My Fox 4 News Night

Steve and Heather: The "blue screen" that the weather map is projected onto: The control room (you can see the teleprompter screen at the top): The weather center. Lot's of screens. Being a powerful member of the liberal media, I had a chance to visit the Fox 4 News set on Friday night. In a word, cool. In more words:

• The place is huge. I don't know why I thought it would be a small operation, but it was a pretty big building with tons of employees.
• Everyone I met was really nice and with a great sense of snarky humor.
• All the offices of the big time anchors are off to the side but are about the size of an office cubicle. They were all crammed packed with junk that I could have gone through for hours if no one were watching.
• The anchor desk and weather center are in two different rooms.
• Saw the girl who was responsible for taking phone calls from the public regarding news tips and monitoring the police scanner. I think there is the possibility that a lot of the public may make drunken news tips.
• I got to meet Heather Hays. Very sweet and a certifiable "Hey, now."
• I saw Steve Eager before the newscast sitting at a computer. He was actually working on his news script.
• The control room is incredible. Six people run show but I'm not sure what three of them did. The three main folks are the Producer (who I really didn't see do anything after the show had begun) and the Director who was telling the Technical Director (the man pushing the buttons) what to do at a rapid fire pace. That was impressive.
• You'd think that moments before they went on the air there would be increased intensity. Nope.
• In front of Steve Eager and Heather Hays during the newscast is only one guy despite there being three cameras. Two cameras are controlled by another guy in a different room by remote control.
• And those are the only people in the room of the anchor desk. No one else. That surprised me.
• Lots of talking in technical terms by the crew.
• I saw the script for the newscast. Everything is planned down to the second. Set up for throwing it to Emily on remote (9 seconds). Emily live. (27 seconds) Roll prepared video package (1:15) Back to Emily live (15 seconds). Back to anchor desk.
• Everyone reads from the teleprompter except the weather guy. He's on his own. I think that would be hard to do.
• And despite all the show being planned, no one tells the weather guy what to say or has the right to overrule his forecast.
• There are more computers there than at Microsoft

(Thanks, Alice!)