Learning how KOMU operates

I was at KOMU 8, three times this week. However, I did not do any reporting. This week I learned a lot about how the station works. In recent weeks I learned about the production assistant position.

I did not know the responsibilities of this position. The production assistants are responsible for grabbing national news stories off of a wire service and cutting them into Voice overs for the morning anchors. They also run the teleprompter for the morning show.

This week I also learned about the cut ins shift. Cut ins run at the 25 and 55 minute commercial breaks of the Today show. They are students anchoring these short morning news breaks.

Since I do not remotely resemble a morning person, I had no idea the morning PA shifts and the cut-ins shifts were available. After practicing cut-ins in lab this week, I really want to get up early one morning and do cut-ins.

Eric Blumberg made cut-ins training fun because he tried to throw us off in any way possible. During my practice cut-in the teleprompter would drift in and out. This made me have to look down at my script occasionally and then try to look up at the camera as much as possible.

He threw others off by making occasional changes to the script. This trick worked on some students resulting in hilarious outtakes.

I had fun learning the ropes at KOMU and look forward to reporting there in coming weeks.