The Rundown Shuffle

Everyday the person who produces the newscast comes up with a rundown of what they want to see on the broadcast.

The rundown is generated in a computer program called, "I-NEWS." There are different programs that stations use, but this is the one we use.

The producer will work hard all day in coordinating the day's events into their rundown. They work in conjunction with the assignment desk, news management, reporters, the art department, the production department…and the list goes on.

During the day, many people have their hands into the rundown changing things here and tweaking things there, but the producer is the “ring-leader.”

Naturally, the rundown is subject to change throughout the day. It all depends on the day's events. While there are many elements to deal with, the producer does have the help of news managers for guidance and direction.

At any rate, on Friday, those changes came at 5 minutes before air time. We had some breaking news.

The N-F-L suspended star quarterback Michael Vick - indefinitely.

It was a decision that was expected to come down, but nobody knew when the N-F-L would act. This was obviously a big enough story that it became our lead story, and rightly so.

Our producer worked frantically to change the rundown to accommodate this story.

It involved changing the order of stories, changing anchor reads, changing graphics and adding graphics; all to enhance the presentation of this important story.
Then, once all those changes are made the producer had to communicate them to me.

In turn, I have to communicate them to the crew. When all those changes happen, I just tell the crew to ignore their rundown for the first few stories and listen to me. I’ll call those changes with enough time for everyone to react.

Needless to say, everyone did a sparkling job! The newscast went off without a hitch.

I wish I could prove it to you and provide a link to the first block of our news. However, we ran N-F-L footage as part of the story. At this time, the station isn’t allowed to stream such footage, but trust me when I say the crew really did a great job.

...and of course, there's one last thing to keep in mind concerning that rundown I told you about. In today's case, we actually had a little time to react. There are many times when breaking news can happen while we're on the air.

That's when the adrenaline can really start pumping!