A minor mistake is something that a regular viewer won’t notice but that a TV professional will. An anchor hesitates and looks down at the script. Teleprompter problem.
Someones name is shown over screen when they are talking and the name comes in before you see them or stays after they’ve gone. Early or late “super” Named for the superimposition of the data on the screen.
Anchors looking briefly at the wrong camera.
Major mistakes? Going to someone live and they are not ready or their mic isn’t working. Rolling the wrong video for a story. A misspelling on a full screen of information.
These are all technical mistakes. Editorial mistakes (incorrect facts) are also found.
Yes, it is. With a few exceptions, at the Columbus level, they are all trying to get to Cleveland or Philadelphia. And behind them are the people in Dayton who want to move up. Some of them stay a long time and get paid well because viewers like them. Dave Kaylor comes to mind. All in all, anchors who can’t depend on good ratings to get them what they want are viewed as replaceable and disposable. Reporters are viewed the same way. People behind the scenes…producers, assignment desk, photographers…have much more job security than people on the air do.
It depends on how competent the reporter is. It usually doesn’t take more than three or four trys. The only thing recorded on the scene is called a “standup”. “I’m standing here in front of an empty house, where earlier today, something awful happened.” The rest of the audio is recorded back at the station and edited together with the pictures. The finished product is called a “package”.
You can’t air a package as is, because it would be lacking video or audio and wouldn’t make sense. If it’s just minutes from completion, you can “float” the story further down into the newscast. If it’s hopeless, you drop it from the show and chew ass later.
As a producer, I chose stories that I thought would interest the most people. The goal is to balance controversey with an opposing view, so things don’t look one sided. I had to sigh a little when putting something in, but objectivity is the foundation of credibility. No credibility, no viewers.
Personal danger? As a photographer, I’ve chased tornadoes, gone to chemical spills, natural gas leaks, etc. I once followed a sheriff with a camera as he arrested someone that we knew had a gun.
Unusual? An ostrich escape from a farm, a beehive wreck on the highway…that sort of stuff.
The weather people control their own graphics with a remote that activates the computer. Watch their hands next time. If the graphics were really glitching, I would call that a major mistake. This is assuming you aren’t watching an extremely small station with less sophisticated equipment.
Go to a local station and apply for a camera operator job. Those are usually the first rung on the ladder. Once inside, observe, learn and show interest. Wait for someone to leave and strike.
Most of them have grown up in the modern media environment and fit right in. Some of them have trouble with “But professor so and so says to do it this way” at first, but most of them work through that. It all depends on where you live. If you are in a small town in Texas, you are seeing 23 year olds who will not be in the TV business five years from now. If you are in a city big enough to have a professional sports team, you are looking at veterans.
First, thanks for answering my previous question. I think I came off a little strong in my post, but it just irks me sometimes that the general public is forced to get their news from people who are seemingly so dumb… :\ I hadn’t even thought about the difference in age of the anchors and such. Of course, channel 3 has anchors who’ve been around a while, but are still annoying. Not so much dumb, but annoying.
I knew that this was how they do it, but is it completely universal that the weather guy controls the image? I seem to recall that one of our guys here always seems to be behind the image on the screen. Or rather, he never has enough time with one image to finish what he wants to say about it. It seems like he’s not controlling it, or he’d finish up his thoughts while the image is on the screen. But then, he could just be flinchy with his remote, or be a little too worried about his time constraints…
He could be being rushed by the producer or his graphics could be on a continuous loop instead of loaded individually. The smaller the market, the more likely something like that is to happen.
I thank all of you for your questions. If the thread is still here, I will answer more of them when I return on Monday.