Erika Mahoney was anchoring and we were sitting next to each other in the news room the entire time during production. She got her story on the Canastota School District vote done early which allowed her plenty of time not only to write the headlines, the tease into break, the Love Handles kicker, and the close, but also go over and edit the other copy stories that I wrote. I made it very clear that she could edit whatever she wanted since, after all, she's the one reading it for the broadcast. During the broadcast, she did a great job keeping up with time. Most of A-Block was right on time and we went into break about 10 seconds heavy. She made up for it quickly in B-Block and we actually finished the broadcast about 10 seconds light, which is fine with me.
Our reporters were Greg Shillinglaw, Jesse Pantuosco, and Jessica Cunnington, all of whom did a great job with their stories as well. Greg's first story idea on the Common Council meeting fell through but he ended up getting a great story when he saw five fire trucks rush through Downtown Syracuse, apparently because of a fluorescent light bulb that burst. Jesse sat down with SU's Dept. of Public Safety captain John Sardino to discuss security plans for Saturday night's highly anticipated men's basketball game against Villanova. Jess took a local spin on Fashion Week by visiting a couple of local boutique stores and seeing how Fashion Week has affected business for them. Everyone did a great job of keeping me updated on their status and getting their stories done early so we ready to go well ahead of the 4:30 show time.
I think we really benefitted from having three reporters on our team (whereas the other teams had two). This allowed for me to keep a good pace when making the rundown and get a variety of stories into our newscast. I would like to listen to the newscast again before Wednesday this week so I can take note of things I liked and didn't like about the broadcast itself. I was so focused on timing while the last broadcast was going on that I really didn't listen to the content very closely.
Overall, I was very happy with how everything worked out and everyone else on the team said they were as well. Although I have some production experience that may or may not have helped, it was my first time producing a six-minute live radio newscast, which is way different from a 30-minute taped sports show (which is what I produce every week). I knew that going in, which made me a little nervous going into last week. But this week I'm really looking forward to producing and working with Erika, Greg, Jesse, and Jess again.
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