By Alice Main (webdesign@mainhat.com)

Dan Rather was preparing to broadcast the CBS Evening News from a floating restaurant on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, overlooking the Cincinnati skyline. The original plan had called for Rather to stand outside on the deck, but that plan was scuttled by ominous clouds and a forecast of thunderstorms, so the production moved inside, and Rather stood in front of a glass window.

Rather was surrounded by people who checked his makeup, his lighting and his scripts, and who admonished the assembled audience when there was too much noise.

Standing to Rather's immediate left, just off-camera, was Allen Berman, senior producer.

Berman was talking by phone with Jeff Fager, the executive producer, who was in the booth in New York. It was 6:20, and Fager was changing the first block around. It was up to Berman to handle the changes at the remote site.

Local news staffers watched, secretly hoping for some glitch in the newscast that would prove that network people make mistakes too.

It didn't happen. Unfortunately, the newscast was smooth, thanks in large part to the expert touch of Al Berman.

HOW HE GOT THERE

Berman graduated from Florida Atlantic University in 1977, and started pounding on TV station doors in West Palm Beach until someone answered.

Berman worked part-time as a film cameraman, and later became a photographer-reporter.

"I was not all that impressed with my own performance. I looked at what the producer did and found that much more appealing, and so I swapped with a producer who wanted to be on television, and I became a noon producer."

Berman worked his way up to producing the 6 and 11 o'clock newscasts, before he moved to Miami in 1979 to become the weekend producer at WTVJ. He moved up to produce the 6 and 11 again, and then moved to WDIV in Detroit in 1985, where he once again produced the main newscasts.

It was 1985 when Berman moved to New York. He was the executive producer of the 6 o'clock news, and later of the 11 o'clock news at WABC.

In 1986, he jumped to the net. He worked on The CBS Morning News, and CBS This Morning, and then America Tonight with Lesley Stahl and Charles Kuralt during the Gulf War.

After the war, he was promoted to senior producer of the CBS Evening News, and has been there ever since.

A TYPICAL DAY

"I wake up, turn on news radio 88, and get a handle on the day's news. On the drive in, I call the domestic bureaus, the foreign desk, and the national desk. I'm in the door at 9 AM. I read through 5 newspapers, and then start talking with my colleagues in the fishbowl," Berman says.

His colleagues include three other senior producers, a senior producer in Washington, and executive producer Jeff Fager, who's the boss.

"I'm specifically in charge of building the broadcast on a particular day. And I'm responsible for spot news and the economics team," says Berman.

The group fields story offers from bureaus all over the world.

"We list them, discuss them and prioritize them. Then we do what EPs and producers everywhere do. We weigh the elements, line them up, decide how long correspondents' stories should be, which stories will be for Dan, and decide on graphic support."

In the afternoon, the lineup is reviewed with the director, graphics, writers, tape people and others to make sure everyone is up to speed.

"Then, it's a matter of monitoring, reviewing and editing. The writers write copy for Dan. The correspondents and producers in the field are writing. Each script is assigned to one of the senior producers who works with the correspondent-producer team to make recommended changes. Sometimes the scripts undergo several drafts. They get script approval, and the team assembles the piece in the field and feeds it in," Berman says.

Berman sits in the booth with Fager during the newscast. When it's over, Rather joins the producing team in the bowl to talk about what worked, what didn't, and about what the other guys did.

AN ATYPICAL DAY

Last week, we got the news about the bombing at the US military housing complex in Saudi Arabia at about 5 o'clock. Of course CBS, NBC, and ABC all led the 6:30 news with the story, but CBS spent roughly twice as much time on the story as the other two networks did.

"We kept thinking, what else can we do?" Berman said the next day. "Can we get anybody on the phone? We got a witness. Is there someone who can put this in perspective? We got Faoud Ajami. We got David Martin. We wanted to keep it loose and live, if we get any new information let's be willing to break in to the broadcast. Everybody was throwing in ideas, and while we were on the air we broke in and changed things. Jeff (Fager) showed a great willingness to tear apart the news and put it back together. We have four feeds and updated each one, 6:30, 7:00, 8:30, and 9:00."

CAN LOCAL PRODUCERS MOVE TO THE NET?

It all sounds pretty familiar to a local news producer. All except that part about fielding offers from bureaus around the world.

So does that mean a local news producer's experience can get him or her to the network?

