Newscast #5 - Ian Miller - Spring 2019

Five down, one to go. 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 our special edition, I’ll tell you how we got to #5. Which was actually one of our smoothest takes! It has been busy, busy, busy. It felt like such a short turnaround between shows 4 and 5. Maybe that’s because Spring Break had extended our break previously.

Immediately once episode four ended, everyone was right back to work on their next stories. It seemed like things were going smooth initially but it seemed like the whole crew ran into problems. That is, with the exception of Chris Marzullo and Brooke Hawthorne. These two have improved so much. After struggling to make show all semester, they had the best two packages in class. To me, it has been an unbelievable turnaround for them.

Once packages were done, it was script time. This script was the smoothest to put together that I’ve done. I like to think I’m starting to get the hang of this producing stuff.

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. With Christine Robinson back on desk this week, we finally had a run through go a bit smoother and have it feel more normal.

Show day. Our director John Lowe and I are constantly trying to make our last minute adjustments. Compared to last time, these adjustments were not near as overwhelming. Only a few minor adjustments were made. We felt good and confident with how the show is going to go. Truly, it went almost as planned. Almost.

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. Our main issue, though, is that we fell a tad short on time. This was due to our packages being shorter than they usually are. We had to make up for that time by making the credits a little bit longer. Otherwise, the taping went as smooth as butter.

The crew makes my job easy. They get it, everyone’s getting it. With them by my side, they make our shows go smooth and keep up the quality we expect from an Emmy award-winning newscast.

Stay tuned for our special edition show for our final newscast. It’s something you won’t want to miss.