Normally towards the last several weeks of the semester, Annenberg TV News and See-It-Live producers are tasked with coming up with an interesting segment to air. These segments can be more light hearted and positive, such as Women Crush Wednesday from last year, where every week a woman from the USC community would be highlighted.
So, when I was tasked with coming up with a segment idea, I had to think about what would be interesting for our audience, but what would also be relevant to our newscast for the day. Unlike Annenberg TV News, See-It-Live focuses on a specific topic, so I wanted to think of a segment that could relate to our topic week in and week out.
During our producer class the week before we had to air our new segment, my fellow producers and I brainstormed possible segment ideas we could do. For the show I was on, I thought it would be cool to create a segment focused on social media where we could somehow relate the topic we were working on for the day.
While working with the other See-It-Live producer, Alex Song, he thought of an idea where we could intertwine both social media trends and a Price is Right type of game into our newscast. We called this segment Hashtagged.
For this week, the game consisted of one host, who was Brett Chody, our See It Live correspondent for the day, and three contestants, Tessa Ferrari, Emily Ching, and Julia Mervis.
The game itself is pretty simple. The host chooses three relevant Twitter hashtags that were trending in the previous 24 hours. Since our topic was the presidential debate this week, Brett chose three hashtags that were related to U.S. politics. Then, Brett told the contestants what number the hashtag was trending at and how long ago the hashtag was trending. For each hashtag, the contestants had to guess how many tweets mentioned that hashtag, and the contestant who got closest to the actual number won that round.
There were three hashtags used. They were: #speakupvotebiden, #trumpispathetic, and #debateinsixwords.
Surprisingly, for our very first week of this segment, the game ended in a tie. So, our final trophy graphic amusingly had all three contestants on its plaque separated by forward slashes.
Since I was the lead producer this week, my teammate, Alex, spearheaded the preparation for our segment. He found the contestants and wrote the script. In addition, our art director, Steven Vargas, created all the graphics for the segment which turned out great.
Being a producer means finding ways to get better every week. Since I’m most likely to prepare the segment for our next show, I’m hoping to come up with a new angle or direction. I do not know what that will be yet, but I am definitely up for the challenge.