"I was absolutely much better off coming from local news than to have started at the network," says Berman, "because in local news you do more.

You can do everything: write, report, shoot, edit and produce. All of which I did. At the network the jobs are much more narrowly defined. At the network you can spend an entire career and never shoot a tape."

"The other reason is that in local news in smaller markets, you can make mistakes. Everyone does. You learn from them. If you make those mistakes at the network level, they could be too costly."

[11/96]

By Alice Main (webdesign@mainhat.com)

Q: Tell us about your typical day.

A: It begins at 2:30 p.m. I head right for the afternoon editorial meeting for all of CNN, also attended by supervisors of CNN, Headline News, various producers and assignment editors. We go over what the network is producing for the evening and other goings on. Then I head to my newsroom where the producer has been working on a rundown of what our crew will do throughout the night. I tell him/her what I've learned at the meeting, we decide which stories are priorities and which features we'll do. While he/she is putting the rundown together, I'm "reading in": reading the wires, CNN info files, the stories on the CNN Web site, my e-mail, newspapers (sometimes), CNN reporters' scripts. We have a staff meeting between 4:30 PM and 5 PM to discuss the rundown, how to treat some stories (graphics, multi-media elements, extra research, etc.), and which writer/associate producer team will do which stories. The rest of the night I keep up with the news, troubleshoot, answer questions, approve stories after they're completed—I "supervise."

Q: How did you get to this point in your career?

A: Well, I've spent my entire 11-year career so far at CNN. A week after graduation from college (Auburn University, where I served four uninspired years), I started at CNN Radio. I did everything from editing tape to making calls to writing copy and anchoring newscasts. After three years, I moved to Headline News, where I wrote and edited copy, and produced a little. Headline News is a great place to work to learn the basics of television news; I wouldn't trade my three years there for anything. Then I moved "upstairs" to CNN for four years, where I did nothing but write anchor copy (and other stuff), and loved it, and had no desire to leave until I was recruited to help start CNN Interactive's Web site. I had worked with the head honcho when he was at CNN and he talked me into becoming a "cyber-journalist." I signed up to be a writer but within weeks I was producing and last spring became a senior producer. (It helps being on the ground floor of a new venture!)

Q: What's the most challenging part of your job?

A: For me, the news is the easy part. The most challenging part of my job is keeping up with all the high-tech bells and whistles and new technology that changes, I swear, almost daily. I had never even "surfed the Net" before I came to work here—I was intimidated. But my progress shows just how easy it is to use multi-media and to adapt to a different medium for news production.

Q: What do you like best about your job?

A: Hmmmm, the part I like best would have to be the constant exposure to the latest computer stuff. I learn something new practically every day and that part is a challenge I look forward to.

Q: Where might you go from here?

A: I can't believe more than a year has gone by already. CNN Interactive has grown so quickly and our product has changed (for the better) so much during that time. I really have no idea where to go from here. I had no idea I'd ever be doing cyber-journalism in the first place! I guess, though, the natural progression would be to continue in the news biz when computers and TVs are one and the same. I'll go where technology takes me.

[9/97]

By J. Elliott Lewis

It's 10 minutes before airtime. Scripts are flying. People are screaming. Phones are ringing. A veteran newsman reaches across the producer pod to answer the call. He picks up the receiver.

"Newsroom. Respess!" he says cheerfully.

At age 70, Forrest Respess is surely one of the oldest newscast producers working in the industry today. "I don't think there are too many of us," he says with pride.

"Frosty," as he is known, works in the newsroom of WCPX-TV in Orlando, Florida. He produces a ten o'clock newscast which the CBS affiliate broadcasts on a local UHF station, WKCF.

"I'm not a retiring person," says Frosty. Apparently not. He took the job in 1994 after "retiring" from WGN-TV in Chicago where he worked for 23 years. "I think just working in a newsroom environment keeps the juices flowing, mentally," he says. "It keeps you on your toes."

Frosty's television debut took place in 1947 when he helped to produce a live, dramatic show which was broadcast over a low power, experimental television station in Cincinnati, Ohio. The station's call letters: W-8-X-C-T. Frosty was a student at the University of Cincinnati at the time. One of his classmates who worked on that production was Earl Hamner Jr., who later created The Waltons television series. Frosty graduated in 1948 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Radio Education, although at one time he wanted to pursue a career in theater as a stage manager.

