8/23/2004

Monday, August 23, 2004 - One minute till air

I actually felt like I did something important today with the CBC. There is a daily update of the decathlon competitors on the CBC. I was assigned to log the high jump section of the decathlon. I knew from previous nights when a producer came in and told one of us, shotlisters, that we needed to do better in keeping track of the track and field. There people are under pressue to deliver highlights of competitions as soon as they finish. I asked for some tips from the previous logger of the decathlon. She told me a little. Tonight I started logging, and it was the hardest thing to log in the entire time I have been working. There were two high jump bars that the video feed was switching between. This meant that in order to catch both the one video feed had to switch to the other before posting the first one's results sometimes. This meant that I coudln't always get the name of the guy jumping much less his bar height and his attempt number. I always could get the country tricode if I couldn't get the bib number. So about halfway through the producer cames in and says I need to focus on three people and give me the names and numbers. This makes it a little easier, because I at least know what the guy wants. Then, I can sacrifice some for the the coverage of others for the coverage of the one's he wants. While I was still logging the rest of the competition, he went to another computer and tried to find the entries of the "three clowns" as he called them. Then, another person from the edit suite came in and said they were changing the story to the winners of the high jump. Then, the story changed to the leaders in the standings overall in the decathlon when I went to the edit suite with the shotlist. There was a brief exchange of words between the two suites and I wasn't wuite sure what to do, so I guessed and searched the timecode of the shotlist for the three people I knew he wanted. I had made an error in my bib numbers in the log, but I had put KAZ (for Kazhastan) and there was only one Kazastanian in the competition. He ran the tape to that place and it was a great shot. The man jumped up and roared and ran a few yards. The other suite took it, and they wanted to see the high jumps of the top three athletes in the decathlon. The producer I was with stayed his ground and wanted the original favorites shown, not the leaders in the standings. I was busy finding the good jumps of the leaders in the standings when he said he didn't need them. He said that I did a good job and thanked me for my work. I went and took a bathroom break. I hadn't even been able to eat dinner (not that I was particularly dying to). On my return from the bathroom (we are talking 60 seconds here), I walked through the CBC lobby to see the clips that I logged on the screen live on air in Canada.

~ Stephen

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