KET is providing exclusive live coverage and analysis of Fancy Farm 2016, the state’s premier political event, which is widely viewed as the kickoff to the fall election season.

First, Comment on Kentucky, hosted by Bill Bryant, will air live from Fancy Farm on Friday, Aug. 5 at 8/7 pm on KET. Immediately following at 8:30/7:30 pm, a 30-minute Fancy Farm 2016 Preview, hosted by KET’s Bill Goodman and Renee Shaw, will offer insight into Saturday’s planned speeches with perspectives from several of Kentucky’s political pundits and political party spokespersons.

Then, on Saturday, Aug. 6, KET will broadcast live coverage of Fancy Farm 2016. Goodman and Shaw will provide a pre-event analysis with political observers, beginning at 2:30/1:30 pm on KET and online at KET.org/fancyfarm. Live coverage continues through 5:30/4:30 pm, and the afternoon’s political stump speeches will be broadcast in their entirety. Archived speeches will be available for online streaming on KET’s Fancy Farm website.

Contenders for Kentucky’s U.S. Senate race, 1st Congressional District in Western Kentucky, and the state’s constitutional officers have been invited to speak.

On Monday, Aug. 8, Goodman and Shaw present highlights from the Fancy Farm picnic and introduce excerpts from the speeches in a special, one-hour Fancy Farm 2016 highlights program airing at 8/7 pm on KET.

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.

KET is Kentucky’s largest classroom, serving more than one million people each week via television, online and mobile. Learn more about Kentucky’s preeminent public media organization on Twitter @KET and facebook.com/KET and at KET.org.

Contact:

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