February 13, 2012
Today marked the fourth week of News 20 @ 5 Live newscasts. Just as with most Mondays, our day started rather slow with a rundown full of incomplete stories. Our three reporters were assigned to the following stories:
1. Prison Privatization Update
2. Gas Price Spike
3. Airport Update
More news began to develop by noon. Surprisingly, our reporters made it back to the newsroom fairly early...around 1:30 p.m. This gave them enough time to properly enter their scripts into ENPS, and carefully edit their packages. By 4:00 p.m., I had a complete rundown, and scripts were being printed. However, around this time we also discovered that our control room was experiencing technical issues. Early today, there was a major power outage that affected about 2,300 households, along with the campus of Florida A&M.
Consequently, all video based formats would not make it to air. So here's what happen..
- change all VO's and VO/SOT/VO's to RDR
- make revisions to rundown
- drop all packages
- drop one live shot
- float stories and commercial breaks that wouldn't make it to air
- re-print rundowns for studio crew
Ultimately, the show ended up being very simple, yet conveying good and solid journalism. The anchors were great at dealing with the sudden problems on hand. The newscast ended up being about 15 minutes long, compared 30 minutes.
Initially I was slightly upset about the problems with the server, but I knew that remaining positive would help the atmosphere.
Next week's goal: Attempt to identify and solve any server issues. Incorporate two live shots.
