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Sep152009
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Tuesday |
Like Monday, there was not much going on at the station, being a slow news day. I spend quite a while at the assignment desk not doing much. I decided to give myself a tour of the engineering stuff upstairs. I took a seat in the director’s booth upstairs and introduced myself to the lady who was working there. Nothing was really happening since it was over an hour away from the newscast. After a little while I walked down to the master control room where I met a young man who was working there. All the screens and controls were pretty fascinating and I learned a bit about how commercials and syndicated programming are queued up. While everything is still rather complicated, the extensive automation makes things a lot easier than it might otherwise be.At five I walked back to the director’s booth to observe the director and producer conduct the broadcast. It was fascinating to watch all the talk and commotion that goes into directing a newscast. The director was calling out the shots and graphics, the producer sat behind the director and keeps the newscast on track, and keeps track of time. There is an assistant to play back all the video clips and sound bytes as well as a woman there to talk to the two live trucks that were doing remote broadcasts.At 5:30 I left for the day. The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful.