Honing Skills – Page 11 – Survive Your Job In Television News

How to get the most out of consultants when they come to your station.

At most stations where I worked, people dreaded when the consultant came to town. The seminars, extra meetings, temporary changes in news philosophy and execution just seemed to be a waste. But I really liked when the consultants came to town. It was a chance at perspective. The consultant knew my station’s philosophy but could also tell me about what other stations were doing. Since early in my career, many newsrooms where I worked had no EP or a weak one, so a consultant visit was my chance to pick someone’s brain a bit.

Here’s what I did to use a consultant visit to my benefit, and here’s what you can do as a reporter as well.

Since my I was a producer, I would dub a newscast I liked and have it ready to hand over. I would also ask management for a preview of what the would be in the seminar the consultant had planned. Usually it was writing of some sort. So, I would print samples of my work that related to the subject. Then after the seminar I would mingle a bit and ask if I could have the consultant look over my work. Now, I did not hand over a huge pile of papers, just a small handful or one section of a newscast. Often the consultant would look over my work and give me critiques. I would also ask about trends in larger markets so I could try to “practice” more sophisticated elements in my own newscasts. Occasionally the consultant was really snooty and would blow me off. But most of the time the person was very approachable and willing to share information.

This is good in terms of pushing yourself to the next level when you aren’t getting training elsewhere. There is another benefit to also consider. Never forget who hired the consultant. It’s either the GM or corporate. It never hurts to have a consultant tell those bosses that they met a very conscientious producer (or anchor/reporter etc.) that seemed driven to push him/herself. Let’s face it, the only time I saw a GM for any length of time was a quarterly meeting, previewing a big political special for the station or being told the numbers in the newscasts sucked and we better kick it into high gear or else! So it’s nice to have someone like a consultant tell the GM you are eager to do your best.

As I got to know my station consultants better over the years, some also started giving me career advice. The kind of advice you rarely get, unless you have am agent who’s really on the ball. I got calls sometimes when a job came open at a station the consultant called on. It was a consultant who sat me down and told me I was ready for management and to aim for a medium-large to large market when I did apply. A consultant reviewed my writing samples to make sure I was well rounded before I made a large market jump as a producer. When I went to a large market, the consultant there (he was with another agency than my previous station FYI) worked with me on the side to get ready to become an EP. Why? It makes the consultant look good to be able to place you in a good fit and help you move up.

Reporters, don’t overlook this option for yourselves as well, especially when talent coaches come in and work with you one and one to improve your look and performance. Most of the time you are given a business card and told to call with any further questions: Do it! Yes, your current station will probably hear that you called. Don’t bad mouth the place. Do ask if you can send more current work samples to find out if you are on the right track. Again, these consultants meet a lot of big time bosses. They can and sometimes do put a word in about the talent they get to know.

It should go without saying that you don’t want to badger these potential mentors and ask too many questions or get too many reviews of your work. Once in a while it is okay, and might even help your career. So listen to the seminars, ask questions, show you are committed to the station where you work and improving your own worth. That consultant could help your career in ways you’d never expect.

Game on: Secrets to raising the roof during sports.

No doubt being a sports anchor isn’t what it used to be. You can’t just put up highlights and scoreboards and survive. Many are being asked to one man band. Some stations are getting rid of sports departments and many others have already done it. Yet sports still dominates many conversations among regular people, daily. We all know that ESPN has changed the playing field. So what does a sportscaster do, to not only stand out but possibly keep his/her job at all? One phrase (and it’s one we at survivetvnewsjobs.com love) storytelling.

Often when I would tell sports anchors to do more of this, I would get puzzled looks and the sports anchor would walk away shaking his/her head. So let me spell it out. Playing and watching sports are commonplace among many of your viewers. Leisure activities involving sports are an integral part of many people’s lives. You just have to think of sports as more than the latest college or pro game on the weekend. And when you do cover those weekend games, you need to make them have impact. Before you shake your head in confusion and disgust, look at these key ways to provide that impact.

Storytelling During Sportscasting

Let’s hear it
Memorable moments
Character build
Make it real

First let’s hear it. Use a lot of natural sound throughout your sportscast. Think about it, what are the latest techniques you are seeing when watching national games? The networks are taking you into the event with mic’s in places they’ve never been before. The commentators stop talking and take those special mics so you hear the cars screeching around the track in NASCAR, you listen to the quarterback call plays in mic’d up segments during games. You hear players talking on the sidelines for a few seconds. No you cannot do the exact same thing, but take the general idea and run with it. This is a type of storytelling using natural sound. You can ask to mic up a player during practice. You can set a lav mic up when you do stories to catch ambient sound, you can use natural sound in vo’s and vosots and packages throughout your sportscast so viewers are engaged. Going to cover a sports event, be it a practice, newsconference, or game and thinking about the natural sound will help you look at the event in a different way. You will become more engaged and notice things you may not have caught onto before. This could help you find interesting elements the other sports anchors and reporters in town aren’t doing.

Which leads to our next point: Creating memorable moments. You will hear a skilled EP tell his or her producers this all the time. Photojournalists really get this concept as well. Memorable moments are partially visual, but the key is that they play out emotions. Sports are full of emotion. They are utterly human. You see incredible joyous moments, incredible pain, anger, angst, fear, intense drive, painful defeats and wondrous victories. Looking for memorable moments each day in sports should be like the old saying… “shooting fish in a barrel.” Even news conferences have emotion behind them. Play it out. Search for the emotion in the sound bites, and the backstories to what lead up to the news conferences. You follow players’ tweets, you monitor sport blogs. The emotions are all there, easy pickings. Use them.

Again, I remember the head shaking, followed by “I only get 2 minutes and I have to get these highlights in.” If the ratings fall off during your sportscast then, no, you do not have to show the highlights like you traditionally would. You can take one key element, let it play with nat sound to create a memorable moment, then throw up a score board if you need. Take the viewer into the event. Don’t just cram a million factoids into a 2 minute segment. Fans watched the game, saw highlights on ESPN, got onto the internet to check out their favorite blogs, are signed up on Twitter to check out what their favorite players say etc. Think about what makes you love covering sports. That’s why fans love watching sports. The memorable moments are the draw. The emotion of it all.

Early in my career there was a sportscaster at a competing station, who won Emmy’s for his sportscasts all the time, often beating veteran sports journalists in much larger markets. I started watching his sportscasts to see why. The answer: memorable moments. He made each sportscast interesting. They did not look like all the others in town. And this sports journalist was making a big name for himself. He also would turn in packages every year and beat out reporters for Emmy’s. He was a storyteller that just loved covering sports. Believe me, this guy never worried about his sports time getting cut. He became a real draw in a small community that didn’t have any professional teams to follow. What did he even have to talk about? Plenty. He also did pieces on local sporting events, by character building.

So what is character building exactly? It is centering a story on someone who can really help you explain the issue or to simplify even more: someone that spells out the point of your package. (see storytelling on a dime.) It also means branching out. Sit your assistant news director or executive producer down and ask them what the trends are in town for recreation. Chances are they have seen research and know what topics (i.e. – sports) people in town love to do. Let’s take biking for example. Many places have incredible trails families explore each day. Hit the trail on a Monday or Tuesday when you only have retread elements on the professional or college games and start looking for characters. Ask people why they ride. Ask the history of the trail. Listen to what people are talking about. You will find stories. Contact the local Y and ask about inspiring athletes on and/or coaches for their different teams. Check out the intramural leagues in the area. You will find amazing slice of life stories with cool characters doing a sport. Before you know it, you will have compelling packages to air on those hum drum Mondays and Tuesdays. Your sportscast might just be a package those days. And they might get a bump in numbers when viewers catch on.

Then carry the character building into your coverage leading up to the “big games.” It’s like watching the incredible pieces about athletes before Olympic events. These stories about particular athletes or coaches or fans, make viewers care more about the event itself and what you will have to say about it. Finding the characters will take you into the sports you cover, not just make you a seemingly detached sideliner. This will help you make connections with coaches as well. Maybe more exclusives will come your way.

Finally make your sportscasts real. When you sit on the set, talk to the viewer. Don’t just throw a million one liners and stats and quick highlights at people. And please, don’t yell at the viewers for two straight minutes! Making the sportscast real means using the statistics to add color to the story, instead of making the stats the story. Think Dan Patrick. He always makes sports issues really conversational and boils controversies down in ways even a casual fan can easily follow. You can do this visually by taking the viewer into the event with nat sound and characters and memorable moments. That will help the viewer connect with your content and you. This should help make your sportscast raise the roof each night.

Your Producing Voice: How you get into anchor’s heads.

I have a secret for producers. It’s something your anchors aren’t going to tell you. However, they may say it behind your back. Your voice in our IFB tells us everything we need to know about how good you are at what you do — or whether you have a long way to go.

A friend of mine reminded me of this the other day. In 2004, she produced the wall-to-wall coverage of Hurricane Charley that I anchored at WSPA-TV. As a new hurricane, Irene, was barreling toward the Carolina coast, she was reminiscing on my Facebook wall about the chaos going on behind-the-scenes at the station when Charley hit the Myrtle Beach area.

