Producer Training Round 2

When I decided to take a blog vacation last week, it didn't cross my mind that I would be training a new producer this week. So the time I usually devote to writing in the morning has been reassigned because, long story short, I'm a perfectionist. I want to make sure the new producer is all set for when I go back to days next week. So I've been making step-by-step lists for every process that goes along with the show, and that's no easy task because there's so much that goes into the morning show. It is an hour long, after all.

But the format change that went into effect this week is working out well. It's nice to see something you planned coming to fruition, especially something as huge as a show.

So what should you be taking away from this post?

I'll have the new girl producing on her own by the end of the week, which means I'll no longer be a vampire next week!

Blog Vacay

I'm taking this week off. I have extra stuff going on at work, the week started off pretty somber with a funeral, Thursday is Thanksgiving and Friday I'll be slammed with live shots.

I will try to keep up with all you guys' stuff though.

Happy Thanksgiving!

In Remembrance

Very few people have the good fortune of knowing one of life's great people. I'd like to consider myself one of the lucky few who have had that pleasure not once, but twice. In both instances, those great people were taken away too soon. And I didn't get to say goodbye. Selfish of me, I know.

The first was my teacher, my mentor, and my friend. Prof was truly one of the greatest men I think I will ever know. He passed away during my senior year of college. 4 years doesn't seem like enough time, but in that short time he taught me so much. He encouraged me, criticized me and made me better at what I do.

When he passed, I wrote this:

Prof, I hope you knew how many lives you touched during yours and how much inspiration and encouragement you spread to others. You were truly one of the greatest people to have graced my life with their presence, and for that I thank you. Thank you for believing in me, encouraging me, and just being there when things weren’t going my way. You will always be an inspiration.

I still miss him, and those words are still true.

The second was the first director I worked with. Joe. The 40-year tv veteran who played such an integral role in my transition from the world of print into the world of broadcast.

He got sick at the beginning of the year. Cancer. But he was so stoic and strong, I was sure he'd beat it. But life doesn't always work the way we think it should. Joe passed away around midnight.

With the exception of the newest reporters, everyone at the station worked with Joe. He was a great director, and he taught me a lot.

Joe, you were truly one of the greats. I was watching you before I even knew who you were on Fishing With Red. You helped shape who I am as a producer and I will always be grateful for your guidance in those first weeks. I know I wouldn't be as successful as I've been without your help. The station just won't be the same without you.

Weekly Internal Clock Changing

Fridays on the vampire shift are always tough, even if they are the gateway to the weekend.

You get home from working all night and all you want to do is crawl in bed and sleep the day away, but you know you can't do that if you want to have a normal weekend, i.e. one where you actually see the light of day.

So you try to stay awake all day, maybe with the exception of a one-to-two hour nap thrown in the mix somewhere, running the risk of being a complete and total jerk by the time a normal person's bedtime rolls around. [that last part could just be me]

So what should be an early start to the weekend turns into a race against time as your body shuts down more and more as the day progresses.

Eating helps. So does caffeine. But not sugar, surprisingly. I think it's the crash factor - it intensifies with sleep deprivation or something. Who knows? [it's a good thing I don't eat a lot of sweets]

Sometimes a nap is beneficial, but you've got to get it in there pretty early in the day. Otherwise it's just a tease and your body will rebel against you. For example, last Friday both me and the boyfriend tried to stay awake all day after working all night. We both fell asleep while watching TV at his place that afternoon and woke up about three hours later only because the phone rang. After that, neither of us had any motivation to do anything else. I just laid on the couch in a semi-vegetative state until about 8:00 p.m. when I drug my butt to bed and passed out for good.

Luckily for me today, I have a meeting later this morning to discuss the upcoming morning show reformat. So I'm going to go home, take a shower and nap until I have to be back here. And then I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that my little power nap will get me through the rest of the day so I can have a semi-normal weekend.

Wish me luck!

Falling in Love

Do you believe in love at first sight?

Or do you scoff at it?

Used to I'd tell you that it takes more than a look to know if you're compatible with someone, but what if I was wrong?