"My father wasn't about to contribute a penny to do anything in show biz, " says Frosty. "But he said, 'If it were something that had a future like radio, I might consider it.'"

After graduation, Frosty worked in radio for about six years before moving into television. He started as an assistant director for WTTV in Indianapolis, Indiana, then eventually moved to WMBD-TV in Peoria, Illinois where he was both a director and an on-air reporter. The film they shot had to be "processed" before it could be edited, which sometimes took 25 minutes. "They'd just converted to color film," says Frosty. "That took longer than black and white."

The stories for the entire newscast were then spliced together on two "film chains," one for A-roll, the other for B-roll, with a few seconds of leader in between each story. The rundown was pretty much set in stone. "There was none of this business of flip-flopping stories," says Frosty. "That was it!" But back then, few stations even had producers. Usually that responsibility fell on the anchors or directors.

Frosty was preparing to direct WMBD's midday news in November 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated. "We had a feature called Window on the Weather." Frosty says while he and the rest of the crew were setting up for the live shot, someone from the newsroom told them the President had been shot. "I turned to the weather guy and said, I don't think we're going to need you."

WMBD received its network news feeds through landlines. "There were no domestic satellites," says Frosty. And without videotape, the station recorded the feed by setting up a camera in front of a monitor and filming the stories as they came in.

Frosty's first producing job in television came in 1969 at KMOX-TV in St. Louis, then a CBS owned and operated station. But he lost his job there in 1971, one of 750 CBS employees laid off after cigarette advertisements were banned from television, resulting in a loss of ad revenue. At the same time, the country had entered a recession.

He landed on his feet at WGN in Chicago where he would spend the next 23 years, eventually becoming producer of the station's noon news. He held that job for a decade, until a new news director stripped him of the title and made him a newswriter. Soon after that, Frosty and his wife of 40 years decided to move to Florida.

By that time, Frosty had become an expert on NewStar, a popular newsroom computer system. He'd been the NewStar system manager at WGN and offered his services to WCPX, another NewStar station. But he ended up back in the producer's chair instead.

As for television journalists today, Frosty says they need to know "a little more history, learn how to spell, and take a pre-law course to have an understanding of the court system."

Despite the industry's shortcomings, Frosty genuinely likes his job. "You become frustrated with the routine stories . . . the shootings, the house fires. But you never know when something is going to happen."

In fact, Frosty seems to enjoy the surprises, even after 50 years in the business. "I work better under pressure," he says.

J. Elliott Lewis is a reporter at WCPX-TV, Orlando, Fl.

[8/96]

By Dana Rogers

She's been in the business six years. Six years at the network. Marisa Venegas freely admitted she knew nothing about television, when an NBC medical correspondent approached her about her first network producing position. The correspondent said he needed someone with a science background. Venegas' undergraduate degree is in medical anthropology. She worked in medical research for four years until she earned a master's degree in science and environmental reporting. When NBC came calling, she was working for a medical newspaper with a new owner who was pushing what she calls a "pro-pharmaceutical" slant. That's part of what made the jump to TV seem so appealing. In her six-year TV stint, she's made many more jumps, from NBC to CBS, onto "Eye to Eye with Connie Chung," then to the Evening News as chief medical producer in New York. Her latest leap two months ago landed her in Miami's CBS bureau where she's producing in-depth medical reports. Besides some important personal perks, the move means she's getting more than a minute-thirty air time and more than one regular working day to turn a story.

While she's navigating the battlefield of medical reporting, at 34, Venegas is also working to avoid some of the common personal pitfalls of ambition in our industry. She says she's met too many network workers, especially women in their late 40s, who regret not making time for children, marriage, or even more of a social life. Venegas says, "Sometimes you have to put your ego on hold if you're going to try and have any kind of real life." The future for Venegas could include coverage of Latin America for the network. The Colombian-born bilingual believes Latin America will become more important and prominent in our news. If that's the case, she'll be ready. Her advice to other producers is to follow their interests and develop as many sub-specialties as possible. That philosophy has served her well so far, as is evident form the following interview.

Q: Medical news seems to have taken on a whole new form in recent years. Do you think that's true?

