Rogulski pulls up with his truck, the "News Cruiser" with WJR logos all over it. He is being followed by an LTU security vehicle. Apparently, they thought that he did not belong on the campus (Oh crap! The Media is here!). Anyway, he explained to the Security guy that he was a professor. It was quite a funny way to start the morning off seeing your professor getting tailgated by the LTU security van.
This was my first time at Fox 2, and it looked really nice. The tour was really tailored to reporting and story writing. It's interesting to me, but I really wanted to learn more about the technical aspect of doing the news. I spent the last 15 minutes of the newscast in the control room. It was amazing to see this control room. Everything looked so modern. Instead of having multiple monitors, there were around 5 flat screen TVs. These TVs had video feed from multiple sources, such as the cameras and graphics. The director that morning, Donnie Hopps, was one of my former instructors from Specs Howard. When I went to that school, he directed news in the morning and taught in the afternoon. He always had stories about directing at Fox 2, and it was nice to finally see him directing in person. One of the funnier things I witnessed in the control room was when the producer got mad, because the lower thirds graphic was wrong. Jay Towers was reporting from an Apple store on the iPad launch, and the graphic said "I-Pad" instead of "iPad."
I was also interested in the camera system they had. The cameras are all robotic, and they are operated by a person in the back of the studio. Roop was in the studio talking to us about reporting, but I was more interested on how the cameras worked. He also told us that news stations are creating automated control rooms where only one person is necessary. The person sits in front of a computer and has access to pretty much every piece of equipment. The one drawback is it is harder to fix a problem if something goes wrong, because there is only one person. He said there is a control room being built at Fox 2 that will be automated like the one he described.
Anyway, the trip was really nice. The next one we are going on is to WJR. It's going to be nice to finally see the place that Rogulski talks about pretty much every day.
Here is a pic I took from my DVR. You can see where we were watching the broadcast from, because two of us ended up in the shot. Rogulski walks behind them later on in this shot.
That's so cool that you got the tour of Channel 2. When I took that class last semester I didn't go, but I wish I had. You are going to love WJR. It was really nice to see where Rogulski works, and how it works.
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