Secrets of Television

Television Information: TV news explained

When you turn on the nine, ten or eleven o'clock news every night on television, you usually see many different stories. There may be some stories about crime, some about health, others about education, even others about the weather. You also may recognize some of the anchors who sit on the desk and the reporters out in the field. But do you know what happens behind the scenes of a television station (and often a radio station) when it comes to putting a newscast together? The answers will probably surprise you.

It takes a large group of people to make one newscast work. Whether it be a half hour show or a four hour show, there is more than meets the eye when it comes to the news. Each story is discussed in a meeting with the reporter (the person you will see on air), the assignment editor (the person who finds and assigns stories) and the producer (the person who decides what goes where in the newscast). After the story is deemed worthy of coverage, the reporter will set up interviews and then she or he and the photographer will go out and videotape all the interviews. The photographer will also have to get the rest of the video that goes with the story. For instance, if the story is about the candlelight vigil, of course the candles and people will be captured on video. if the story is something that does not have video at the same place as the interviews, or is hard to visualize, the reporter and photographer have to come up with a way to let the viewers see the story. All of this together can take several hours, or at times can be done in as little as 30 minutes. But that's not all that's needed for some stories.

If the story is one where the anchor reads over video and you hear from one person, that is referred to as a vo/sot. this has to be written and a piece of the interview needs to be chosen. This doesn't take quite as long as the next option.

When you see people who are interviewed and hear what is going on at the scene and hear the reporter's voice, that is called a package. The reporter has to write the story, pick what parts of interviews will be used, decide on the video and then have the whole script approved by the producer. This process takes a lot longer than it appears on the newscast. While the story may be no longer than two minutes (and that includes seeing the reporter out in the field or in the newsroom), it probably took three to five hours to put together. There really is a lot more behind the scenes that has to be done for a story to be on the air for viewers to see.

However, this is only the beginning. I mentioned there is a team of reporters, photographers, producers and assignment editors. There are also people who write stories that reporters don't write, video tape editors that actually take the raw video and put something together that goes along with what is read by the anchor. There are also people who work in the studio operating cameras, making sure audio is okay for everyone speaking whether live or on tape. Also, every time you see someone's name underneath them or a location up top, i.e. last night, detroit, someone has had to put those in the computer. The graphics then have to be put on the video at the right time during the live newscast.

The final product may look like something that was very easy and sometimes it looks like there are problems. If it does look easy, that means that everyone on the news team from on air to off air to people working in the studio live have done their parts correctly. When something goes wrong, there could be one problem or many. It's hard to tell. But all in all, you can see, a newscast that you sit down and watch or just listen to, is not something that comes easy. it is something that takes a full day of work from just about everyone in the news department.

Written by mary mccahon