What if one look, one moment was all it took to fall in love with someone? That moment when your eyes first meet and for just a second you feel as if you can see into his soul?

Sounds far-fetched doesn't it? But it's not.

Science has proven that it takes only a fifth of a second, a moment, for the brain to react after setting eyes on the right person.

When you're falling in love, a dozen parts of your brain release chemicals like dopamine.

So when you meet someone and things just feel right, maybe they are.

What if that moment when you lock eyes and the world stands still isn't just a saying anymore? What if it turns out to be true?

OMG!

Did you guys know requesting an old friend's phone number because you somehow lost it and asking how he/she is doing from time to time is inappropriate?

Not to mention disrespectful to his/her significant other as well as your own?

Well, I guess you do now.

Oh, and apparently I'm both inappropriate and disrespectful.

So now that friend whose number I requested, while saying 'I hope you're doing well', has been permanently deleted off of facebook instead of just put on a hidden list.

And his significant other has been blocked, after I told her to get over herself.

Take that, world!

Do I Provoke You?

Occasionally we get viewer feedback regarding the inappropriateness of some of our shows' content.

[OK, so it's more like we get a lot of viewer feedback on that subject.]

Older ladies will comment on the slutty suggestive clothes our female anchors wear. And this will happen on days they wear button-up shirts buttoned up to the collar or turtlenecks. Once a lady complained that the morning anchor showed too much leg. [this could have been on a day she had on pants for all I know] Men don't usually complain about stuff like that...

Getting back to the subject at hand: provocative news. To read our viewer feedback, you'd think that's all we cover sometimes. It's too violent, too suggestive, and the list goes on and on.

Remember when all the gay marriage stuff was happening out in California? Of course, we had to include it in our national coverage, and of course we got hate mail because of it. Stuff like, I don't want my kids exposed to issues like these. Newsflash buddy: your kids are being exposed to this in way more places than the news.

We get told that we should censor our coverage of certain things. In this area, anything with sexual leanings is especially targeted, and the earlier in the day it plays the more responses it will get.

In the words of my director, grow up. Get with the times, people. Things are changing, have already changed in a lot of instances. It's not always for the better, but a lot of it is here to stay, i.e. open homosexuality, violence on TV, and racier content. For a television station to stay competitive in today's market, they've got to embrace those risque topics. And let's face it, if they didn't no one would watch their station, including the small-minded people who constantly send in their complaints about the very coverage they can't get enough of.

Rainy Tuesday

That's what today feels like.

Life of Me VII

Life has gotten exponentially better within the past 24 hours. 

Thursday morning I didn't get home 'til about a quarter to noon from a meeting with the general manager, news director and executive producer. We were discussing the complete and total transformation of the morning show that's about to transpire in the next two weeks.

It seems like we just reworked the show, and we did. But that was just a little rearranging and doesn't compare to what we're in the process of doing. It's all very exciting.

We basically took the show and blew it up and gathered all the parts into a pile. It looked like what you have when you start a new jigsaw puzzle.

Then we had this three-sheet long timeline broken down into blocks. Currently we have six blocks every hour. When we're done, we'll have nine. That's two more breaks per hour. The current 20-minute long first block will become two blocks.

In essence, we were starting from scratch with the show. Maybe I'm a nerd, but I loved figuring out the layout of the entire show, establishing flow from block to block. It was a throwback to when I would layout the paper in high school or when I established the ladder for the yearbook in college.

My thought process on the whole thing is probably very different from most people in broadcast given my prior history with print. When I'm stacking my show, or in this case creating a show, I envision the transitions as the turning of pages. My goal is to get the viewer to keep turning the pages.

This whole process is just the first step in a much larger goal for the show. Right now, the show is two hours long with the first hour repeating for the second. The goal is for the second hour to eventually become its own show, meaning that hopefully a second producer will be hired for the morning show specifically to produce the second hour.

Finally the higher-ups are standing behind the advancement of the morning show.

And now for the icing on the cake.

