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Sunday 6 December 2009

WINOL 30/11 - 04/12 Critical Reflection


Technical difficulties and complacency were the two key factors as after several weeks of ever-improving news bulletins, we took a step back with our latest live broadcast.

Over the last five weeks, we as a news desk have seen ourselves grow accustomed to our various roles and despite several technical issues in the past, we had learned to work through the faulty equipment.

However, our fortunes clearly took a turn for the worst this past Wednesday. Problems with sound, VTs, and the eternally-malfunctioning autocue were hindering our efforts, and although these problems were clearly out of our hands, it was still a pretty big step down for us and it is something we will look to improve on come our next bulletin.

As the designated Production Assistant for this week (a role which I have grown used to for the past four weeks), my job was to time the VTs so that the bulletin runs smoothly, letting Leanne (who was directing this week) know how many seconds were left with each VT so that she can prompt everyone in the studio floor, and harass Matt with printouts of the script and running order from time to time. As this was our first week implementing ENPS (The Essential News Production System), it took a few minutes getting used to the new-look script and running order as Matt had used Microsoft Office applications Word and Excel to compile everything. Nonetheless, we are looking to get used to the new system and improve on Wednesday's mistakes.