A: I think that people who are concerned with ratings have found over and over people care about two things, and those things are their money and their health. So I think that's put pressure on the various networks and shows in general to do more medical reporting. I mean medical versus science, technology or environment which I find frustrating because I think science especially at the research level is just as important as medical. But they want news you can use and that's why you've seen a proliferation of medical coverage at every level, which can be a very bad thing. When a specialty as delicate as medicine is handled by people without medical backgrounds, they are very susceptible to the various agendas that are rife in this field, from the medical researchers to the pharmaceutical companies and device manufacturers, you name it. I find what's so difficult about what I do is, first I have to sift through the political agendas before I can actually even start looking at the research methodology. So I think it's a field everyone wants to cover but very few people have the training to do.

Q: So give us some tips about common pitfalls.

A: The tendency to label research findings as breakthroughs. It is probably the single most problematic thing. Because people don't follow the research over time, they aren't able to differentiate between what is an incremental finding and what is a truly significant finding. Researchers very often want to toot their own horn. They want to talk to us the way we want them to talk to us. They want to reduce and simplify things to sound bites. So they will sometimes overstate the significance of their work and they want research grants and they want to please and they know we complain bitterly about the fact that scientists very often resort to jargon, so I think in some cases they go to the other extreme and I think in some cases we eagerly believe them. In general, I think we aren't sufficiently critical when evaluating medical news or we'll put it all on the end in a single caveat in a stand-up, which is doing a disservice to your viewer because they don't know what to believe. It's problematic because our bosses or our editors very often don't understand the material we've given them and they sometimes want to simplify it or to cut out information which may be critical to the understanding of the piece or to the science or to the background. From the perspective of reporters who don't have a background in medicine, they will very often parrot whatever it is that they're told. They don't do enough research. I find there's a lot of lazy reporting going on out there.

Q: How do you feel about the public complaint that no one can tell from television what's good or bad for them or make sense of conflicting medical reports?

A: I think that's a very legitimate complaint because we very often confuse the hell out of the public. I think we do because there's pressure to report on what the journals report and it is the business of medicine to replicate studies. That is the hallmark of good science to replicate studies again and again and again to make sure the results are consistent. What happens is that in us reporting what the journals report, we then mirror that flip-flop in science. There is a very easy way to deal with that. That is for us to use our expertise to say, "this is not definitive, we should not do this story." Instead, what we do is report every story, and then confuse people. We don't know how to sort out certain studies called "Meta Analysis." They look at all the studies that have been done on a give topic and then try and see which of those studies are statistically significant and which of those aren't. That's going to give you a better idea of whether something is good or bad for you rather than if you just look at a handful of people and determine something is bad for you. So by our reporting on every single study, we're making a big mistake. "Meta Analyses" are published in the journals, too. Those are the ones you should pay attention to. I'll give you a clear example of something that came out last week that I didn't report on. There was a story that researchers had identified in rats a nurturing gene. That would have been a terrible study to report on television. Sure, it's very interesting to devote a half page in print to explain how it's relatively easy to manipulate genes in animals, especially in rats, but it would be nearly impossible to tease out a single gene for behavior in humans, since nurturing is (the result of) a complex of biological and psychological factors. You can see if you only had one minute thirty seconds to do that story, and you were only to report the researchers deleted (certain genes in) these mice and these rats and created this aggressive behavior, it sounds very interesting, but you immediately infer then maybe you could do that with people. If you say you can't do it with people, then you have to explain why, but you're out of time. So that's not a good television story to do and I think it would have been irresponsible because it would be so controversial. Not to give it adequate time would be to do a faulty job.

Q: Then is the solution to hire more people with a background like yours?

A: I think definitely more people who are interesting in covering medicine should have a background in medicine, some sort of background. I think it's absolutely critical. At the very least if you don't have a reporter with a medical background you should have a producer with that background. We have arguably one of the toughest jobs. We have to keep track of twelve or thirteen journals, on top of what the FDA has approved, on top of what every medical special interest group in the world is doing and it is absolutely overwhelming. I think people need to be prepared to do that. In the case of the FDA, one day they'll be very cooperative on something they want to push that they've done a good job on, and they'll want to muzzle you the next day on something you've found on your own that they don't want you to cover. You need to know the various agendas at the agencies and you need to make very clear decision on what you select to tell your bosses we don't want to cover. That can only come from someone who has a background in the field.

Q: What do you think of the Center for Science in the Public Interest?

