WRAL-TV’s Brian Shrader (left) & WRAL-TV’s Mike Maze greet viewers in the station’s tent at the Fayetteville Dogwood Festival.

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The cloudy skies and very brief rain showers failed to dampen the enthusiasm of the estimated 250,000 attendees at the 2010 Annual Fayetteville Dogwood Festival this past weekend, April 23-25. Capitol Broadcasting Company & WRAL-TV were Gold sponsors of the event.

The Dogwood Festival has been voted Event of the Year by the NCAFE and a top 20 event in the Southeast by the Southeast Tourism Society.

It seems that the WRAL-TV tent was the happening place to be as a continuous smarm of viewers stopped by to get autographs, celebrity pictures and meet Tracker the newsroom dog. Tracker makes his first appearance at the Festival, and he proved to be quite a draw with kids and adults alike.

Tracker, the Newsroom Dog, is a hit with fans at his first trip to the Fayetteville Dogwood Festival.

The human personalities on hand this year were Meteorologists- Mike Maze and Elizabeth Gardner, Traffic /Culture reporter – Brian Shrader, and Fayetteville Bureau reporter- Bryan Mims.

The booth was staffed by a cross-section of departments, Pam White-WRAL-TV Accounting, Bill Burch, Graphic Artist-WRAL-TV Promotions and Clarence Williams, Producer/Director WRAL-TV News. Tracker was with his owner, WRAL-TV News Director of News Ops & Special Projects- Leesa Moore Craigie and Leesa’s fiancé John Herman…Tracker’s co-owner/handler.

Thanks to WRAL-TV’s Clarence Williams for this capcom story & to WRAL-TV’s Bill Burch for these capcom photos.