4:00 Newscast

The Wednesday 4:00 p.m. newcast was relatively successful considering it was the first radio newscast for every member of our team. Our stories were all newsworthy and were of interest to Central New Yorkers.

The biggest positive I take out of the newcast was how well it flowed. It started with a pretty good wrap by Natalie McGurn about Centro's new transfer hub and followed with a story about Centro bussing for Saturday's Syracuse-Villanova game. After a national story about a jobs bill and a regional story about a protest againt a proposal to legalize selling wine in New York grocery stores, the newscast turned back to transportation.

We had a national story about the Toyota CEO apologizing for fatal flaws in the company's vehicles, and then a regional story about a deal with Toyota and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

The newscast went from a regional story back to a local feature wrap on how Syracuse schools are celebrating Black History Month and a local feature phoner about the premiere of Syracuse Stage's "Lookingglass Alice."

As our A block progressed, we became gradually heavier and heavier. Hannah Kollock did a great job reading her stories, and Natalie and Simon Rosenwasser did a great job with their wraps. Hannah is generally a slow reader, and although she told me this numerous times in the hours before the newscast, I failed to take it into account. I should have allowed more time for her to read each story.

However, I did not, and Hannah had to say "Now this" before the break instead of reading the tease. She then had to skip a story on a hero dog, and read an extremely abbreviated weather and goodbye. Hannah did a very good job preparing abbreviated versions of the tease, weather, and goodbye, and it sounded great. As producer, I also did a good job timing the newscast, figuring out what needed to be cut and and abbreviated, and ensuring it was six minutes long.

The talent did a great job throughout the day, and the problems fell on me, as the producer. It took me way too long to create the rundown and write stories, and luckily Hannah, Natalie, and Simon helped out and wrote some stories which I had intended to write. Another consequence of me being behind was that I did not have time to listen to Hannah read each story before the newscast, and realize how long it takes her to read each story.

Next week, I will be a lot quicker with the rundown and stories, and will make sure there is ample time to listen to Hannah read each story. I will also take into account that she is generally a slow reader. If Hannah, Natalie, and Simon build upon their solid jobs, then it should be a great newscast.