Tuesday is News Day!

so often, writers wake up and think, "what am i going to write about today?"

i am not that writer. in fact, most days i wake up knowing exactly what i will write.
today, for example, i will probably write about:
- the president's state of the union address - gabrielle giffords' last day in congress - the 2012 oscar nominations - someone behaving badly - something to save you money or keep you healthy -

i write every single day. i just write a whole lot more fact than fiction.
...which is why i decided to launch a new weekly feature here on the blog.
starting this week, Tuesday is News Day.

every tuesday, i'll try to pull back the curtain on my other writing world of journalism. i'm keeping this broad for now, so it could be anything from talking about a hot topic in the news to giving you tips on how to get your book covered on TV!

since this is more of an introductory post, i thought i'd start by answering the question i get a lot: "what the heck does a TV News Producer do all day, anyway?"

in short... everything.

your typical local news producer will be in charge of 30 minutes to an hour of TV content daily. this means using a combination of local news wires, national video feeds, reporter ideas, personal contacts, press releases and radio scanners to determine what's happening in the world that day and whether to include it in the show.

keeping in mind that your average 30-minute show has 2 or 3 commercial breaks, one or two weather segments, a sports segment and possibly a daily feature (like an investigative piece) - you're looking at filling anywhere from 8 to 15 minutes of news. we call that the "news hole" and it's usually closer to 8 minutes than 15. (you can see why it's hard for authors to score a few of those precious minutes on air!)

producers build the selected stories into their show - deciding what order they will play in, how much air time they'll get, how they will look visually (maps, graphics, animations, video, etc...)
and then... we write. producers write everything from the TV anchor's toss to a reporter in the field.. to the many short stories not presented by reporters.. to those 10-second promotional spots you see in your prime-time TV shows leading into the nightly news.

throughout the day, producers will put out various fires such as breaking news. we'll work with other departments, like editing and graphics and production to make sure our vision for the show will be executed the way we want.
and finally, producers end the day in a control room, making sure that 30 minutes of TV goes off exactly as we planned! HA!
maybe in a future post, i'll tell you just how often that actually happens. ;)

so next week, i'll jump into some more specific topics, but in the meantime, let me know if there's anything you'd like to see on Tuesday News Day!