Susanne's Blog

Every once in a while, when someone is sick, on vacation, or whatever, I get a chance to stay in the building and edit shows. The upside is that the weather is iffy and I don't have to participate in that. The down side is, I am sure to have a heart attack one day.

Before I go any further, let me just get this out of the way.

I know every job is hard. I KNOW every occupation has its stressful moments. I KNOW this. I appreciate this.

Now, working for tv news will surely kill me. You don't know what a deadline is until you work in TV news. You think your teacher or boss is going to fire you if your report gets in five seconds late? I don't think so. But if your story is 5 seconds late...dear God!
You've just forced the producer to totally rearrange a show they spent seven hours writing and arranging.
You've just forced a director to change camera angles, to basically throw out a carefully orchestrated guide to the next hour in favor of a "fly by the seat of your pants," chaotic, spastic dance for life.
You've just forced anchors to just try and keep up.
AND you've just forced every other story to air earlier, meaning photojournalists and editors now have less time to finish, and more time to panic. (and for some reason panicking seems to cause computers to fail...which perpetuates this whole scenario).
Finally, you've just forced management to have a "talk" with you. (Those are never pleasant)

And that's only one kind of stress. But that's all I'm going to write about now. Just thinking about it has made my shoulders tense and my heart race. I may have to go be sick.

The great thing is you, the viewer, rarely notice these things.

BTY, I get to edit ALL week! ...oh, my heart.