Christmas and New Years schedules have been made and displayed on the newsroom door. I checked mine when I got to work Thursday night to make sure of what days my holidays would fall on, and guess what I saw.

Ashton King - pr 6/10

Do you know what that means? I will be off the vampire shift by at least the week before Christmas!

I danced around the hallway in celebration.

Behind the Scenes VIII

Scene: Thursday morning, control room

Event: Veterans Day

Situation: Cameraman enters control room to get coffee.

Cameraman: (to director) You must be a veteran.

Director: What?

Cameraman: With all the talking you're doing, you must be a veteran.

Director: Aw, man. Don't be hatin' this mornin'.

Cameraman proceeds to back where coffee is located.

As he's walking back through, without saying a word, he walks over to the director's board and lays a roll of duct tape down.

Help Wanted

I had an interesting conversation with some of my coworkers the other day regarding the process our station is going through to hire new people. We were talking about how college grads nowadays don't aggressively pursue careers.

I remember when I first started applying for a real job. I hadn't graduated from college yet. In fact, I still had about three months of classes left.

I started perusing a myriad of "help wanted" websites, sending my clips and resume as far north as Ohio and as far west as San Diego. I got in touch with every contact I had in the print business trying to sniff out leads on open positions and quite frankly, just to get my name out there.

If I saw anything that interested me, I threw my hat in the ring. It didn't matter if I didn't have the minimum years of experience they specified. It didn't matter if it didn't fit inside the parameters of my degree. If it caught my fancy, I applied. And that went against everything I'd ever been told.

Your best bet is to apply for entry-level positions. You need at least three years experience to deserve a second look from most employers. Stick to your field; the odds are better.

Excuse my French, but quite frankly that advice is bullshit.

I landed a handful of interviews, a couple of which I definitely did not meet the experience requirements for. But here's the thing, guys. I was a fresh-out-of-college, talented journalist who was actively pursuing what I wanted to do.

Experience is great, but it isn't everything. Think about it: just because someone has worked somewhere longer doesn't necessarily mean they do a good job. It also doesn't mean that a so-called newbie can't come in and blow the experienced worker out of the water.

Take me, for instance. When I got hired at the t.v. station I work for now, I had absolutely no experience in the world of broadcast whatsoever. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not.

I went to school for print, you know newspapers and magazines. I'd always thought I'd end up working for a prestigious magazine one day [and that dream still hasn't been ruled out]. I hadn't even considered broadcast as an option that was open to me, mainly due to the fact that I had no experience to even get my foot in the door.

So when my news director called and asked me to come in for an interview, I was astounded. My thoughts were something along the lines of, 'what can a print journalist do at a t.v. station?' But I wanted a job [and was curious], so I went to the interview and put my best stuff on the table. And I'll be danged if I didn't get the job.

So if you're out there looking for a job right now, here's my advice. Apply for EVERYTHING and anything that you think you'd like to do. Don't limit your options because you don't think you're experienced enough.

What's the worse that can happen? They could tell you no, that's true. They could put your information in a file that they come back to at a later date when there's an open position. Or they could see your potential to be a great asset to their company and hire you then.

The whole point is that to get anywhere in life you've got to put yourself out there. Go out on a limb every now and then. Sometimes taking a little risk pays off in the end. Just look at me!

Fly Me to the Moon

Want to know one of the secrets to making it through an entire night of working alone?

Music.

And lately I've been really into jazz. You know, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Louis Armstrong, the whole gang.

There's just something about that era of music that makes me feel so peaceful and at ease with the world. Not to mention it keeps me pretty mellow over the whole back-to-overnight-producing situation.

So now for your viewing and listening pleasure, here's one of my favorites as sung by ol' blue eyes himself, 'Fly Me to the Moon.'

Who Said?

Do you guys remember when we were little and life was actually fun? Not just occasionally, but all the time no-holds-barred fun?

What happened to that, huh? When did growing up turn into something so serious? When did we become destined to this stress-laden existence?

When did we start doing the things we have to do instead of the things we love? Who told us we had to stop doing the things we love? And why did we buy into it so easily?

