James Dilworth

Draft 4/Final Draft

 

Remember, It’s Just TV...

(A Look Behind the Scenes at a TV News Show and Station)

 

         “Two minutes out.” A male voice, the Master Control Op calmly intones in my ear as I stand next to a video camera atop a black metal tripod with three wheels at the bottom, attached to it by a grey cord, connecting to my black headset with an earphone on my left ear. On the set, the two Anchors sit, looking past me and the camera operator, on camera two, as they pass a hand mirror back and forth making sure the powder on their faces covers just the right amount.

         “Do we have the lead package? Do we? Tell me as soon as you get it. WND-45 Base to Randy, are you up yet? Can you hear me? Are you there? WND-45 Base to Randy...” A harried female voice, the Producer, is soon muffled as she continues to bark commands to several people at once.        

         “OK. We’re coming out to three, then we’re going to one on a box and then to two. Stand by.” The Director speaks slowly and clearly, a hint of nervousness in her voice

         “One minute out. Your remote just dialed in...they’re powered up and ready to go...” The Master Control Op speaks again, seemingly the most calm and collected voice over the headset, compared to the Producer or the Director.

         “I have all the tapes for the first block, Elizabeth.” Another male voice that I have not yet heard comes out, the Tape Op.

         “Thirty seconds.”

         From the far side of the TV studio the Weatherman suddenly blurts out , as he straddles a backless office chair, putting on his coat. “Can you tell them for first Weather I’d like to take Pinpoint and show the live Cloud-Cam?” Quickly, I move behind my camera, flip a switch and move the microphone of the headset to my lips. “Mike wants PinPoint and Cloud-Cam in first Weather.” This close to the start of the show I can only hope the Director heard me.

         “Dammit! Get your shot up now! We’re less than two away from you! I don’t know if I can get my first live shot up...”

         “Ten, Nine, Eight...”

         “Two shot on three, tighten up just a little bit...”

         I mimic the Master Control Op’s countdown, standing to the left of my camera, my left arm raised with all my fingers spread out, and then the fingers doing count as well . “Five, four, three, two.” I stop counting at two, as my middle and forefinger remain held up in the air, then I fold my middle finger into my palm, and finally I fold in the index and wave my whole arm down as I hear in my headset the opening music for the news show, as on the many monitors in the studio show the closing credits of the show that airs before out newscast.

         “Profile one, Spin cart, roll ten, sound on...” with a flip of a switch and a quick press of a button, the Director takes a breath and begins the show.

         “Tonight on Channel Two News at Five...”

***

         At any time, just about everywhere in the world, there is someone working on a TV newscast, whether it is a producer hunched in front of a computer, putting together a show, or a news Anchor in the middle of a show. The television news business is a twenty-four hour business, one that never stops, even here in Reno, Nevada. At KTVN Channel 2, every day of the week, except for Friday and Saturday, there is someone at the station preparing the next newscast.

         That’s not to say there isn’t always someone at the television station. By law, there has to be and that person is the Master Control operator. That person’s main job is to make sure the station doesn’t go “black”, or have it shut down and putting in the video tapes for local programming, which is any show that is broadcasted when CBS, the network KTVN is an affiliate with, is not showing something. The other critical job the Master Control Op (short for operator) does is he or she keeps a tally of the commercials and compares it to a list that Traffic, the department in the station that keeps track of the commercials and tells the Master Control op to “air” or show them on the channel. The loneliest job in television is Master Control, since one must work twelve hour shifts, such as 4 pm to 1 am, and one sits in a dimly lighted control room that looks like it came from a B Science Fiction movie from the 50s, by one’s self, surrounded by dozens of television monitors, several computers that control every aspect of the station’s signal output, a set of triggers, dials and levers to “shade” or make sure the cameras in the studio are correctly set, odd looking screens to check the station’s sound and visual output and enveloped by the soundtrack of the show that is playing on the station however it is a well paid job and a Master Control op only works three shifts a week. At KTVN, there are four Master Control ops who regularly work, and there are three other people in the Production department (the department that handles the technical aspects of the station), who are all Directors, that have a license to run a TV station, from the FCC.

         The first basic job in the television news department is the Producer. Just as in a film or a stage play, the Producer is in charge of every thing and everyone in the show. The most important thing the Producer does is he or she creates the run down for the show and in creating the run down, decides which stories the newscast will tell. This process is extremely time intensive: usually a Producer shows up at the station about six hours or more to make an half hour news program. In making a TV news show, the Producer must read stories off of the Associated Press news wire, read newspapers, reuse news stories from earlier shows and look at news feeds from CBS, CNN and other sources to put together video clips for news stories that aren’t local. At the same time, the Producer begins to write the script that the Reporters and News Anchors will read and which will end up in the TelePrompTer. The Producers sit together at one end of the newsroom, their desks all bunched together and surrounded by old wall dividers. On weekday afternoons, there are usually at least three producers at the station, clustered around each other preparing their respective shows.