A: I am very frightened by that group. My tendency is when they do something, to run the other way. Unfortunately, because my colleagues don't run the other way and they tend to cover absolutely everything CSPI does, we then give them more credibility than they deserve. I think they don't always do very careful studies and are very much into hype. A concrete example: One of the last things they did was an analysis of diet groups. In my reporting of that story it emerged that physicians for bariatric medicine were sponsoring part of their press conference. Those are people who are in the business of treating obesity, and they think you should prescribe medicine instead of joining Jenny Craig or the like. I'm not saying you shouldn't be critical of the diet industry, but you have to be careful of not being critical of those who are pushing the CSPI agenda. Those are doctors who want to prescribe medication. Only by having that understanding can you avoid stepping in the land mines.

Dana Rogers is a producer at KOTV, Tulsa. She's a Dallas native who's worked in Texas and Oklahoma. She's been producing at the Belo station in Tulsa for almost six years.

[12/96]

By Alice Main (webdesign@mainhat.com)

He's friends with the "Agony of Defeat" guy, he attended the wedding of Bart Conner and Nadia Comaneci in Bucharest, he has 16 Emmy awards, and he is still moved when he recalls the victories of Dorothy Hamill and Scott Hamilton. Thirty-three years after joining ABC Sports, Doug Wilson is as passionate about his business as ever. He's just back from Innsbruck, Austria, where he's working on an upcoming figure skating show. He's visiting his son's family in Cincinnati for Thanksgiving, when I talked with him.

Q: What have we seen on TV that's your work?

A: Since 1964, I've been involved with ABC's Wide World of Sports. I've covered 40 sports, and in the recent decade and a half I've focused in on figure skating. In fact, since 1964 I've been involved in 95% of the figure skating that ABC's ever done. The figure skating community has been very, very good to me! (laughs).

Q: What are some of your favorite moments from your career so far?

A: There've been so many poignant moments in 33 years. I've been so lucky to have been on the team working with extraordinary people and becoming friends with extraordinary people. I've been to ten Olympic games. Various moments in those games stand out. I covered the gymnastics in 1972, when Olga Korbut became a household word overnight. In skating, the Scott Hamilton victory, the Brian Boitano victory, the Dorothy Hamill victory in 1976, which I produced . . . and I'd chronicled her career through the middle 70s. She's been through a lot in her life, but she has a lot of dignity and a great sense of class.

I produced the Ohio State - Michigan game when Woody Hayes went in with the number-one team and came out with a loss. I produced it the next year in Columbus when he came back and won. Last year, I directed the Michigan-Michigan State game, which was another upset, in blizzard conditions.

I'm very proud of "Canvas of Ice," a special that Brian Boitano and Katarina Witt starred in. Brian after the Olympics had a dream to skate on a glacier in Alaska. He came to me and told me. I said, "Nothing's impossible," and by golly we went to Alaska, a three-and-a-half hour RV ride out of Fairbanks. Then another helicopter ride into the wilderness. The pilot found a primeval lake next to a glacier. It took three-and-a-half days to do two performances. We had 6 or 7 cameras. Also Brian was very responsive . . . it was a spiritual experience for him to be out in the middle of nowhere. It looked like it was about 35 degrees, but it was really 20 below and he couldn't be on the ice for more than 10 minutes at a time.

In 1980, for the Wide World of Sports, it was the first visit of American figure skaters to the People's Republic of China. Things were not as they are today in China. There was only one hotel, and much of the crew slept outside on mats. But we had an incredible experience. The Chinese people were wonderful, gregarious and appreciative. I remembered back around 1970, I'd watched a news clip from Tiananmen Square, an "I hate America" rally. It was frightening. And then a few years later we found ourselves in the same spot to find people appreciating each other through sport.

When you ask me about highlights, I have to put them in two categories. One is the shows themselves. The other is the relationships and friends I've been blessed with over the years.

I produced a show in Obersdorf, Germany, where the Agony of Defeat guy fell. His name Vinko Bogataj. I've been to his home and he's been to mine. When we did an anniversary show, we invited him to come. He didn't know he was a folk hero. I went up to the grand ballroom with him, and told him some of the greatest athletes of the century are going to be here and they're going to give you a standing ovation. He looked at me like I was crazy. We tried to keep him a secret, but McKay couldn't get halfway through his introductory sentence before everyone was on their feet. Mohammed Ali got his autograph!

Q: How and when did you get started?

