How a Television Newscast Operates

When you turn on your local news station to catch up on the day's events, you only get to see a very small part of the action. While the anchor or reporter is telling you about the news, a small army of people are operating behind the scenes, ensuring everything runs smoothly. Their job is to make the person on screen look good and for you to never notice that they are there. We're going to take a look at the various positions around the station that make your nightly news look and sound great.

It all starts with the newsroom. Producers are hard at work, twenty four hours a day, writing scripts and gathering information. A producer is the person who decides which stories will be featured and where in the newscast they will be read. The producer is also in the control room during the newscast, following along with the script, coordinating live shots, and talking to reporters and anchors through their in-ear monitors. A producer also follows the clock and decides whether to drop or add stories as the newscast takes place. They have a very high pressure job and must meet hard deadlines, as well as be flexible if there is breaking news.

The production assistant staff consists of camera operators, an audio board operator, a graphics person, a teleprompter operator and a director. In some large stations, there may be multiples of each of these.

A camera operator stays in the studio during the newscast and wears a set of headphones. They receive a "run down," which is a piece of paper that has the schedule of stories and commercial breaks on it, along with other pertinent information such as what camera shot will be used for each story. The camera operator must move the camera(s) around the studio during the newscast and set up different shots. They do this according to the run down, but also according to the director, who is communicating with them from the control room.

The teleprompter operator is typically either in the studio or in the control room and operates a piece of equipment which scrolls the script on a monitor on the front of the cameras in the studio. The anchor reads this and the teleprompter operator must pay very close attention so as to keep up with the anchor and not go too fast or slow. The anchors also have paper versions of the script in front of them in case the prompter experiences technical difficulties.

The audio operator is responsible for controlling all of the audio in a newscast, from the volume of the anchor to the music used at the beginning and end of a newscast. An audio operator must have the ability to juggle multiple audio sources at once and must pay constant attention to the newscast. They typically are in the control room or are in an isolated room by themselves. They use an audio board that has controls for every audio source (e.g. the anchor's microphone, the live reporter's microphone, an interview sound byte, etc.,) to be used in the newscast.

The graphics person typically is tasked with creating any graphics used in the newscast, as well as pulling the graphics up during the newscast for the director. They must arrive early to create the graphics, which usually consist of "fonts," which are what you see at the bottom of the screen when identifying people, or full screen graphics, such as a map, or a graphic with information on it.

The director ties everything together in the control room. The director uses a piece of equipment called a "switcher." The switcher has all of the cameras, various video sources, and the graphics computer routed to it. The director follows the run down, coordinates with the producer, calls out which camera shots are to be used, monitors audio levels, follows along with the script, plays video at the appropriate time, pulls up fonts or graphics, and overall, controls what you see on the screen at home.

Beyond the production team, you have photographers and video editors. The "photogs" go out into the field with reporters or on their own to capture video for the newscast. Their job can consist of anything from covering a county fair to shooting footage at a crime scene. The footage they shoot is delivered to a video editor, who will then edit the footage to remove any odd camera movements and any material that isn't pertinent to the story. Both photogs and editors have a high pressure job and must meet hard deadlines.

The final link in the chain is the master control operator. Master control is in the engineering department and handles everything from tuning in live shots to putting the newscast on air. Master control operators work twenty four hours a day, as they are also the people who run the commercials, get satellite feeds, monitor equipment, ingest programming into the computer system, and switch between network and local programming.

Of course, you also have the sales department, who sell advertising, which makes the entire operation possible, as well as web content developers, engineers, and management. All of these people are an integral part in keeping the station running smoothly so that you can keep up with all of the important news of the day.

So the next time you're watching your favorite newscast, think about how many people are working hard behind the scenes. These people are dedicated to bringing you accurate and up to date information and they take pride in knowing that they are doing their part in keeping you informed.