Between news gigs in Richmond, I took a job as a director at WTVR, channel 6. One of my assignments was the 6:00 PM newscast. This was before Chyron invented the character generator.
To get supers on the screen or what are now called lower thirds, we used a message board. That’s one of those blackboards you see in restaurants where they put up the specials of the day. Each letter must be snapped into an upper and lower track in a line on the board to form the words. In our case, the news reporters would supply the names and titles of the people that were going to appear on the newscast and the studio floor crew would put them on the message board. During the newscast one camera was designated as the super camera and using the switcher the director would superimpose the person’s name and title over the talking head in the film.
Shortly after I arrived, we came up with the idea of using a Dymo tape writer and writing the person’s name and title in white letters and affixing it in two lines to a black 5×7 card. These cards were kept in an alphabetical file so that when a reoccurring newsmaker appeared on the show, the camera crew just had to pull out the already-made card and place it in order on an easel in front of the lower third camera. This turned out to be a great time saver, even though new cards had to be made for almost every newscast.
During a live show, it was the director’s job to fill in the log as spots were run. The log would later show the time that the spots started and ended so the advertiser could be billed. It’s all done automatically now.
So generally, what would happen is, I would roll a projector or VTR which had the commercial on it, press the correct button to put the spot on the air, then look down and fill out the log. For a projector, you had to roll it a couple of seconds early, so it could get up to speed before you hit the take button. For VTRs, it was 5 seconds.
Anyway, I got in the habit of rolling the device waiting the amount of time, and hitting the take button on the switcher which would cut from the studio to the commercial Then I would Iook down and fill out the log. But during one newscast I found out something very interesting and very scary.
Each button on the switcher had a light inside it, so you could tell which button was live. If the light inside a switcher button burnt out, the switcher would return to the previously pressed button as soon as you took your finger off the new button.
One evening, when the anchor threw to a commercial, I rolled the projector or VTR…I don’t remember which…hit the button to put it on the air and looked down to fill out the log. When I glanced up at the monitor, we were still on the studio anchor. So, I hit the take button again. But it went back to the anchor as soon as I took my finger off the button. The anchor…who will remain unnamed…was getting very mad at being put back on the air. When it happened a third time, the anchor commented in a very loud voice and although his mic was cut off, we could hear him very clearly in the control room, “If Mims does that one more time, I’m gonna come in there and break his blank blank neck.” The anchor was a very big guy.
I quickly found out that if I held my finger on the button, it would stay hot even though the light was burnt out. We decided not to use that VTR or projector for the rest of the show. And I took the anchor out for a drink when the newscast was over. One of the fun things about live TV. And I wouldn’t trade the memory for a million bucks.