Mr. B's Domain – The Log - Archive

September 23, 2009

Late Package

Like yesterday, Dad dropped me off at WVUE not long before 11 this morning. There were only seven stories on the board when I arrived and it was looking like another slow news day. I was not particularly interested in working the desk today either so like yesterday I camped out in master control again. I learned a little more today. Debbie and later Ron talked about how they “ingest” programming for broadcast. Promos, some commercials and other content come in through digital Betacam tapes which are manually reviewed and transferred to a server. Some syndicated programming is received in advance via C/Ku band satellite and other shows are received through Pathfire, a digital media distribution service.Two live feeds were scheduled for the newscast and I saw how those signals are acquired. The weather was stormy however and they were canceled due to the threat of lightning.At five this afternoon I went to the director’s booth to watch the newscast. I saw one from there last week which was pretty interesting. There was a lot going on but everything did go smoothly. Tonight there was a hiccup that had to be worked out for the rest of the broadcast. One of today’s top stories was the start of the crime camera trial and Sabrina Wilson shot a package to be aired. Unfortunately it wasn’t ready when the broadcast started and it still wasn’t ready when it came time to air it.Instead, Wilson did an ad-lib Q & A with the anchors instead, hoping all the while it would be a lead-in to the package. After two minutes it still wasn’t ready and they moved on to the next story. A few minutes after that it was ready and apparently one of the editors made the call to run it even though the story had already been covered. That put the broadcast in the red on time, a couple minutes over the hour allotted. For the remainder of the broadcast, the producers I was sitting next two cut segments, rearranged and shortened others to fix the time issue. Being a novice at this sort of thing, it was interesting to watch them solve a frustrating problem while remaining perfectly calm.I left for the day just after six. I don’t recall doing anything in particular this evening.

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