A Week in the Life of the GEN Crew
By Corey Urbanek
When some people picture a TV station, they see lots of people running around, fingers furiously typing away, phones ringing off the hook, police scanners buzzing constantly. There are interns to handle paperwork, photographers to edit all the video, stylists to do hair and makeup, and the anchors simply step up to the desk and read the news.
That's not the case.
For Good Evening Nebraska, there are essentially two of us. You heard that right. Two. Just Andrea and myself.
Granted, we have some help along the way, but for the most part, what you see is done by the two of us.
So to give you a better idea of what we're up against, we decided to paint the picture of a somewhat standard week.
We'll go back to the second week of January. Our show was in its first full week of airing, and we were still working to put the pieces together and working out the kinks.
Our topic was "Recovering from the Holidays", and we were taking a closer look at how various people and organizations get back into the swing of things following the holiday season. This included state senators, local schools, getting out of holiday debt, and sticking with your resolutions.
Our first scheduled interviews were on Saturday the 7th, with State Senators Mike Gloor and Galen Hadley. First up: Mike Gloor at his home in Grand Island. We piled in the car at 9am with all our gear (two cameras and their accessories, and two tripods). The interview took about an hour, maybe a little longer total. Then it was time to grab some lunch and head back to Kearney. We got a few hours at home, then met Senator Hadley at 4pm. That interview took about 45 minutes, and we were finished for the day.
Sunday, Andrea went in to the station to work on editing some of those interviews, but ended up leaving earlier than planned because she wasn't feeling well.
Monday, I went in to work at my usual 10am, to find out Andrea had called in sick that day. It was then my job to pull various national stories to fill the show. I also had to produce the NTV News at Six half hour, and attend a staff meeting that afternoon. (A big thanks to Colleen Williams for stepping in to help anchor GEN that day!)
Thankfully, Andrea was up and about on Tuesday. We had a very busy day, starting bright and early at 8:00am. We had three back to back interviews to get the school's perspective on getting back into a routine after the holiday break. First, Kearney High School at 8:00, then Meadowlark Elementary at 8:45, then the Registrar's Office at UNK at 9:30.
Once we wrapped those up, it was back to the station at about 11:00. We still had to finish editing the two Senator interviews, and I had to finish producing the shows for the day. All that got completed by the deadline, and we were out of there around 7:15pm after the show. Nearly a 12-hour shift makes for a long day.
Wednesday, we continued our interview, edit, newscast format. We met with Sally Bernard at 10:00am, and then headed to the station to edit the school interviews from the day before.
Thursday, a slight break in the action. Each Thursday at 8:30am, Andrea, Matt (news director), Kristy (assistant news director), and I all meet at Barista's in Kearney to discuss any issues that have come up. We enjoyed some delicious espresso drinks, while tackling quite a few things from our first week of shows.
After that, it was off to more interviews. This time it was the YMCA at 10:00 and Good Samaritan hospital at 10:45. We've discovered you can get about anywhere in Kearney within 5-10 minutes, which is great. But then you still have to find a parking space, which is not so great. After those were finished, it was back to the station for more editing and one more round of shows.
Friday finally brought us a chance to pause and take a breath. No interviews scheduled, no meetings. However, we did still have to edit the stories for the day. But we had a little more time to do so! Oh, and we had to set up interviews for the next week. There's always that one more thing…
Keep in mind, there are other things that we each have to do on top of all of the interviews and editing. That includes:
- We both shoot and edit several promos for the ABC and FOX stations
- We both write scripts for GEN
- Corey stacks and writes NTV News at Six
- Corey manages the show from the production booth each night
- Andrea has to read through scripts before the show, along with getting her hair and makeup ready to go
And to think, this is all just one week!
Things have since calmed down since January, now that we've gotten addressed the major issues and really found our groove. We've also gotten better about planning ahead, and have realized that we can't do everything ourselves. That's why you'll see national stories each night. It's just too much work for two people to fill an entire half hour of content.
So there you have it. A week in the life of the GEN crew. I hope it gives you a better idea of just how much work we put in. We continue to strive for a better on-air product each and every day, and we hope you enjoy it!
Feel free to ask any questions in the comments below, we'll do our best to answer them!
Corey Urbanek (Producer)
