The First Week at WSBTV

This week showed me just how rigorous being a producer will be, especially if I continue in my path to producing news. This week I shadowed Damien who just happened to be producing the 11p.m. show. Damien arrived at the station at about 3p.m. and we still experienced a seemingly major issue which, as the producer, Damien fixed. He sat for about six hours deciding what stories still had new value since most of them in the run-down were just revolving from the morning, noon and afternoon news. Stories like the idiots pick pocketing old people and of course the break-ins in Clayton County homes made the cut. He also made the decision not to lead with the Haiti like other stations because at the time there was no new information to report. So everything was going well. Damien assigned reporters to stories, entered time for stories, read over scripts, approved new stories, wrote teases etc. Everything is running smoothly until 10:45. As I previously stated, we wanted to treat the sensitive Haiti situation with special attention and not show the same thing broadcasted on every news station across the world. So the deal was, our reporters on the ground in Haiti would send us a new package. Damien had already talked the graphics department into making a new Haiti template and all was well. Then along came the dreaded phone call... "can someone let them know the Haiti package won't be ready by 11?" Every person near me stood still like the entire news cast was at stake. Then it was a simultaneous stirke into action. Everyone tried to figure out different ways to still have a Haiti segment. In the end we cut and edited the old package to fit the new script. It was exactly what we did not want, but the viewers had no clue there was even an issue.