XMAS BREAK

Now that I'm on break until January 22nd I have had a lot of free time even though I've been working 4o hour weeks. Its weird having this free time because last semester at one point I was working 30 hour weeks and having class every weekday. Next semester I will hopefully continue working 40 hours a week and I will only have one class so I should be able to focus on Titan Town Sports more than I already do. Since I've started working with New Vision I have thought about what I want to do with Titan Town Sports. I would love to do live shots from different sporting events but the chances of that happening are slim to none. I tried thinking of how I could be creative with the show, instead of just doing highlights and SACC athlete. I think I will have Dave and who elese wants to, shoot the highlights like I did first semester when I was availble. I want to start doing more feature stories and I'm going to really test my shooting, editing and most of all my writting skills. I won't be setting up my interviews or any of my shots before hand. I want to be able to go to a practice ask the coach for some interviews and get some shots come back write it, voice it and get it on the air in a matter of a 3 hour span. The only problem I think I'll run into is making sure I have an editing bay and hopeing that the computer doesn't crash on me. If all the equipment is availble and working I dont see how I wouldn't get these features done on time. This is what I would like to do next semester, well see if it works out that way.

Second week

I am now in my second week as a New Vision employee working for not only one station but two. When I first started learning our editing system AVID, I was not sure if I would ever learn it and be an effective editor. But now that I am in my second full work week it has gone pretty good. I mean I still dont know what every button does but I do know what I am doing and I feel I am producing good footage. I have been out on a few spot news accidents which was something I really didnt do when I was with WYTV. Other than that I have been shooting a lot of local stories and a few sporting events. So far everything has gone good and I am learning something new every day about the AVID editing system.

Hitting the WALL

This week was a rough one for not only myself but the whole campus, we all had finals. My finals weren't that bad because I only had two. The reason it was a rough week was because I had to do a 24 source lit review on what makes a good Sportscast. Not only did I have to do that I was on the work schedule for 40 hours and it was the first week at the new station. I had both of my finals on wednesday and I worked from 8 to 2:30. As soon as I got off worked I hustled down to the field house at the college for my capstone final which was with Titan Treverse like at the beginning of the semester. We did a few exercises like the tank and driver game. We had a obstacle course that was not a lot of fun but we got through it. After that it was time to climb the rock wall. I had never climbed a rock wall and I wasnt scared but I was just tiny bit nervous. I am not sure why but after flying up the wall I realized why I was nervous. Once you reach the top its time to come back down and that is pretty scarry when you just drop 10 feet at a time and your not sure if your even going to stop. All and all it was a fun experiece and I would love to it again. I also finished my lit review on Friday night the day before it was due. I didnt think I would be able to find 24 sources but I actually found 26. There was alot of good information that I will use towards my final project. Some of the information was kind of shocking because it talked about the 6 o'clock sportscast as dying segment. This makes me think what are sports directors leading with in their shows and why are they loosing viewers. So now next semester when Titan Town Sports starts up again, each week I am going to make sure that were hitting what our viewers want. What is it that our viewers want? Well after all the research I have found they want to see local stories not national. They want feature storys on athletes they might know and they want to get to know the athletes. So next semester get ready for a better and more improved Titan Town Sports.

New Vision

Ever since I was hired at WYTV channel 33 three months ago there has been a lot of talk about merging with our competitor WKBN channel 27. Well last friday was the day we found out if we had a job or not. What happened with the merger was both stations would be going through massive layoffs because we would all be working in the same building "WKBN" as one joint station. Both stations would be having their normal broadcast but because were all working in the same building a lot of the jobs were downsized. Now my job before was a Photographer for WYTV and what I did was I would go out with a reporter or by myself and shoot stories and edit them for WYTV's news. Now what I will be doing is since I am a New Vision employee I will go out and shoot and edit stories just like before but now the stories will air on WYTV and WKBN. What New Vision did was they bought both of our stations and put us in the same building so they didn't have a photog from WYTV and WKBN at the same story. It is easier and cheaper to have one photog than two. Another thing that New Vision has gone to is "VJ's". This makes me realize that my job position is not as valuable as it use to be because what a VJ does is everything. They shoot, write, interview and do their own stand ups. A lot of the people that I learned from and got to know at WYTV weren't hired back by New Vision and I truly feel terrible for these people who have been doing this for five, ten or thirty years of their lives. I am not real sure why all these people were not hired back but I do think it might have been because they made more money than me. But I can't complain because this is a great oppurtunity for myself to gain more experience. My work load will probably double but that will only help me in the long run. This week I did some job training and basically what I did was I trained on our new editing system "Avid". Its not really like WYTV's editing system or Westminster's but it is the most advanced system out there and it may take some time learning it but once I get it down I should be able to produce a better and quicker quality product.

Tapes

Well this week was pretty hetick because the semester is coming to the end and most of my professors are trying to get all there last minute projects and tests in. Also trying to put a good show together was a challenge because we haven't had a show in that was live and more than 3 minutes in 4 weeks. I wasn't thrilled with the content we had but I was trying to fill in all the empty spots. We did 2 recaps of highlights that if it was a normal everyday sportscast I would never put it in the show but seeing how our show is only once a week and we haven't had a show in since these events happened I put aired them. One was a basketball tournament that the Titans hosted and its been happening for a long time. Another reason why we aired it was because we didnt have any footage of the men's team. The other story we aired was a local allstar soccer game that was Lawernce vs. Mercer county which Lawernce county is our main viewers.
Well were in the show and everything is going very smooth there hasn't been any blunders. But then we get to sports and of course something always goes wrong. We showed all the highlights and the allstar soccer match package and they looked and sounded great but then we got to my package on Dan Orrison who was our outstanding athlete and student award and what happens we air the wrong video. I wont mention names but somebody doesn't know how to read. I cued up the tape for this person, I wrote down the time code so even if they accidentally re-winded the tape they would know where the video was. The person ended up playing highlights from a football game from 4 weeks ago. Even though the package was on a football player they should have known that the video they had was not Dan Orrison. So I guess I should have known by now that I can only rely on myself to run the right tape. This week I will not be producing the show but I will sit in the control room and make sure they run the right package.