Well this morning our grand experiment of merging The WILK Morning News with television began. Our 7am hour is now simulcast on Fox 56. I haven’t even had a chance to see it yet. We purposely did NOT turn on the tv in the studio because there’s a 30 second delay and it would be very confusing. I’d rather just do the show as usual, and ignore the fact that it’s being broadcast with pictures all over Northeast Pa.
We’ve learned a bit of restraint as well during the breaks. Remember, we may not be on the tv during commercials, but the fine folks in the Fox 56 master control studio can hear EVERY thing we are saying. It’s weird to know that people are able to see and hear everything you’re doing. It does change the way you act.
It makes me think about reality tv. I’ve suspected that you can call it REALITY tv all you want, but once there’s a camera around and it’s known to the subjects, then it is anything but reality. You want reality television, put a camera in a situation and don’t let anyone know it’s there. I suspect we’d all be a little uncomfortable watching what we say and do when that happens.
When 8am rolled around today, I breathed a little sigh of relief. It was nice to have that camera off. I was never much of a tv person. If I could zoom back in time to my teen years, that comment would throw me for a loop. Back then, I thought tv was all I wanted. First it was Barbara Walters, that’s who I wanted to be. Then it was Christiane Amanpour at CNN. I know that the two couldn’t be any more different.
I studied both radio and tv during my years at Marywood. I was always more interested in television. At that time, it was easier to get a gig in radio than tv, so I started working at WWDL gaining experience AND a paycheck. They sent me on some news stories and I was hooked. Immediately I knew that my ticket into tv news was to work in radio news. I started work at WILK in Wilkes Barre and the daily commute was almost an hour from Factoryville every day.
Back in 1989, radio stations had a news department. Not just news and talk stations, but music stations. KRZ had a news department, WEJL, WWDL. I’d go to a news conference and the radio stations would outnumber the tv stations. Our biggest competition was WARM and it was great. They were the best and it made us work harder. In my early radio years, I still planned to make the move into tv, and did on a part time basis in 1992. WYOU hired me as a weekend reporter. I did the Saturday beat, and Catherine Behrens from WARM held Sundays.
TV was much different than I expected. In radio news, you depend on yourself. You carry the tape recorder (now the digital recorder), you carried the alligator clips (you used them to send your audio through the phone), you did the interviews, you wrote the story, edited the clip, phoned in the studio, then cut up the sound, and wrote the other versions of the story (we did three versions with audio for every news event we covered). When you got back to the studio you also did a voicer and wrap, and carefully organized everything so the morning crew found a newsroom filled with carts (not mp3’s) and paper in neat little stacks. It was a lot of work, but you did it for the most part, alone.
In television, suddenly I was working with a cameraman. I’d say camera person, but in those days they were all men, except when Pam came along for a short time and lugged around that big heavy camera and all it’s components. Nothing against the cameraman, but he edited the package and chose the shots. You had to be careful what you wrote, because the video might not match the words on the paper. Suddenly, I was also more aware of what I was wearing. Covering a blizzard, I was worried about whether the boots would match the pants, and how dumb would I look with a hat on.
One day, I was in the station vehicle with Lonnie Miller, my favorite camera person of all time (sorry about those Cowboys Lonnie!). I was blabbing and he finally interrupted me and said, ‘Aren’t you going to start writing your story?’ We had hours to go until the broadcast, but I guess it takes awhile for some reporters to get it together. I remembered laughing and thinking to myself…’write the story? It’s already written in my head.’ You see, in radio news, you cover a news conference and you’re constantly looking at the clock. News was every half hour…so you’re never more than 29 minutes away from a newscast. You learn to write fast.
While I enjoyed doing television, I was a bit put off by the focus on the image. You’d bust your ass getting a story and then get calls and postcards from viewers telling you to ditch the glasses, or wear a different color. It comes with the territory. It’s 2 hours since our debut on FOX 56 and I’ve already had two phone calls, three email and numerous comments in the hall about the close shots on the tv. I guess our big heads in split screen is a bit much, according to a facebook posts that reads:
"should show more of their bodies not just their heads and dont split the screen”
I’m prepared for the onslaught of comments about the hair, the clothes, the makeup. Please understand the only thing I’m most concerned with is bringing you interesting topics and something you will look for in the morning. I also realize that many things will be changing as this experiment continues. I’ve already asked Becky at Fox to hook up a ‘wild cam’ so I can bring my own shots to the viewers.
I’m excited about doing tv again. To be honest with you, the focus on image, and working with a camera person weren’t my main complaints about tv. The reality was I couldn’t make any money in it. I tried to jump to WNEP tv, but I had a no compete clause in my contract and the boss at Channel 16 wanted me to get my GM to sign off on that. Well, if you knew my boss then, you’d know that hell would freeze over before that happened. What didn’t help was that my starting salary was going to be less than what I was making in radio at that time. So much for the glitter and glamour of tv.
So here I am, working at WILK 20 years later. It’s not that I’ve been doing the same thing though. I’ve done news anchor, news reporter, station manager, a jump to Froggy 101 for a year as Polly Ponds and Cricket, then WILK Program Director and Talk Show host. It’s only fitting that we’re now merging with tv. The lines between media are going away. The web has brought pictures and video to radio and we’re no longer a radio company, but a multi-media company.
Why am I telling you all this? Well, this is my blog, and perhaps you’re checking in here after seeing my big head on Fox 56. I’ll do my best to work with Kevin on bringing you compelling local talk radio on TV every day. As for the split screen and the close-up…well that’s for the TV people to figure out!
Corbett
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