         A newscast only has a limited amount of time, so a producer must take up all the time without going over or going under because time is the most important thing at a television station. The way that a station makes its money is selling time to advertisers, who hope to put their commercials during shows where people will see them, so if you watch the news cast at 5 pm, a person would see different commercials than would be shown during the encore showing of the 11 pm news at 2 in the morning. It is the Producer’s job to make sure the news cast stays on time, and if it doesn’t, the Producer must drop stories to keep it on time or add them if there is too much left over time.

         All the while, the Producer is a making sure that their show is coming together so that at the time the show goes on, there will be no problems. In an ideal world, the video editors who take both the news feeds, locally made video and put them both together to make a news cast would be finished hours before the show, the News Anchors would read their lines perfectly and take up their allotted time down to the second, and the production side would operate without a problem. Usually though, a news program is fraught with problems: sometimes video editors are unable to get a tape out to the video deck operator until seconds before the story is on the air, other times a reporter out in the field will talk too long and throw the show off twenty seconds, or a video deck doesn’t work or a camera operator misses a shot. Whenever something goes wrong with the show, the Producer has the option of listing it in an error report. This error report is scrutinized by the News Director and the other Managers in the station, just like every news program broadcast by the station everyday (there are at least five televisions in the office of each Manager, always turned on the other channels to monitor them. In fact, the only place in the TV station where there is no television are the bathrooms and storage rooms.) The News Director is the highest person in the News Department and it is his or her job to set the format of the news program, from the kind of stories that are to be covered to the way the Anchors and Reporters dress.

         The job of News Director, as well as every other in the News department is determined by ratings and ratings are what is most important about the TV news business. If your news show doesn’t get ratings, advertisers take their ads to different shows and the station doesn’t make money and most likely, you wouldn’t either since you would be fired from your job. Ratings and commercials are a vicious cycle since if you don’t have people watching your show, how can you get good ratings and in turn, how can you get advertisers? A phrase that is often repeated around the station when things seem gloomy or bad is “Remember, it’s just TV, not life or death...” The strange thing, is that although people say this time and time again, everyone treats it as if it were.

         During the the newscast itself, the Producer does very little, except hope that the show is a clean one and that there are few problems. Apart from that, the Producer gives cues to Reporters and Anchors as to how much time is left for them to talk, sometimes change the Anchor’s scripts if changes need to be made for breaking news or the addition or subtraction of stories, and fill in the error reports. After the news begins, the entire operation falls into the hands of Production and the Talent. The Talent, or the Anchors and the Reporters are what would seem, to most people, the most important part of the show after the Producer but it is not. Production becomes the most critical part of the newscast once the show begins, and the head of the Production team is the Director.

         Normally, there are three directors in TV news production: the Technical Director, the Director and the Floor Director, whose jobs all intertwine. The Technical Director runs the Switcher during the Show, which, is the most critical job in the TV station, other than Master Control. As the Technical Director switches the show, the viewer sees different camera angles, recorded video shots, effects (the way TV shows change between camera angles, live shots and blocks) on screen graphics (the bug, which is the logo one sees at the bottom right corner of the screen, names and and full screens (informational texts that Anchors or Reporters read over). The Director however, gives cues to the Camera Operators in the studio to cue the Anchors or to make room for shots with “box” graphics, tell the Tape Operator to roll his or her tapes and in which video deck, and the Audio Board Operator to switch the audio channels on and off. In the studio, the Floor Director gives the Anchor and the Reporters cues and counts them in or out as the commercial breaks end or at the end of shows. At KTVN, these three jobs are all done by three people, but not three Directors. The role of Technical Director and Director is done by one person who as they change shots, prepare to put graphics up on screen, talk over a headphone system which shot is next, tells the Camera Operators to change their shot or gives cues. Floor Directing is done by the Camera Operators who, as they change shots make sure the Anchors are talking when they need to be talking.

         The other production jobs, such as Tape Operator, Audio Board Operator, Camera Operators, TelePrompTer (not a misspelling) Operator and Computer Graphics Operator are very simple in comparison to Directing and Switching. The Tape Op operates the Beta Video Cassette Decks and puts tapes into them at the right times according to the run downs, which the Director has marked before the show. The Audio Board Operator runs the audio board and makes sure the TV sound doesn’t overload or have too many decibels. Computer Graphics Operator runs a computer that controls the graphics and puts them up at the right times, usually the person who runs the Audio Board also does CG if there aren’t enough people to do both jobs. The person running TelePrompTer has a very interesting and seemingly easy job: they run the TelePrompTer machine so the Anchor doesn’t have to either memorize their script or look away from the camera to read their script. The way this works is there is a monitor on the end of the Studio Cameras that shows the script: so, an Anchor need only look at the camera to know what to say. However, the TelePrompTer Operator must keep up with the Anchor and not lag behind, so if the TelePrompTer is run too fast the Anchor won’t be able to talk fast enough, and vice versa. Most of the time when people start out at the station, they either begin working at the TelePrompTer or at the Studio Cameras.

