancy Farm 2015. The afternoon’s political stump speeches will be broadcast in their entirety. Goodman and Shaw will provide a pre-event analysis with political observers, beginning at 2:30/1:30 pm on KET and online at www.KET.org/fancyfarm. A live blog from the event will also be available on the website, as will archived speeches for online streaming.

“Fancy Farm is widely considered one of the premier political events in Kentucky,” Shaw said. “KET viewers are among the most informed and politically plugged-in, and it’s our privilege to follow these contests even at this very early stage in the fall campaigns.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell, Gov. Steve Beshear, Congressman Ed Whitfield, gubernatorial candidates Matt Bevin and Jack Conway, attorney general candidates Whitney Westerfield and Andy Beshear, lieutenant governor candidates Jenean Hampton and  Sannie Overly and agriculture commissioner candidates Jean-Marie Lawson Spann and Ryan Quarles, among others, are scheduled to speak at the event.

Scheduled to participate in KET’s Saturday’s Fancy Farm coverage are: Jennifer Moore, former chair of the Kentucky Democratic Party and co-founder of Emerge Kentucky; Steve Robertson, chair of the Republican Party of Kentucky; Scott Jennings, former adviser to President George W. Bush, political consultant and a partner at RunSwitch Public Relations; Patrick Hughes, chair of the Kentucky Democratic Party; Ronnie Ellis, political reporter for CNHI News Service; and Al Cross, University of Kentucky Center for Rural Journalism and Community Issues.

On Monday, Aug. 3, Goodman and Shaw present highlights from the Fancy Farm picnic and introduce excerpts from the speeches in a special, one-hour Fancy Farm 2015 highlights program airing at 8/7 pm on KET.

“Fancy Farm has become a ‘must see’ event for many of our KET viewers,” Goodman said. “We do our best to bring viewers the flavor and feeling of one of the oldest political picnics in the nation.”

About Fancy Farm: Every year since the early 1880s, St. Jerome Catholic Church in the small town of Fancy Farm in Western Kentucky has hosted an annual community picnic. It was a local affair at first, but at some point, political candidates began to see the Fancy Farm Picnic as a good chance to meet, greet and stump for votes. Soon a platform for speaking was added, and by the middle of the 20th century, Fancy Farm had become the unofficial kickoff event for the fall campaigns in Kentucky.

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Contact:

Todd Piccirilli
Senior Director, Marketing and Communications
859-258-7242
tpiccirilli@ket.org