A: After I graduated from Colgate, I went to New York and got a job as NBC page. I did that for about 6-8 months. Then I got drafted, and got myself into the Air Force Reserve, and got married when I got out in fall of '58

The people at NBC offered me my page job back. $49.50 a week, gross. Even then, that was rough. I had been in the Colgate 13, an a capella group. An alumnus named Harold Day had heard me, and offered me a job at ABC in production. ABC in the fall of '58 had just opened the network to daytime. They were building programming with American Bandstand. Also "Who Do You Trust,'' starring Johnny Carson, where I was an assistant. The pay was not much better, $60 a week, working in production, but my wife was also working as a production assistant. I thought by learning production I could be a better performer. I was a singer, dancer, I'd been in summer stock, and did theatrical stuff all my high school and college days. ABC's Wide World of Sports with Jim McKay and Roone Arledge treated sports as drama, and I always treated it that way. The only difference between a performance on a stage and a sports performance is that on stage the script has already been written.

Q: Your title is Producer/Director. Talk about the differences.

A: The producer's where the buck stops. When Roone Arledge first promoted me, it was to a position of producer/director. He really wanted me to be a producer. From his perspective, the producer's where the buck stops. During the late sixties and seventies, I produced mostly. Then, things evolved and changed and I ended up doing more directing. My directing colleagues would be mad at me for this, but it's the producer who has to live with the project. When I was producing I was never away from it. Home, work.. I was living with the shows. At ABC Sports we were also responsible for the creative format. Not really for the words because the commentators usually did that, although we did write for them some. (Never for Jim McKay, Jack Whitaker or Al Michaels!) It's a heck of a lot more stressful over the long haul. The stress is intensified during the actual event when you're directing.

Blocking is the process for the director. I go to the arena for practice, and pre-block the performances. It takes hours and hours of preparation to be able to direct a show. The director will see how the live show looks and sounds. The producer is responsible for the format and what is said. Ultimately, if the announcer says something the president of ABC Sports doesn't like, the president will call the producer first. The producer decides what you're going to do. The director decides how you're going to do it.

Q: Why is skating so popular now?

A: Having been involved in skating since 1964, it's never not been popular. It's a matter of degree. Look back to Sonja Henie. In Hollywood, she was the second-biggest moneymaker in the 30s and 40s. Then along came Dick Button after the war. After that, Peggy Fleming. What I see is a graph that starts in the 30s and rises, and each Olympic year there's a peak, then a little dip. But the dip never goes down as far as it was before. The sport continues to gain more and more interest. Then, of course, the big thing was the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan thing in Detroit. So a lot of people who'd never watched figure skating before, watched. A lot of the people who watched for the first time, kept watching. The rules of quote amateurism have changed. It's the second-most popular sport on television. Last year we went up against the Final Four on CBS and ER on NBC, and came in second for the night.

Q: Skating is on all the time now. And not all of the tournaments can be equally important.

A: ABC Sports has what are the traditionally valid championships that go back to the turn of the century in some cases. We have the World Championships and the National Championships. Within the scope of our arrangements with those organizations, we have various events that we've made deals for, and some are less top-of-the-line than others. Like Skate America. It's still great, and attracts the top skaters, like Michelle Kwan and Todd Eldredge.

Q: Tell me about the early days on the Wide World of Sports.

A: The program's definition is at the top of the show every week. In those early decades, we had a calling. It was all new, everywhere we went was new. To go to Prague and take a big mobile van and drive it down the main street.. today you'd have an ENG unit and go live easily. As we used to say, they're almost as interested in looking at us as we are at them. It was year after year of doing 25 to 40 shows. I used to be on the road 6 to 7 months a year. It was tough on my late wife and my boys.

Q: Any touchy moments abroad?

A: I covered what was to be Nadia's final performance in Bucharest in 1984. We almost didn't get out with the tapes. They wanted to screen my tapes and I felt that was not appropriate from a journalist's point of view. I told the "KGB" guy I was going to do the scene set, and "if you don't take the tapes, I won't say anything about it but if you do , I'll tell." And it worked!

Q: Are you happy with the Wide World of Sports today?

A: Yes. It's not a matter of happy or sad. It's the evolution. Now, it's more about live events. It got its beginning with provincial events, like a rattlesnake hunt, wrist wrestling, and lumberjack championships. Most people in the US hadn't seen those things. Now they have. So we're more oriented to live events.

Q: How do you measure your success on a show?

A: The skaters know this: as soon as the guy or gal at home is sitting there saying "What a great shot that is," I've failed, because they should be saying, "What a great skater." I'm an extension of them. I'm part of their dance.

