You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Broadcast Consultants.
I’ve met dozens in my 27 year career.
They are hired guns that come in and fine tune everything from your hair cut, to your eye shadow, to the foundation you wear to the the color of your tie.
They scrutinize the news product, they look for ways to make ugly people prettier. They search for ways to make babbling fools more eloquent. They brain storm trying to make sedentary lumps of flesh more visually exciting on camera.
In short, TV stations hire these people to over haul the on air product. Producers must write snazzier lead ins. Anchors must care more about the words on the teleprompter. And reporters have to sell out, peel back the onion and make magic tv.
Consultants are direct like a New York City subway beggar.
“Your eyes are baggy, wear more make up.”
“Windsor knots make your neck look fat.”
“Don’t wear sleeveless shirts. You have jiggly upper arms.”
Wow.
Broadcast consultants can be rude, crude and since their wallets are full of management money, they are prepared to tear you a new one.
When the consultants come in, everything changes, for a little while. Then we all get amnesia and we return to the old tired ways that work.
It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks.
So Thursday is the day we are to meet with the Broadcasting Consultants.
I can all ready feel the target on my back as I walk to the upstairs conference room.
After all, I’m dressed in jeans and cowboy boots and a turtle neck sweater.
Normally I’m a dress shirt and slacks kind of guy.
But let’s get real. It’s going to be 17 degrees tonight. If I have to be live, standing in front of dead drug dealer, I need to be warm.
This isn’t project runway damn it. It’s batten down the hatches and keep from freezing.
I am late to the meeting and I try and sneak in.
It’s hard to slide by 8 discerning news people.
Suddenly the woman, in her mid 50’s, perks up.
Her face radiates. Her eyes dance a jig. A smile bursts across her face. It’s as if she has seen an old friend or a lamb chop after a visit with Tom Hanks and Wilson.
“Well hello,” She says out loud with a smile.
I smile back, all the time thinking, Do I know you?
She begins to tell a story while staring at me. I’m uncomfortable and I take notes for some reason.
She begins talking about how she goes around the country trying to get reporters to be non traditional, to be special, to be memorable.
She launches into an impromptu story. “There is this reporter, somewhere, I can’t remember what city, but he’s doing a live shot and it’s freezing out,” she says staring at me.
My brain is scrambling. What is she getting at. Don’t look at me lady. Leave my soul alone.
“And he has this T Shirt and he froze it in water and he’s banging it and it’s just a great live shot.”
She is beaming at me, smiling.
“That reporter was you,” she says pointing at me.
“Michigan?” I respond searching my own fuzzy memories.
“I think so,” she says.
“Man, that was like 18 years ago,” I say amazed she remembers it.
“We still show it as an example of how to do a great live shot,” She says.
I am overwhelmed.
“Wow, really. You still show a live shot of mine from 18 years ago. That was like 1996.”
She nods and smiles and then the meeting begins.
I barely remember yesterday. The thought of 18 years ago? That was a lifetime ago.
I recall my memory banks. I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It’s January or February which in West Michigan is the other side of Pluto.
It’s Michigan in winter. It’s cold. So what? What the hell are you gonna tell Michiganders about cold.
They know cold. They live cold. Their hearts and minds are cold. Just kidding Michiganders. You lead a newscast with cold, they go to sleep or head to the beer cooler.
So I got creative, and soaked a T shirt in water and placed it on the ground. It became a card board kite. I punched it and swung it around on tv. It was a stupid but effective prop.
I’ve used this trick before, but I’m sure this was the 1st time.
When it comes to frozen T shirts and made up live shots, I am the Wright Brothers of TV taking flight.
She begins her seminar and tells us that the industry has changed, the customer, meaning the viewers are now in charge.
She says broadcasting use to be a Push industry, meaning people made appointments to watch TV news at a prescribed time. We gave them the news and they either liked it or they didn’t, but that was it.
Now, she says, Broadcasting is a Pull industry meaning meaning that people can get information on the go, from their phones, on their laptops.
But she says, people surveyed would rather watch the news on TV.
Viewers want to feel a connection to their on air people. It is not enough to report an event anymore. Viewers are more discerning, they want ot know what does mean to me.
I think she likes my style because I am a wild card on TV. Even I don’t know what I am going to do before I do it.
I am always amazed that 27 years later, and I still haven’t cussed on live TV.
That sounds easy. It’s not.
So much pressure. So much can go wrong. So much does go wrong.
Every live shot is a rubex cube of confusion.
Some sports book parlays have better odds than live shots news people are asked to pull off.
Stories fall apart. Stories that are wrong. Technological problems that cannot be planned for.
Not cursing on air?
I’m surprised.
The consultant says she is looking for people who pop, who are telegenic. She says that means the camera likes you and something happens when you step before it. She says it is a look, an alive energy that cuts through the background noise.
She says after 911, people want real, authentic broadcasters.
Then the consultation leaves the proverbial tracks. She starts talking about esoteric self help philosophies straight from some 1968 Haight Ashbury handbook.
I wonder when whose going to pass around the bong.
Dress in the zone, and Zen of Ten, and Secret Sauce and Intrinsic Qualities.
Nice made up phrases I think to myself.
At one point she says we need to “maximize our secret sauce.”
I almost laughed.
I didn’t know if this was a broadcasting consultation or a hamburger clinic.
Then the discussion turns to makeup and foundation and getting more sleep and eating more vegetables.
I try to look like I care.
I don’t.
I am a newsman.
I’ll sleep when I die.
I’m a newsman,
I’ll eat vegetables when someone else puts them on my plate.
I’m a newsman.
Make Up?
I have. I will again. Don’t ask. I ain’t exactly proud about it.
I eat news. Sometimes it’s filled with bad calories and transfats and red dye number 2.
Stick that Zen of Ten in your pipe and smoke it.
Life’s Crazy™