A Lovely County Line...

This week was definitely about getting back into the groove. I worked at WKST for nine days straight the week prior, so I was exhausted trying to balance work and classes. However, I still had a lot of broadcasting to do this week. In particular, I was anchoring for our college’s television news magazine show, The County Line, for the first time this semester. Right now, we have seven anchors who rotate positions from week to week, so normally each one gets to anchor at least two times every semester.

Anyways, this past Thursday happened to be one of my weeks…I was really excited because it was also Valentine’s Day, and I had something perfect to wear for the job. Over Christmas break, my aunt gave me this red two-piece top. This ensemble reminded of similar outfits that anchors from my hometown news stations in Cleveland wore for the nightly news programs. Whenever I get the chance, I try to watch the local television news programs, so I can pick up on the “norms” for local television stations in the area; maybe down the line, it will help me get a job at a TV station. Also, when I anchored last semester, I wore a red blouse the one time, and the producer and my professor said that red was a good color for me that also stood out on our television set. I’m trying to be more conscious of what I wear when I anchor now: I try to pick something that complements my skin tone, but also works well with the college’s news desk set.

Back to the preparation…on Thursday, Pam, my fellow co-anchor, and I decided to write scripts early in the day; then, we went back and adjusted them once the producer finalized the rundown. During the show run-through, I was having trouble seeing the prompter; it was too dark, but thankfully, the chief engineer came in and fixed the problem. I was very impressed with our show crew this past week. We got done with our run-through 25 minutes before the show was supposed to start, which allowed both Pam and I enough time to read through our scripts a couple more times, until we felt comfortable with them. Overall, this had to be one of the times I felt the most prepared when anchoring, and it’s all because everyone worked well together. Broadcasting is truly all about teamwork.