Production Blogs

Spotlighting the creativity in the Tuesday ATVN newscast

The Tuesday producing team works together to introduce a new entertainment segment called “USC in the Spotlight”

"A screengrab of the live guest and the entertainment reporter from the new Tuesday ATVN segment "USC in the Spotlight".

Reporter Halee Anderson interviewing a guest on the Tuesday newscast. (Photo by Alexis Gebhardt)

By Alexis Gebhardt

Teamwork makes the dream work, and without my team, the new additions to the show would not have happened. The creativity of my co-producer and me really shined through in our most recent Tuesday newscast, and I think it made for a more interesting show.

My co-producer and I workshopped ideas for new segments we could add to the show, and from that conversation we introduced a new segment called “USC in the Spotlight.” This segment is meant to highlight creative projects USC students are working on and is also meant to include a live guest on the show. Our entertainment reporter worked on this new segment with us.

We had a live guest, meaning a guest who comes in and is interviewed while the show is streamed live on YouTube. Setting up the interview and the pre-planning were a lot of extra steps, and I wish that I had leaned on my co-producer more to help with that.

Part of this segment was creating a fun motion graphic that my co-producer and I came up with and our incredible art director made. This new segment was a great addition to the show and made the show feel less stiff, because it’s not just anchors reading scripts on camera but also a reporter sitting down and talking with someone in our community.

Many of the stories I included in the show started with video rather than having the anchor appear on camera first. While this may not have made much of a creative difference, it is something that I did intentionally. I felt that if the story was particularly visual, an on-camera introduction was not necessary. I think this also left more time to do the new live segment because adding 10-second introductions for each story adds up. And part of making this work meant talking to my co-producer to make sure we were on the same page about what the various videos should be and why I intended to start stories with visuals.

In the future, I think my co-producer and I should work together more as a team when it comes to scheduling and preparing for live guests. For next week. as the producer who focuses on videos and editing for the show, I am going to try to help my co-producer and entertainment reporter with anything that needs to be done for the live interview segment.

This story was written as an assignment in JOUR403: Television News Production with Professor Stacy Scholder. Annenberg Media student editors also reviewed the story and published it per newsroom guidelines.