Breaking News...

I made a quick trip to KTLA's 10 o'clock nightly broadcast last night (thanks to @stevenjacobross who humored my lifecasting/blogging) and was lucky enough to witness what happens when another live broadcast runs into your usual time slot. In this case it was last night's Raider game, and it ran at least 20 minutes past 10.

Despite this little snafu, it was business as usual in the news room. Behind the scenes, the producers and crew mercilessly chopped the story lineup left and right for the time allotted, and for the most part, the talent took it all in stride and adjusted as necessary. It was interesting to witness what goes on behind the camera in a situation like this: here was a team of people who had put together a very tight hour of news packages only to find out that they now could use maybe half of their work. But despite the circumstances, the broadcast ran like a well-oiled machine on-air, and you truly wouldn't know there was anything out of the ordinary happening off-camera(except for the fact that I've now told you!)

See? Pretty cool, calm, and collected looking if you ask me. But why? If I had to put my money on it, I'd credit the producer. The crew of a ship can only be as calm as its captain, and in this case, even if the adjustments are ones that they have to make on a regular basis (so as to not run past 11pm and into the Friends rerun time slot) it still takes some skill to do it well. I sat down for a few minutes after the show to get the inside scoop on what goes on in the producer's head at times like these and what has to happen to get the job done. Take a look:

P.S. Did you know that KTLA was the first TV station to broadcast west of the Mississippi river? They were also the first to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Too. Cool.