I can remember being excited about growing up and all the possibilities I'd have once I was a grown-up. Luckily, I find myself doing something that I'm passionate about and genuinely enjoy doing, thereby making my profession a career in lieu of a job. I don't think I could go through the rest of my life with just that.

I know too many people who don't like to get out of bed and go to work. Too many people who just do the things they have to and never take any time to do the things they love.

We can't all be kids forever, nor should we try to be. But who said we had to be boring, stressed out adults? We should be making life something worth living. Otherwise, what's the point of living at all?

Life of Me VI

It doesn't matter who you are. There will come a time when every single one of us will find ourselves in a situation we don't want to be in.

Sometimes the situation is of our own making. Other times it isn't. But more often than not we're going to complain about it.

It isn't fair. I hate this. This shouldn't have happened to me.

But it did. And the easiest and best way of dealing with it is to get over it. Accepting the reality of the situation doesn't mean you have to like it.

In other words, throw your human nature out the window. 'Cause there's probably not a whole lot you can do about it.

Take my work, for instance. Right now we're operating two producers short and it's thrown a monkey wrench into many of our schedules. My schedule was changed back to working overnight, and do you think I was happy to hear that? Definitely not, but after throwing myself a day-long pity party I accepted the reality of our short-staffedness and determined to make the most of it.

The truth of the matter is, whether you cause the situation or someone else causes it, moping around and complaining about it only makes it worse. I may not be thrilled to be working the vampire shift again, but at least I'm not making myself miserable over it.

Let's Get Physical, Physical

The world's as ugly as sin...

And so are lots of people in it.

We have this reporter who works out of one of our bureaus. Her area comprises several counties that can be best described as backwoods. The more politically correct term for her beat would be rural... way rural. And every person this reporter ever interviews, male or female, is highly unattractive.

If you were to judge the area by her stories you'd come to the conclusion that those counties had no attractive people living there. At all.

Have you ever really thought about ugly people? They come in all different kinds, you know.

There are the ugly people who don't know they're ugly. You know, the ones who keep up with fashion trends and try to blend in with the beautiful people. They're the ones who try really hard to look good and only succeed in drawing more attention to their ugliness.

Then there are the ones who know they're ugly and try to compensate for it by wearing trendy clothes, caking on makeup and attempting to fix their hair. The end result is usually painful to look at.

Then you've got the ugly people who know they're ugly and have given up on trying not to be. They're the ones who look like they just rolled out of bed, tripped into their closet and fell into whatever clothes happened to be lying on the floor.

And then you've got the people who are beautiful on the outside but whose insides are so twisted and black they end up being uglier and more undesirable than those physically unattractive people who fall into the first three categories.

It's that last category of ugliness that makes this world ugly. Sometimes I think if we were all ugly we'd be better off. But I think that even then someone would come up with the concept of beauty and we'd decline back into the superficial mess we're in now.

Return to the World of Overnight Producing

I'd like to welcome you all to another not-so-exciting edition of "Ashton's working overnights again" blogging.

That's right. I'm back to the joy of working overnight. My body is getting ready to hate me... again.

But enough of that borderline whining and onwards to the good stuff! Or lack thereof.

So, it's my first night back working alone and it just so happens to be Halloween. I work in an old hotel that could very well be haunted, but I don't like to think about that especially since the boyfriend made me watch Paranormal Activity and I keep having random flashbacks to it. *shudder*

You would think that with tonight being Halloween the scanners would be alive with activity and thus providing me some form of entertainment, but no! For the most part they've been silent, leaving me with nothing to focus on but the moaning of the refrigerator and the random bumps in the night that make this place so homey. Oh, and there was a nice little 'welcome back' gift I've yet to tell you about.

Remember my last week of working this shift? The week when the creepy guy kept calling? Well he called tonight! How bizarre is that? He wanted to know if we would have news tomorrow [duh!], told me Happy Halloween, asked me to play Simon Says twice and then told me I was nice.

I'm not up for round two with this guy.