One of the readers of this blog asked about some technical issues we had in a recent newscast.
Live television has its advantages and disadvantages. Live newscasts are urgent and compelling. But, when something goes wrong, there is no time to go back and fix it. That applies especially to technical problems.
Sometimes you have audio problems like the ones we had recently. In one case that our viewer caught our reporter's mic was "not hot" -
TV lingo for not being turned on. Our audio operator did not catch it because he was going over last-minute changes to the newscast with the director and did not conduct a mic check. Our blogger referred to hearing an "echo." This was caused when we cranked up nearby microphones so our reporter could be heard. In the same newscast we were late taking another reporter's live shot. (When it rains, it pours.) According to my director, that problem was caused when there was a slow "memory leak" in our Kalypso switcher. It took several attempts to get the reporter's live signal into the switcher so that the director could get it on the air. The director says he would have floated the story - what we call it when we move a story and play it later in a newscast - if he had known the problem was so severe.
A news director wants every newscast to be clean - without technical problems. We strive for that every day, in every newscast. But when you are dealing with live television and as many moving parts as we use every day, sometimes technical problems happen. You just deal with them the best you can and move on. You can't linger on the problem or problems just snow ball. We find that most viewers are forgiving because they realize this is live TV.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish all our viewers a happy and safe (and technical-problem free) Thanksgiving.