So I could hardly read the newscast .. and I couldn't hear any part of it. With me so far? Add in the lack of a TV feed of the show, since the Time Warner Cable feed to our office is on a five-second delay, and I was up a creek without a set of rabbit ears.
Emergency fix #1: I dialed into the control room at WKYC in Cleveland and put the director on the speaker phone on the set. It worked -- sort of -- but every time the director yelled "go" or "cue" viewers could hear him. This lasted about four minutes, but I couldn't hear when A.J. Colby finished his first weather story and viewers saw me sitting like a deer in headlights on the set.
Emergency fix #2: Videographer Larry Baker crawled under the desk as I was reading the next few stories and re-wired my IFB from the main input into the alternate input. He literally got the cable from my earpiece wrapped around his neck as he was crawling and yanked the piece out of my ear. Even as he plugged it in, it too didn't 
work.
work.Emergency fix #3: Larry ran out to his car and grabbed a suction cup, a thin wire, some duct tape and a small battery-operated speaker. While Vic Gideon was reporting live at Jacob's Field, Larry wired my IFB into the speaker, and then suction-cupped the conductor wire to the ear piece on the phone and dialed in to the Cleveland newsroom. PRESTO!!!!! I had photographer Mark Smilor take a picture during the sports segment so folks could see how it looked.
I still couldn't read much of the show .. nor could I see any of it live .. but at least I could hear the director and the weather and sports guys for the rest of the newscast. Hopefully, the engineers can figure out what's wrong and fix it for the 10 p.m. news broadcast, but all things considered, without Larry, I might as well have stopped the news and just taken calls from viewers because it's the only thing I could have controlled.
Anyone still know how to make a tin-can telephone? I might need it sooner than later.
5 comments:
...but you still look good on TV... >:-) In all seriousness, I know how frustrating it is when equipment isn't working properly for you when you need it to on the job. I hope the 10 p.m. newscast goes a little smoother for you, Eric!
Don't you just love the modern miracles of high definition technology????
That Larry is a great guy!
Sounds like the TV23 days! I remember Jerry Healey doing sports... and come to think of it, Fred Anthony too... lost their scripts somewhere in the building (no prompters in those days)... and adlibbing the entire show from memory. I can't imagine doing one of today's casts being blind and deaf to the show and Mein Director. And the glamor is...????
I can top that Eric. In 1978 I was directing the TV23 11 pm newscast with Dick Russ and Marcie Messett. About 2 minutes in, we lost the sync generator at the station, and all our video sources on the switcher, excepting the 2 cameras, went crazy and were unable to generate a stable picture. It was like being in the Twilight Zone on the air. Our engineer finally solved the problem after 10 minutes or so. After that debacle, few things fazed me as a director.
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