But her experience was far different from mine. All I remember from that day in 2004 was her soft, reassuring voice in my head calmly telling me which satellite shot to go to next. She’d line-up one. Sometimes it would work out and I could talk with the reporters out on the beach as the wind and rain beat them harder and harder. In those conditions, the satellite shot would go down a lot, though. It probably stressed her out to the max. But you couldn’t tell by her voice. With smooth, even tones, she’d let me know we’d lost that one and suggest where to go next. If she didn’t have a suggestion, I’d just ad-lib until we got back on-track.

Sometimes when she’d open her mic, I could hear someone near her in the booth screaming. It was clear that day who was really in control in the “control room,” the producer really knew what she was doing.

I’ve worked with some brilliant producers. The best are “power producers” in the newsroom who build innovative, incisive blocks of news that showcase their anchors’ full range of personality. Throughout the day, they prod their reporters. And they can be gruff when they’re not getting what they want.

But then, right before their show, they ascend the steps above the director to the producer’s perch in the control room and it’s like they take on the personality of a guardian angel: wise, patient, and soft-spoken. Like Bela Karolyi, the best use breaks in the action to coach their anchors into an Olympic performance.

“Nice ad-lib there on story X,” you might hear them say during a commercial break. “You had the whole control room laughing.”

Or it can be as simple as: “Great pacing on that A-block. We’re right on time.”

That doesn’t mean stroking your anchors’ egos. I don’t want you to tell me I’m doing a good job if the show’s a train wreck or my energy is off. You should still communicate with me though.

“Live shots down all over the place,” you might say. “Gotta love live TV! Just keep doing what you’re doing. We’ll get through it — and we needed material for the holiday party blooper tape anyway.”

It really is like that scene from Broadcast News when the producer, played by Holly Hunter, got the very inexperienced anchor, played by William Hurt, through a special report about Libya. Hopefully you won’t need to be the ventriloquist Hunter’s character nearly becomes in that scene. But this quote from the movie’s anchor is so true:

“You’re an amazing woman,” he tells his producer. “What a feeling having you inside my head!”

So the next time you feel like hitting that button in the booth and really letting your anchor have it in his IFB, remember that. You’re in his head. And what you say will dramatically impact his performance for the rest of that show — and maybe for the rest of the time you work together.

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Matthew Nordin is a morning anchor and investigative reporter at Raycom Media’s WMBF News, the NBC affiliate in Myrtle Beach, SC. He was an anchor/reporter at WSPA-TV in Greenville/Spartanburg, SC from 2001-2005. Soon, he’ll write about communicating with your anchor during live interviews. You can follow him on Twitter @MatthewNordin

It’s GM’s agenda and you are stuck covering it “as news.”

We promise this situation will happen to you. It happened to us at several stations, in small to large markets. General Manager walks into an editorial meeting and says “So what are we doing to cover such and such, ( fill-in the blank, new road widening project, special session by legislature, tax incentive package for a new industry in town etc.) since our viewers the tax payers are getting screwed.” The news director gives a blank look followed by the lifted eyebrow smirk, then stares at you, “So how will you cover that story today?”

If this happens, say you are going to make some calls and get out of the room pronto. Better yet, grab your photog and get out of the building while you make those calls! Why? You do not want the GM to start going off on specific players and agendas for the story. You do not want specifics on how this story should be told, and exactly what the tease will say. That way, if it is the GM skimming headlines and misinterpreting reality, you won’t end up having to tell him/her. Without specifics chances are you can find some small nugget to package.

Next, call the newsroom mega brain. You know, the walking, talking, human factoid! This person can save you hours of stress and research. Do the necessary ego stroke and get the person to give you background information on this subject. You need time to work sources for a backup in case the story falls apart. The “human factoid” usually can at least provide the name and number for a player in town who will give you insight on whether the GM’s “news” really is “news.”

Do your thing, work it and try to find an interesting character or bit of video to showcase so you can get by. If there’s just nothing to the story give the basics, then try and include a little subtle perspective in your anchor intro or tag. Managers tend to play in that copy more anyway. This way, if the story is taken out of context and the GM gets a call, it will more likely become management’s problem instead of the reporter’s failing.

If you cannot find a nugget to package, and there’s simply nothing to the story, offer to write a vo or vo/sot and let your manager know early. That gives management time to derail the GM situation well before the newscast airs. It helps if you can offer an interesting alternative story the manager can have you churn out instead. Sometimes management will then take the GM “news” burden off of you and have an anchor front it somewhere cool on set. You are off the hook, and the GM still feels heard without the station blowing a weak story out of proportion.

If you are told to package a story and say certain things in a tease you don’t like, try and do a subtle rewrite. Also, know this happens to everyone from time to time. Chances are your credibility is not ruined. Those in the know in town realize you got stuck “being the good soldier.”