Blow up Your Show for Fun and Promotions

If you want to be a better producer and move up in your newsroom or to another market, nothing will assist you in this more than being able to roll with the punches. You may have created the most beautiful rundown in the world, but if some breaking news comes in at the last minute and you can't figure out how to put it in your newscast, you should seriously consider another career. What divides good producers from great ones is the ability to wing it and fly by the seat of their pants, especially in the control booth. It is the ability to manage chaos, to have everything thrown at you and still manage to have everyone on the same page and the show looking good.

Have a plan for spot news. For example, there's a big fire. Will the reporter be there live by the top of the show? If not, can we get a mast cam and have reporter on the phone? Or a spokesperson from the Fire Department? Or a neighbor from next door? Or will the anchor "tease" the fire at the top of the show, promising a live report later? Can you get a map?

Keep hitting the breaking news throughout the show if it's continuing. Whatever you decide to do, make sure anchors and the crew understand what you want to do. Tell them as early as possible. "I'm going to take Suzie off the top on the fire. If Suzie's not there, Bob will ad lib some info on the fire from the mast cam." Or whatever. Just make sure everyone knows what you're doing and how this impacts their part of the show.

Don't get too fancy. Put spot news in at the top and float everything else down. Change is confusing enough for the director so don't shoot yourself in the foot by getting too complicated.

Talk to anchors (and directors for that matter) in sots, pkgs or breaks. Resist the urge to tell them about stuff while they are reading. Feed anchors the info they need for the next thing they will be doing. Who's at bat, who's on deck? Don't feed too much information from the rest of the show, just feed what they need to know next.

Change is good for you.
Change is good for your show.
Put the best, newest stuff in your show, without exception.
Do this on a regular basis, even with small stories that trickle into the newsroom. Throw in a vo you were not expecting and you'll get in the habit of changing things up. It will make you better prepared to do major surgery to your show, should such an occasion arise. And it will.

Your show should look radically different and have substantially different stories than the show that preceded you. Anything else is the hallmark of a lazy producer.