Chris Bainbridge \u201902 and his red Mustang convertible have turned up in towns like Bryson City, North Carolina; Oliver Springs, Tennessee; Anderson, South Carolina; and Macon, Georgia. He\u2019s been bowling, curling, ziplining, fishing, rappelling, snow tubing and spelunking. He\u2019s revisited Marion, his childhood home in the North Carolina mountains, and he\u2019s waved to his alma mater from a bike on Greenville\u2019s Swamp Rabbit Trail.<\/p>\n
In the past two years, Bainbridge has taken almost 100 day trips, and he has brought more than 1 million TV viewers along for the ride. As the host of \u201cThe Ingles Open Road,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0the Furman alumnus is on a mission to showcase local attractions, adventures and activities throughout the Carolinas and surrounding areas.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been a fun ride,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n As vice president of production for Asheville, North Carolina-based Bclip Productions<\/a>, Bainbridge is also the point person for all video projects for Ingles Markets<\/a>, the regional supermarket chain headquartered in nearby Black Mountain.<\/p>\n In 2020, COVID-19 shutdowns were triggering a wave of cabin fever among Ingles\u2019 customers, while also threatening the livelihoods of many of the region\u2019s small business owners. \u201cWhen the pandemic first hit, grocery stores were almost the only things that were open,\u201d Bainbridge remembered.<\/p>\n To meet the moment, Ingles\u2019 advertising director, Melissa Leavell, came to Bclip with a concept for a series of three-minute segments that would run for a few months on a local TV station.<\/p>\n \u201cThey wanted to provide a place where people could learn about fun, cool, family-friendly things that they could get out and do during a pandemic, while at the same time shining a light on local businesses who were really hurting at that time,\u201d Bainbridge said. \u201cAnd the last thing they said after pitching the idea was, \u2018And Chris, we\u2019d like you to host it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Not such a far-fetched idea, as it turned out. At Furman, Bainbridge, who double-majored in communication studies and political science (now known as politics and international affairs), got plenty of experience in front of the camera as the host of a show with a remarkably similar theme.<\/p>\n Bainbridge produced the \u201cGet Around Greenville\u201d video segments during the early days of FurmanTV \u2013 which would evolve into today\u2019s Furman University News Channel<\/a> \u2013 with the help of Jeff Zellmer \u201904, currently the senior vice president of digital operations for FOX Television Stations.<\/p>\n \u201cWe would go out once a week or so and find stuff to go do off campus \u2013 horseback riding, hiking, downtown exploration, things of that nature,\u201d Bainbridge said. \u201cIt was kind of a Wild West for us. Not quite as sophisticated as what I\u2019ve got going now.\u201d<\/p>\n These days, Bainbridge and the Bclip crew have many more miles to cover in his 1966 Mustang, including western North Carolina, upstate South Carolina, east Tennessee and northern Georgia, all areas served by the Ingles supermarket chain. His \u201cteeny tiny TV show\u201d now reaches 1.2 million viewers a week through six stations throughout the Southeast, airing during times such as local news broadcasts or game-day halftime breaks. Each segment (during many of which Bainbridge is sure to recommend one particular grocery store for picnic supplies) is also posted on the show\u2019s website, openroadshow.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n The upcoming 100th episode of \u201cOpen Road\u201d will be a retrospective \u2013 \u201ca look back at all the places we\u2019ve gone, with montages of some fun activities, some family activities and some adventure activities,\u201d Bainbridge said. \u201cAnd then a very long montage of me eating lots and lots of things.\u201d<\/p>\n There are many more places Bainbridge want to take his 1.2 million viewers, including a canyon in Georgia, a paddleboat river tour in Knoxville and a certain football stadium in Greenville.<\/p>\n \u201cI would love to do a show with all of the things that happen with Furman home games \u2013 the players\u2019 walk, the marching band, the tailgating scene, the football,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But for Bainbridge, the best stops on a trip tend to be the unexpected ones.<\/p>\n \u201cThe really fun things are the ones that aren\u2019t on my radar, the things that just pop up, where I say, \u2018Wow, that\u2019s really cool, I wouldn\u2019t have thought to do that,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s really the essence of the show. That\u2019s what we hope to share with people. Discovery is always the most fun part.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chris Bainbridge \u201902 has hosted nearly 100 episodes of his \u201cteeny tiny TV show,\u201d “The Ingles Open Road.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":21736,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,51,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-communication-studies","category-politics-and-international-affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}