A Producer's Story

Today I was a producer again. It wasn't a big news day but there were a lot of good stories to choose from. I decided to lead with an anchor actuality about the DestiNY green hotel plan. Some of our other stories included the decline in holiday sales, the toy hall of fame and the recall of the toy Aqua Dots. Andrew did a wrap about the Thursday Morning Roundtables. And, Annie did her wrap about a cleaning expo at the Oncenter. During the newscast, we were top heavy again. I took out a story in the first block and it was still too much. Looking back, I should have also cut the holiday sales story. I realized at the end that a lot of my stories were too long. I added more words to them because I was afraid we would not have enough to fill time. From this, I've learned to keep it short, especially copy stories.

At the end of the newscast Matt, my anchor, only had 25 seconds to finish. Matt did a great job cutting down our kicker and weather to finish exactly on time. I definitely need to work on my timing in the newscasts. We finished our rundown about a half hour before our anchor had to be in the booth. Matt had a lot of time to read and time the script before we went in. Even though we timed him in the classroom, it did not work out like that in the booth. Today I've learned that less is more. It's better to write less in the copy stories in the first block. If you need more, use a floater!