Talk About Live TV

Technology can be the most useful thing when it actually works. Yesterday at the station, we were not so lucky. It was about 3:56 pm when our camera operator realized that he didn't have control over any of the camera's. They had 4 minutes to figure out what the problem was before the live newscast began. Engineers began to flood the studio and try to get the camera's working. Talk about working under pressure! After a couple minutes they realized that they would not be able to get the camera's working in time for the first shot at 4. They decided that they had to move to to their backup plan, start the newscast in the newsroom. Usually the 4:00 news is split in half, one half is done in the studio and the other half is done in the newsroom. But the question in my mind was, with none of the camera's working in the studio, how were they going to do weather? There is only one green screen at 7News and that is in the studio. Luckily the camera in front of the green screen was still working since it isn't controlled by an operator. Richard Ortner's advice after the whole thing was done was to stay calm when things like this happen. This was something that was out of our control and therefore we couldn't change it. Luckily, they figured everything out by the time the 5:00 newscast was over in time for a normal 10:00 newscast. It's interesting to see what happens when technology doesn't work in the professional world. Overall, I can say that everyone handled the situation very well and stayed calm the whole time, I was very impressed.