Behind The Scenes at CitrusTV's First Ever Election Special
By: Julia Aubuchon
Contributor, CitrusTV Anchor
It was 9:28 p.m. We were going on-air in two minutes and yet the control room and anchor desk were empty. Look in the newsroom however and there was a different story. There was a visual cacophony as crew members ran around making last minute preparations for what would soon be CitrusTV’s first ever Live Election Special.
But- let’s rewind to the beginning. We began preparing for our Election Special two weeks prior to the historic November 4th night. We needed to plan out exactly how we wanted this 90-minute special to air. For a station run entirely by students, many aspects of this production were completely new to us. We were entering unfamiliar territory with guarded optimism. It started with three: Jaime Sasso, the News Director, Matt Rivers, the Executive Producer and Emily Brandstetter, the other Executive Producer. It soon grew to a team of 42 specially picked students. That’s when I found out that I was asked to anchor the show on election night. Unfortunately for me, I was already scheduled to work at my part-time job that same night from 9:45–3:00 a.m. wanting both a male and female anchor, I agreed to try and find someone to cover my shift.
Meanwhile we needed to breakdown every detail of the show to make sure nothing was missed. We needed to assign someone to make new stingers and a new show opening. We needed to find election music and reporters to make political packages. We needed to figure out how to generate graphics every time polls would close and new figures would be released. What we needed was help.
After skipping classes, spending nights in the station, and living off Starbucks’ triple shot lattes, things began to look like they were coming together. Jaime, Emily, and Matt worked around the clock and we now had 15 reporter packages, a new introduction and graphics, and the skeleton of a preliminary rundown. In addition, we planned to have a reporter live in the newsroom giving local election updates, two senior political analysts to breakdown national poll results, and a reporter in Watson Theater where we’d have a viewing party and a room full of students acting as our focus group.
The Sunday before the election we had our last group meeting and I had found someone to cover my shift on Tuesday – but only until midnight. Because we share the station with the Entertainment and Sports departments, we had to determine the times we could use the computers and editing suites to finalize our stories and complete the rundown.
Then, the day arrived. Working endlessly, time flew by. Reporters, editors and producers would work for 10 hours straight before realizing they hadn’t eaten anything or even gone to the bathroom. Crunch time came and the chaos began. It was 45-minutes until show time and Jaime still hadn’t marked her 150-page script. People ran around the station with tunnel vision, so intent on finishing their task, they would accidentally side-swipe people as they made their way by.
It was five minutes now until OTN (The Orange Television Network) would take us live and our Tech Director had just informed us we weren’t getting any audio from our reporter in Watson Theater, which bring us back to where we started. 9:28 p.m. and still no one in the control room or at the anchor desk. Scrambling to get into position and perform a quick mic check I hear the show opening playing in a distance. Our floor director continues to relay messages to us from the control room about what to do now that we have to cut the Watson shot from every block of the show. Little did I know I would soon be ad-libbing almost an entire 90 minutes. I’d receive commands seconds before going on camera like, “say something about the recent poll results – wait, no, – toss it to Shannon” – needless to say it was quite the adrenaline rush.
Despite not having the reporter in Watson, I truly believe we did the best with what we had. We had a CitrusTV correspondent call in from Washington D.C. for a telephone update. We had our Watson Reporter tape segments and run them into the control room to look like live shots. We had updated graphics of red and blue state maps as the figures came in. We had done everything we could. By the end of it all, everyone was in a state of disbelief that we actually pulled it off. Applause broke out and tears were even shed – probably the results of high emotions and a lack of sleep. Thinking back, the night was a blur. I don’t remember much about the show or what was even said. As I left the station and headed to work people were celebrating Obama’s victory in the streets and I knew back at the station they weren’t just celebrating the new president, but the show they had worked so hard to produce.
*Photo Courtesy of CitrusTV.net
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