Newscast #4 - Ian Miller - Spring 2019

Another show in the books. I can’t believe how fast everything has gone since starting WVU News. We’ve all been in constant work mode and before I knew it, we were finishing up our fourth newscast. Before we start working on newscast #5, I’ll tell you how we got to #4. Which may be our best one yet

.From reports, to conferences, to writing our scripts, it’s been a busy couple weeks for all of us here on the WVU News crew. Yet, a lot of our work on this show started well before the start of Spring Break. When there was an active shooter in Morgantown the week before Spring Break, I had to send out our reporter Shayla Klein to the scene. She did a fantastic job reporting on the breaking news and gave us valuable information to work with. Really proud of her for the hard work she puts in and the quality of her work. She’s been consistent and it’s paying off.

Once Spring Break started, my work didn’t stop. Each day I would at the very least do some searches for more ideas for our fourth show. I want to make sure we all stay as up to date as possible. No news producer wants their show to be dated, and that’s what I was going to prevent.

Immediately once break ended, the reporters pitched their stories and we figured out which stories were going to be used. We went through conferences, I gave them feedback, and our reporters gave their final uploads at the end of the first week back. Friday and Saturday, it was time to work on the script.

These scripts take a few hours to complete. It puts together the entire show. Which graphics go where, when we go to commercial break, etc. It can be a tedious process. Once it’s done, though, it’s satisfying. I know the work is nearly finished, barring some minor tweaks.

On Monday before the show, our content that made show goes through their final tweaks. In the evening, I met with my anchors to do our run-through and rehearse how we wanted our show to go. It all couldn’t go smoothly, though. One of our main anchors, Christine Robinson, was sick and lost her voice. We had to go to our backup anchor, Carly Vaniver, for the show. Carly had no run-through time as it was a last minute decision.

Show day. Our director John Lowe and I are constantly trying to make our last minute adjustments. With Carly being anchor, we needed to make sure the script was adjusted for her. Things went a little rough at the beginning as Carly was getting her legs underneath her. Halfway through, it clicked. Carly did fantastic for her first time as a main anchor. Brooke Hawthorne, Claudia Sessa, and Chris Marzullo all did great jobs on air. It helped Carly develop chemistry with them and made everything go so much smoother than I thought.

Our whole crew in the control room made everything go smooth as well. John, Shayla, and Mitchell Blahut kept everything in line so we had minimal issues with our graphics and video content.

I am lucky to have a great news crew like the one I have right now. Everyone does their job, they know what they need to do, and they can adapt to changes on the fly. This is what any producer would want. I’m proud of all of them. Everyone here is turning into a professional. Don’t be surprised if you see them on the evening news very soon.