| Jessie Kane
Former WCNC producer |
I have small boxes, big boxes and everything in between in my apartment right now. Some of the boxes are still packed while others are broken down and placed on my ottoman because I just can’t stand to have them on the floor anymore.
I have a stack of papers on the kitchen counter that needs to be sorted and I dread opening up my bedroom closet because it’s filled with stuff I just don’t know what to do with yet. If you haven’t guessed by now I have just moved – and not across town but across the country.
I’m a news producer. While you can never predict when breaking news is going to happen there are a lot of constants in the day.
Here are the highlights of a typical day at WCNC:
9:30 a.m.: Morning meeting
10:45 a.m.: Write story for wcnc.com
11 a.m.: Start stacking show
11:30 a.m.: Reporter split meeting
Noon: Start writing scripts
1 p.m.: Make graphics for show
1:45 p.m.: Write another story for wcnc.com
2:30 p.m. Afternoon meeting
6 p.m.: Show Starts
6:27:55 p.m.: Show Ends
Now, there is nothing and I mean nothing predictable about a move. While a lot of people can go with the flow most producers (especially me) need to know what’s going to be done, what’s being done now and when everything will be done.
If I told you everything that didn’t get done how I wanted it to or when I wanted it done we would both have aged substantially by the end of this blog. To save us both a lot of time I’ll just give you the best examples. First, I have two cats so I flew my mom to Charlotte so she could help me get them across the country. Everything was fine until she got lost in southwest Charlotte on her way back from the beach. We ended up leaving for the airport almost an hour after I had planned to. Second, I took a week off between jobs in hopes that my household goods would arrive in Seattle before I started work but the delivery wasn’t made until the day after I started. Third, about two hours before the movers were supposed to arrive I got a call from the moving company to tell me that the truck was broken down about 90 miles outside of Seattle. The driver ended up having to abandon the big rig and rent a smaller truck to make the delivery.
So the moral of this story is producing a show is extremely different than producing a move. For a show a producer is in control of the product while for a move a producer is at the mercy of others.
It’s time for me to unpack another box.
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