Today was definitely a day of uh oh's and oh no's. Starting in the morning when our professor had to attend to a family emergency, which left me and my team up the stream with half a paddle. Contrary to my belief, the wait time actually helped the reporters to better develop their stories and build a basic script.
Once the reporters got their cameras, they headed off to cover their assigned stories. It was until about 11:45 that I got a call from my reporter explaining how he just witnessed a bus fly by him with five police officers on its tail. That's when news just started to happen. Another story came in over the wires about a suspicious death in a nearby area. The B-block was getting pack with newsworthy stories and the A-block was of course light as a feather. Though there were great top stories being covered I still needed more, wanted more. I was getting comfortable with building the show and wanted to try doing more on-camera things. I scheduled an on camera weather tease, an anchor chat within a block, and a live shot (even though it was mandatory).
My professor seemed to be really excited about the amount of actual news we had today. "Finally... this is what I was waiting for... I'm tired of these full-screen macs, now we got some real news," he said... or something like that. I had to admit I was a little excited to actually had some news today also. I was getting too used to Mondays being slow news days, and today really showed me how news can happen at the drop of a dime. I was also hugely grateful to have a reporter who was willing to go the extra 10-15 miles (with no gas money provided) to cover a very important story.
Everyone was able to complete pretty much everything by about three o'clock, with the exception of a couple of packages and teases, but it shows that we are progressing. Once I got downstairs, more uh oh's and oh no's started to piled up. Footage wasn't crossing over to the server, packages were still being cut, the script was being written and edited to fit anchors style, and the show clocked out at being four minutes light. I was hoping, praying, crossing my fingers that the package for the live shot would transfer to the server, but no luck... great two more minutes in the hole. When we had to drop the live shot, I thought that I was going to have one of those shows where the anchors sat for three minutes at the end trying to force small talk. However, due to some weird, surreal newscast fairy-godmother (or my pleading to the anchors to speak slowly)... we were able to catch up on time and actually had to drop a couple stories. Man, we must have the greatest anchors... they always manage to be my savior.
All in all, the show was good... though I thought that I had committed suicide when that live shot was dropped. Whatever we're doing, I hope we keep it up because I am not even sure how we're doing it anymore. :- )
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