Q: What's next for you?

A: The World Challenge of Champions. It will be taped in Innsbruck December 19th. We'll make three different programs out of it, to air on the 11th and 18th of January, and sometime later, the exhibition skating. It's a Dick Buttons event.

You know, I've just started to skate. The Ice Theatre of New York gave me some skates. I got a skating lesson with JoJo Starbuck, the former national pairs champ. I took five lessons in Europe. It was marvelous. I may hang my skis up. It was so fun skating outside in St. Moritz. And I didn't fall too much! When I went to Chicago last May, it was very difficult to put the skates on and go on the ice in front of all these top skaters and coaches. They took some photos of me, and Dick sent me a critique.

I'm under contract with ABC till 2000. After that I don't know. I don't think I'll quit, but I'll be 65.

I've been so lucky, if I complained I'd be a terrible ingrate!

In addition to Wilson's pile of Emmy awards, he was the third recipient of the Directors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports, and he was the second recipient of the Spirit of Giving Award, from the US Figure Skaters Association.

[1/99]

By Robert Stewart (stewartr@ohio.edu)

Note: Producer Page webmaster Robert Stewart interviewed NBC Nightly News producer Barb Raab at the end of her month-long visit to Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism.

Q: Describe your job.

A: I am one of 2 dozen (that's a guess) people at NBC Nightly News whose business cards say "producer." That can mean many things. In my case, and in most cases, it means going out into the field and producing stories — setting up and conducting interviews, supervising the shooting of b-roll, doing the reporting, writing the script, and supervising the editing of the final package. I did that for about 3 years. Then I got very sick of traveling; it's hard to have a real life when you never know where you are going to be. Now, I am more of a "day-of-air" producer, and my focus is less on editorial and more on production and promotion. So, for example, I write and produce the nightly news "headlines" every day; that's the highly-produced 30-40 seconds you see at the top of the show telling you what's coming up in the broadcast. It's hard to believe, but producing headlines takes up the better part of a day; the show changes a lot, and oftentimes the video is not in New York, so you have to coordinate with producers in various bureaus. Plus, we try to do a lot of fancy production in editing. Other things I do: I often work with the affiliates to help them promote our stories to their viewers; I occasionally travel to affiliates to offer seminars on writing and producing. Back at 30 Rock, I am one of a group of people who brainstorm and research ideas for stories and/or special series. I guess you could say I've become more of an editorial producer than a field producer.

Q: People get their news from TV and yet they say in poll after poll that they don't like TV news. How do you, as a producer, account for this seeming disconnect?

A: First of all, I think people lie; I think they do like TV news. They may not think it's journalism, but they like to watch it anyway. I think we do a good job — maybe too good — of doing things to get and keep people hooked on TV news. We promote, we tease, and we do stories that >are much "softer" than ever before. We make it so easy to watch TV news, in a busy world. People say they don't like it, but it's much harder to get news elsewhere, I guess.

Also, I seem to recall a recent reference to a new Pew Center study showing that people don't hate TV news; they rather like it. I think it was a study of attitudes toward local news.

Done well, TV news can be a relevant blend of hard news and useful features; that's what we strive to do at NBC Nightly News. Do we always succeed? Well, we get the highest ratings, so you could argue that by definition we succeed; I'd say we bat about .600 at doing it the right way.

Q: Does your response differ when considering local news rather than network news?

A: I think my answers would be the same and the formula for success is the same, and, even though you didn't ask me this, I want to mention that in my time in Athens I've become a big fan of WSAZ-TV News. They do what I'm talking about: they do real news, they do true local news, and they do a good blend of feature stories designed to give viewers relevant and useful information. I am not surprised that they get good ratings. I guess in the end I don't know how to account for the disconnect you describe. I hope it isn't the car-wreck theory; which is to say, I hope people are watching news even though they say they don't like it, for reasons that go beyond the irresistible temptation to stare at something lurid. [note: WSAZ is the NBC affiliate in Huntington, WVa., the ADI for Athens, Ohio.]

Q: I remember a student having a network reporter hammer on his "walking stand-ups" a couple years ago for being so "local TV news," yet we see reporters at the network beginning to wander around the TV screen during their stand-ups. Is network news "going local" in its presentation standards, or will there always be a difference?

