My first week

Well, my first week at the new position is over, and I'm friggin' exhausted. I had to switch from a 1-10pm shift to a 3am-12pm shift, and it really disrupted my sleep patterns. I'm trying to break up my sleep so that I sleep for a few hours after work in the afternoon and then again before work at night. This way I have the evenings to spend with my friends or the gf. It's working now with moderate success, as I seem to keep getting interrupted during my sleep in the daytime.

Beyond that, the work is going okay. The people who work on the morning show are really nice and have been really helpful, though there are a lot less people I have to deal with during my normal workday.

My first reaction to the new digs is that there's a lot more to the job than I first imagined. The assistant producing job involves helping out with scripts, handling contestss, putting info from the show on the Web, handling guests, and the big task after the show is arranging the live cut-ins. They are the "and now a word from your local news" bits that happen during the Today show.

I think right now it's a little daunting, just because I have to learn and remember a lot of details. There are so many little things that go into each script, mostly cues for the director, that I'm not used to doing while writing. I think once I become more comfortable with the system, get a certain rhythm going for each script, and set a good timetable for each task, these things will come much easier to me.

I trained most of the week, and on Friday did the whole Assistant Producing gig by myself, as the normal AP took the day off. It all went pretty well, though there were a couple times I had to do things close to the last second.

The most stressful part of the day came when I had to produce the "15 'til noon" Webcast. I still had very little idea about that show, and wasn't shown all the details either. The assistant news director was supposed to help me, and he did, but I had to wait until the morning meeting was over. I had very little idea what to do up to that point, and by the time the meeting was done we were in a rush to get the show together. Thankfully, the other producers stepped in to help me and we got the show together, albeit a little later than we wanted to. The severe weather didn't help things either. I just felt I wasn't prepared to handle that show yet, because I hadn't trained in everything a producer does. I was supposed to save that for this upcoming week. Oh well.

I'm still excited about the new weekend show, because I've been basically given a blank slate (a "tabula rasa," if you will) for how I want to put the show together. I finally talked to the assistant news director about the show, and he really gave me the go-ahead to start pursuing some ideas.


For those of you in the Madison area, you should definitely watch the show, which begins September 16. It runs on Saturdays from 5-7 am and Sundays from 7-9 am. If you can't wake up that early, you can also tape that. I think that still counts in the Nielsen ratings :-P