The other night while we were watching one of the local stations, we saw a promo for its news department. You may have seen some variant of it: reporters, producers, technicians and so forth in a slick, almost hilariously staged demonstration of teamwork and and cooperation, like they're all the biggest, bestest bunch of newshound buddies you ever saw. I turned to hubby and said something like, "If only people knew how it really worked."
At home you see only the glitz and polish. Everything on television looks so sleek and refined. But if you saw what really goes on behind the scenes, and what the surroundings were like, and all that, well, you get the idea. You only see what happens on the air. You don't see the behind-the-scenes antics, the mad dash to the scene to get the pictures, the rush to get them edited, the occasional clashes of egos, or any of the other stuff that goes on.
The first time someone sees a set of a television program, especially one they've watched for a while, their first response is almost always the same: "It's so small! It looks so much larger on television." Well, that's true. Sometimes, you'll also hear them talk about how it doesn't look the same, and perhaps even something about it looks cheap. That's called "stagecraft." I need look no farther than our own television studio, where we hold some of our classes: on television, the set looks fine, but in person you see that it's a lot of foam board and such, that the host's desk is cobbled together and has just enough veneer on it to look substantial, and so forth. And don't even ask about what the rest of some studios, the parts you can't see on television, look like. It's not glamorous. (It's like the mild disappointment I felt the first time I saw the radio studio where I once worked: the paneling was cheap, the microphone was held on the swing-arm with electrical tape, and so on. But, darn it, it sure sounded like a top-dollar facility! Or when I visited the Smithsonian and saw Ted Baxter's Channel 12 blazer. It looked fine on television, but distressingly cheap in person.)
There's a myth that working in broadcasting is full of glitz and glamour. To the extent that you become famous by virtue of appearing on television or having your voice sent into people's homes, that may be true. But having been there, having been in a few studios, and having spent my time since training people to become professional mass communicators, it's my belief that the glamour is a veneer. Sure, at first it all seems exotic. But work at a station for a month, if not a couple weeks, and you'll find that, except for a few specialized pieces of equipment and a few special things you do, it's not that far removed from most any other profession. The surroundings differ, but when you strip it all down, the workday gripes are universal.