         The Studio Cameras are controlled by the Master Control Op and the only thing a Camera Operator must do is focus and change the shots, make sure all the lights in the studio are still on, the Studio is clean and that the Anchors get their cues. the studio itself is basically a large, empty room with a desk on a raised platform in the middle where the Anchors sit, the Weather office where the Weatherman works on the forecast with his computers, a blue wall where the Weatherman stands to give the forecast and two curtains to make the room less noisy.

         It might seem that the News Anchors and Reporters might have the simplest job of all, since they are told what to read, coached by a dozen people how to read it and know down to the frame and millisecond when they will read it. When someone watches a news show on TV it is meant to look easy and natural, almost as if the News Anchors you see on the TV are your friends, if not your family. This mind set is apparent in how the News Anchors talk to each other as they ad-lib: “Switching gears now, let’s go to Weather”, to “Welcome back, thanks staying with us, or joining us if it’s your first time...” News Anchors and TV news shows are meant to be like hearing your best friend talk about what has gone on in their life since last you wrote, e-mailed or telephoned. Then again, how really genuine can this be since Anchors have practiced behaving like this for years and have been coached to do so as well. Then again, I have asked Anchors if they believe the things they report and one told me that he doesn’t believe half of the things he reports on the TV news. If the Anchors and Reporters don’t believe what they report, how really genuine or real can they be?

         Of everyone else in the station, the Anchors normally arrive last since they really have the least to do, comparatively. Once they arrive, they start looking over the script that the Producer has been working on for however long and they start to change it to their own style. Between working on the scripts and talking to the Reporters who themselves are getting ready to go out in the field, are coming back to the station after making a report or working on their stories, the Anchors put on make-up, even the males. Naturally, the female Anchors and Reporters simply put on their own make-up, but the males put on base powder to make sure their face isn’t too bright under the lights in the studio. Sometimes though, the Anchors put too much base powder on and it gives their already unnatural looking complexion a nice, orange glow. Look closely at male Anchors and Reporters, males usually being those who have less experience with make-up and applying it to their face, and you’ll see the powder, gobbed thickly all over their cheeks.

         Normally, the Anchors come out to the studio about five or ten minutes before the show begins, and they have been working for about two hours or so. The Production people have been working three hours or so, and the Producer has been working for at least six hours to put together the show, that will only last thirty minutes. I really wonder, if a person watched nothing but the newscasts on Channel Two, including CBS’s show, if they would really be informed and know what is going on in the world. I would doubt that because I have seen hundreds of news programs since I have worked at Channel Two and I am unable to remember a single story that has anything to do with reality or even what is important in life. I only remember tragedies such as September 11, murders, kidnappings, rapes, robberies, the “latest” drug that “all” the kids in High School are taking and a few oddball stories such as a skateboarding monkey, a cat stuck up a tree for a year, the world’s largest hot dog and the Miss America Beauty contest. I think a journalist or someone who is associated more closely with “news making”, or at least the ideal of journalism would say the job of a Television news program is to inform and make the public aware of what, however, the job is quite different in reality; news programs are made to entertain the public and show them enough of what is going on in the world to prove that things are really all right, in spite of all the random and inexplicable madness and rottenness that occurs in the world, so you can digest your dinner or breakfast without feeling bad or guilty.

         In the end we should remember that the news, after all is just another television program that is on, between soap operas, baseball games and commercials. Certainly it may be a more important show than the rest, but it is still just a show and is more entertainment than reality.

***

         “One minute left in show. Ten, nine, eight...” I stand behind the camera, my back against the wall at the furthest edge of the studio, set up for the last shot for Camera One in the show. “Three, two one.”

         “Finally tonight, take a look at this...” John, the head anchor of the eleven o’clock program talks about a chimpanzee who has been taught how to ride a skateboard, whom we show as he talks about the chimp’s film career.

         “Slowly bring the music under...” the Director asks the Audio Board op to turn up the theme music for the show.

         “Ten, nine, eight, seven...” the Producer and the Master Control Op countdown in unison as the other Cam Op uses hand signals to countdown in time with the chorus on the headset.

         “That’s all we have time for tonight, have a good night and see you later.” The on-air shot goes from a wide-angle shot of the desk, the two other cameras and the anchors from my camera to a night time shot of downtown Reno from a camera on top of the station.

         “Two, one. We’re clear.” The on-air shot goes black and the news show is over.