You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy. ™
A TV station gone dark.
Friday is humming along like any Friday.
My story about a woman who lost her husband to a hit and run driver is finished. It’s around 3pm. The story is scheduled to air in about 3 hours. The day is winding down.
The story is a good one. No, it’s a great one. I’ve talked to the woman’s oldest son who is having problems dealing with the loss of his father. I’ve talked to the teary eyed woman about the unsolved crime and the difficulty of the holidays without her husband, her best friend.
It is the lead for 6pm. It should be. It’s emotional and personal and relevant. I’m satisfied.
I send the story to the server so that everyone has access to it. Now the producers can see it and the directors can roll it and the editors can tweak it.
When it works, this is a good system. When it doesn’t work, it’s the China Syndrome and the nuclear meltdown has begun.
Anybody seen Jane Fonda?
Suddenly the dreaded alert box flashes on my editing screen indicating a network connectivity issue.
“Hey Bob, are you having trouble?” I scream to the editor in the next bay beside me.
“I’ve got the dreaded white screen,” he says.
The dreaded white screen.
That’s code for We are F***ed.
And so it begins.
The loud speaker begins sounding like an air raid alert in Palestine.
Dumpy assed engineers begin running around the hallways like someone stole their pocket protectors.
Producer voices rise an octave and suddenly the newsdirector and even the GM begin anxiously wandering the news landscape.
I walk into the newsroom and there is a frantic buzz.
“Oh Andy, you’re here,” the assistant newsdirector says with a surprised look on her face.
I smile.
“Can you do a live talk back on the set at 4pm on your story?”
I nod.
“Great. There is no video. No teleprompter. Just you talking about your story.”
“OK.”
I head back to my edit bay and grab my sport coat. I think about the requirements suddenly placed upon me.
The story wasn’t suppose to air for another 2 hours, but now this is an emergency.
If the newsroom were a fire scene, it would say in case of emergency break glass.
I walk out to the set and the sports anchors are there, just in case we need to fill time. The Weather team is in place. Weather people know how to journalistically filibuster. The main anchors are on the desk barking out questions.
“Where’s the on line monitor? Will we have prompter? Are we tossing to the live shot?”
All relevant questions.
From what I gather nobody knows.
“3 2 1,” the floor director shouts.
The main anchor begins reading.
“Good evening and welcome to Nashville’s News 2 at 4pm..”
There is no open graphic, no music, no video open. It’s odd. It’s wrong like a pizza covered with jelly beans.
The anchor stumbles over the script, unclear if we are on air.
She stops and looks up confused. We are all confused.
The floor director holds up his hand. “We’re not on,” he says.
“We’re going to re-run Dr. Phil. Everyone stand by.”
Re run Dr. Phil. WTF?
Apparently the computer is so frazzled, master control cannot even punch out of programming and take the news live.
That’s unprecedented.
The mood in the room is that of helpless laughter.
We all stare at each other and wait. The lights are on, but the monitors are dark.
The producer runs into the studio.
“OK, we are going to re-run Dr. Phil. Everyone get ready for the 5pm news.”
I go back to my edit bay and dub the story onto a thumb drive.
I hand the drive to a photographer who runs it to the satellite truck where there is still a tape machine from the Paleolithic era.
The idea is to play video – some how – and if we can’t run it from the frozen station computer, we’ll run it from an archaic tape machine in the satellite truck parked outside.
Ingenuity is the mother of invention.
I take the set at 5pm.
Still no video I am told.
Great.
Again there is no open. Dr. Phil ends. Channel 2 news awkwardly comes on the air. It’s as smooth as a 13 year old boy buying a hooker on his Bar Mitvah.
The anchors read the lead in and toss to me.
I stare into the monitor. It is an image of me. There is no video. There is no teleprompter.
I babble on for about a minute about something relevant to my story. It’s not my best work but it kills a minute.
The viewer at home knows something is different, but probably have no idea we re going to hell in a hand basket.
By 6pm, the video airs and the station is coming back to life.
The next day the ratings, remarkably, are similar to what they would normally have been.
Either people didn’t know or people didn’t care.
It’s a good lesson. You live by the technological sword. You can also die by the technological sword.
When all else fails, make sure there is an analog dinosaur nearby that can play back video.
And that is crazy.™