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Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism University of Southern California
Producers

News for the Trojans

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This week’s producing almost gave me a heart attack. All of the scripts and videos were finished fairly early in the day. We went on air and everything was rolling smoothly; I felt confident and thought it would be a good show.

Yet crises always come when you are least expecting it.

Half way through the A Block, the server crashed and all of our videos disappeared. The dreaded offline pink video column announced our biggest nightmare – we had effectively lost all of our content.

Since we were still on air, we asked the anchors to keep reading and disregard the missing videos. It was a little awkward but that was all we could do. Meanwhile, we called Trojan Vision, which is the cable station airing the newscast, to take us off the air. They did and replaced us with a random concert video.

A lot of things happened in the booth in that precious 10 minutes off the air. Vicki, the lead producer, decided to switch the order of the rundown and start the newscast again with the weather and sports sections, which were least dependent on videos. We were coordinating with the anchors through IFB, talking to the director and the rest of the studio crew, rewriting the scripts to copy stories, communicating with Trojan Vision to put us back on. Finally, we were back on air with a simplified version of the show sans video.

This moment of crisis management showed me that leadership and problem-solving skills are essential to successful producers. Producers must stay on top of their shows and be resilient in the face of any obstacle.

Obviously, we are a student-run station and face many limitations. We don’t have equipment as sophisticated as those at a professional station. The staff is not as refined in journalism as the professionals. Our commitment is based on class not contract. The goal of ATVN is to provide an educational platform for students to practice and learn, but not to build strong ratings or push for mass-appealing coverage.

But this differentiation sometimes allows ATVN to strive for better-quality reporting. We have more room to experiment because we don’t need to worry about ratings. We uphold the highest journalistic integrity because we don’t need to make compromises for any corporation’s interest. Our staff really cares about what we are doing here because they are either drawn here by enthusiasm for news or the urge to learn.

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