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Oct122010
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33 |
Today was one of the more lively news cycles I’ve worked at Fox 8 since I started there almost a year ago. The big local story was the “early” end of the offshore drilling moratorium imposed by the Obama administration. We covered the story pretty heavily today but worldwide attention was focused elsewhere. The rescue effort of the trapped miners in Chile saw success as the first few were pulled to the surface tonight. I can only imagine what they would be feeling after being stuck underground for over two months.
My boss arranged for another PA to come in this evening allowing me to fill in writing, something I’ve only done on Thursdays these past few weeks. I thought I did good work for the most part this evening and nearly all of it made air. I wouldn’t have expected that after the nine o’clock show started and the producer started killing several stories to make room for live hits from Chile. I stopped writing around 8:30. Rather than have Travis hang around another two hours while I did very little, I relieved him and prompted the newscasts.
A lot of the actual action happened during our ten o’clock show in which quite a few stories were cut to accommodate the miner’s story, even a package on the second congressional district race we teased in the superopen. Unfortunately, we missed the first “big” moment. We went to commercial right before the first miner to be rescued, Florencio Avalos, reached the surface. Other than that, I thought we put on some good TV.
Even though I was in to write today was still working my regular schedule and had to stick around until midnight. Fortunately there was no additional “news” over the scanners before I was free to go home. Unlike yesterday I didn’t come home with a headache so I watched a little TV before bed.
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Oct102010
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Writing |
I have been a bit short on free time over the past few weeks. I have been working on Thursday nights, one of my days off, filling in to write for the evening newscasts. The person who holds the job is training for a producer position on the morning show. Myself and two other PA’s have been coming in to write for the show until the position is again filled.
It’s been a while since I have devoted any of what free time I have to video games. On the suggestion of a friend who hasn’t even seen the show, I have started watching The Shield, a police drama series that aired on FX. I never paid any attention to it when it was on TV but it’s certainly good enough to warrant a look-see. I’m currently about halfway through the show’s seven seasons.
The next thing that will be consuming my free time is a police scanner I won on eBay today. I’ve had my eye on Uniden’s BCD396T handheld scanner for a while. I got lucky and won a unit for a great price. I don’t have a particularly intense interest in the practice so I have not been willing to pay anything close to the price today’s digital scanners retail for. Working on the assignment desk at Fox8 has generated a certain curiosity, however. The radios we use there for scanning are quite elaborate but poorly programmed.
I’ve already done a good deal of research on the subject and I am hoping I won’t have too much trouble programming my scanner. I installed a programming application called FreeScan and purchased a premium subscription to RadioReference.com which should enable the easy transfer of the frequencies I want to the radio.
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