The Muslim militant group Hamas said Monday it will launch a terrorist attack this week during President Clinton’s visit to the Middle East. The leaders of Hamas say the attack will be in revenge for Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin reported orders to assassinate Hamas leaders on sight. Clinton arrives in the Middle East Wednesday for the signing of the Israel/Jordon Accord ending forty-six years of war between the two countries.
U.S. Special Forces teams are tracking two small bands of anti-government gunmen through southwestern Haiti but after weeks of searching only 64 weapons and one man were found. In a raid a couple weeks ago, Green Berets seized 33 weapons and took one man into custody. In another raid 31 weapons were found.
Highs in the mid-70s with early showers and scattered thunderstorms later; tonight more showers and cool with lows in the 50s. Currently it’s 69 degrees.
Must have been a slow news day. Anyway...
Shortly after the school year began in September – and not too long after the semester kick-off meeting for the radio staff – signs began to appear throughout the Communication Building reminding us students that we could try out to become an anchor for Community Channel 7. The cable-only television station was run by students and featured programs created by students, who in turn had hopes that more than just students watched. There was, however, little doubt that students, let alone anyone, watched the programs with any regularity.
The newscasts had, for years, aired under assorted titles all based on “Channel 7 News” (i.e. “Community News 7” or “Community Channel 7 News”) though this semester, and apparently for one or two years before my freshman year, the program had been dubbed “Cable 7 News” in a presumed effort to point out the obvious. Anchor try-outs were held early each long semester (non-Summer session) to pick two teams of four that would host the thirty minute program on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. The cast was the usual stock characters: a male and female news reader, a third person to read sports scores, and a fourth person to point at maps.
Interested parties were to show up a week or so later, dressed as how they would present themselves on the air. This meant neckties, Sunday-best dresses, perfectly coifed hair, and a lot of alcohol-based perfumes and colognes that didn’t work well together. One by one each student was given a script and seated behind the anchor desk (or semi-circular table, as it was in those days) to face the music, or camera, as it were. Try-outs were held in Studio 1, which was the largest therefore most important studio the School of Communication had. There was a little bit of everything in the studio, including the news desk, two interview sets, a blue chroma key wall, a black wall, and then piles of junk stashed in corners or propping up set walls.
Did I go through with try-outs? Not at all. I didn’t feel 100% at ease behind the microphone on the radio yet and didn’t feel the need to allow people to see what I looked like on television. I did however ask Troy Meadows, the radio News Director my freshman year, if I could watch from the studio. It turned out that Troy had been a reporter for Channel 7 the previous year and now, as a senior member of the staff, would be helping with the try-outs. Troy said I could come in for a few minutes to see a working studio but that visitors were mostly frowned upon. This wasn’t show-and-tell after all, it was the news.
Well, sort of. A few weeks later I watched one of the first Cable 7 News programs of the school year and wasn’t that impressed. I recognized a few people on the broadcast: Troy had a story relating to students coming back to campus and Mike, the guy I knew from Thursday morning radio, showed up with another in his series called “Open Mike” where he interviewed people around campus on various topics (apparently Mike was just as familiar with television as he was with radio). I suppose what made me disinterested though was the “attitude” of the program with its anchors promoting stories with false urgency and reading scripts with bland energy. None of us were a professional in any of our roles in that Communication Building – we were all there to learn and some of us had more to learn than others – but it was clear we all needed practice in our craft.
Sadly, the one aspect of Cable 7 News that did not require practice was the promotions staff that turned out some of the most pretentious stuff I’d ever seen. Less than a week after the anchor teams had been decided upon, the new ads began to appear on other Community Channel 7 programs. There were probably a half dozen or so different spots but all on the same theme: shots of the anchors and reporters working at their “desk,” receiving a phone call, and then heading out to campus or somewhere in town to “cover” the story. What made the ads showy? First off, the “desk” the “news team” used belonged to the instructors; these scenes were taped after hours to give the illusion that each student had a room-sized office to his-or-herself. Intercut with shots of students receiving phone calls were shots of students grabbing an aspect of clothing (i.e. suite coat) and running with a photographer down the “news room hall” (the same hall everyone used during the day; now virtually empty because it was taped at 9 p.m.) toward the door. This was followed by shots of the student arriving at the story and preparing to go “live” (really live-to-tape) with what they’ve learned.
At the end of the 30-second spots the scene faded to a shot of the news team talking with each other as they walked down a hall in the Communication Building. The students had that air of crisp seniority or mock forcefulness in their walk, as if they were seasoned authorities on whatever it was they were doing; you know, sort of like in the opening credits of Law and Order. But there were various shots used to make different promos: one scene was of the four-person Tuesday night broadcast team, one scene was of the four-person Thursday night broadcast team; there was one of the four news anchors from both nights, one of the two weather anchors, and one of the two sports anchors. All permutations ended with someone trying to sound like Bill Kurtis or Gary Owens announcing “Cable 7 News.”
Community Channel 7 was almost the polar opposite of the radio station in numerous characteristics. Where the radio station staff had set directors with a chain of command of both students and faculty, the television staff was a jumbled mess of students vying for command amongst each and with the department head. There were, as the saying goes, too many chiefs. There was also a flawed sense of importance that I noticed in my four years as a student: a lot of communication majors looked down in disgust at the radio station. Radio, it seemed, was the bane of the department. I never really understood this attitude. Even though our broadcasts were far more immediate – we were on five days a week with numerous newscasts compared to Channel 7’s one thirty minute program twice a week – television on the other hand was supposedly a more creative medium. It’s also the medium where people got to be seen and always figured a lot of people got into this field to boost their ego after being bashed down in high school.
Needless to say, I found radio far more rewarding but it didn’t take long my freshman year to realize that television would be in my future as a student.
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Television
(Dork)
Dork
From the album Other White Meat
1997