Paperwork Turned Into Real Work!

I received an email from the director of human resources asking me to come in and fill out paperwork for my internship at 3:30 on Monday, September 16, 2012. I thought I was going to go in fill out the paperwork and be on my way home that was not the case. 

Photo By: Nikki Romanuk

I arrived a little early; I met with the Human resource director and filled out the paperwork. I was then given a quick tour, and told to wait for the producer Mike and the sports anchor Brendan. When I finally met the guys, I was given a desk (which I was excited about having). My desk has a computer and a TV and then asked to sort through tapes. The New England Patriots had lost their home opener the previous night, and I was asked to find the tape of the last time they lost a home opener, which was September 23, 2001 against the New York Jets (our rivals). 

After searching through hundreds of tapes, because nothing is organized, I finally found two tapes labeled “New England vs. Jets 9-23-01”. I later found out the part of the tape I needed was taped over. Imagine my distraught, looking for a tape for an hour to get nowhere. I was then asked to melt the Patriots game. Melting a game is watching the entire game and cutting out highlights of the big plays, the goal is to get a four hour game down to about 25mins. The melt is then used for future highlights and the full game is deleted to make space for future game. 

I am a football fan, so it was a little hard to watch all the mistakes the Patriots made over and over and over again. I did not have time to finish the melt, because the Boston Red Sox were playing that night and I needed to log the game. Logging a game is watching the game and marking all the key plays in the game. Logging a game helps with the melting, but just shows marks, which you later use to melt the game or pull highlights from the game for the news. 

Photo By: Nikki Romanuk

I am not a huge baseball fan, and right now I have very little respect for the Boston Red Sox, so I was not excited about this task. Lucky for me the Red Sox won and I was able to learn how to use the program. The next time I went in, I would also be logging the Red Sox game, and they would lose, not too surprising. 

The atmosphere at Fox is interesting, it is really serious and I sometimes feel that the guys do not really know how to act around me. I mean everyone is friendly, but I feel they are restricted on how to act. My intern hours are 3:30pm – 11:30pm meaning I get home around 12:30am. It is a long day and some crazy hours when trying to balance school. 

Now some interesting things I learned about the news…

1.       There are no hair and makeup people. I thought this was interesting because I always assumed that anchors had people help them look camera perfect! But that is not the case; the anchors make themselves look perfect!

2.       Anchors wear purple during election time. I guess I noticed the purple but did not make any connections. The reason for anchors wearing purple is because it is considered a neutral color. When you mix red (republicans color) and blue (democrats color) you get purple (the in between non-bias color).

That is all I have for right now, I am hoping to learn more stuff this next week an write out some highlights, until next time!