A: Network newscasts—particularly network newsmagazines-are definitely stealing what we might call "local news techniques" such as bolder graphics, shorter stories, lifestyle and consumer segments, and yes, the walking stand- up. Still, I think the networks in general draw their lines of how much "show biz" to incorporate, at an earlier point than some local stations. One of the guest speakers in my class was Midwest bureau correspondent Jim Avila, who has a long career in local news and is now one of the rising stars at NBC. He told the class that, whether in local or network, reporters are being forced to do walking stand-ups. Take 3 steps, and then stop, he told them; that's enough walking to satisfy your boss, and to enable you to retain your serious demeanor, according to Jim.

Q: How much power do the network anchors have over the producers for the evening news? Does it vary from network to network, producer to producer, anchor to anchor?

A: Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw have the dual titles of "anchor and managing editor"; you might want to double-check this, but last I looked, Jennings did not. At least where I work, that title is real; Tom has absolute veto power over any and all decisions affecting not only what goes on the air, but also on what gets done and how, behind the scenes. When push comes to shove, Tom's vote is the winning vote. However, what makes Tom so good to work with is that he hardly ever exercises that power; the whole process, every day, is a big messy collaboration, and he is one of the collaborators. Of course, when he speaks, we producers and the senior staff give special weight to his desires and opinions, But he doesn't lord it over us at all. And he's open to having his mind changed. As for Dan Rather, I'm guessing it's the same way in his shop. He recently said as much to Steven Brill, in an interview in Content magazine.

Q: How much creative license do you have as a network producer (vs. How formula-based is the work you do)? How much freedom do you have to experiment with form, for example?

A: The format for a program like mine is pretty set; there's not a whole lot of wiggle room in a typical 1:45 piece. But, we producers have considerable latitude in what we do out in the field and in the edit room; there's not somebody breathing down our necks all the time. The script approval process can range from simple (minor tweaks) to frustratingly complicated (when everybody from the senior producer to the lawyer to the anchorman wants changes). These things tend to be a function of time available. Also, when I was a field producer, I was lucky: I did most of my pieces for Tom, and if Tom was happy with my draft script, which he usually was (he'd change a thing here and there, but basically he and I were in sync on structure and language and overall "take"), that was pretty much it.

Q: What stories are TV news producers shying away from in the current TV news environment that, if handled differently, could be made to work on television?

A: That's a tough one. One thing that jumps to mind is the absence of real efforts to explain some of the things we report on. Example: the spate of school shootings. Even though there were several, all involving young male shooters. TV news producers and reporters didn't do much to really understand what might be going on. We saw stories with some background about the specific individuals, but no bigger-picture analysis. No sense of context. Same with the murder of Matthew Shephard: what are some of the messages that our society serves up in all kinds of ways, that could lead to this kind of horrible crime? The trouble, of course, is that coverage of "issues" is not as "sexy" or telegenic as coverage of "stories," "yarns," "characters." But there is probably a better, albeit more time consuming and thoughtful, way of intertwining the little stories and the bigger picture. In a world where most local newsrooms are cranking out 4-8 hours of news every day with small staffs that are already stretched to the limit, it's hard to know how to create the "luxury" of that kind of coverage. I'm not sure I have any original ideas about that. I guess I'm somewhat relieved not to be a local news director right now; the imperatives would conflict a lot with my own sense of values.

Q: You've had a few weeks of classroom experience, working with journalism students who are preparing to become producers, reporters, etc. As a producer, what advice would you give to young producers right out of school who still are developing their sense of news values, ethics, etc.?

A: I tell my students to make a true commitment to whatever market they wind up in. Several of our guests have stressed the importance of "paying dues," of understanding the hierarchies you walk into, and going the extra mile to get noticed. I would echo that advice. I have tried to teach students to understand that broadcast news is a business as much as or more than a public service/public trust, and that they should keep that in mind as they go out to "the real world." Sometimes, bosses or co-workers may ask them to do something they are not comfortable with, or may stress ratings over content. That's the point at which they have to ask themselves, or turn to role models/mentors/others and ask the tough questions: what are my values, what are my goals, and would this push those limits too far? As Jim Avila told the class, your body of work will be with you forever; do what you need to do to protect it. Don't let anybody make you do something that you feel is just downright wrong, or humiliating. It's hard to stand up to power, especially when you've gotta pay the rent, and sometimes you may have to choose between keeping a job and losing it—but if you have a sense of your core values, they will guide you to the right conclusion. Probably easier said than done.