Television Newsman

my name is bill redeker i'm a television news reporter for kebc television my job is to gather film news stories for channel 7 in los angeles when i get to the studio in the morning i have no idea for the most part what i'm going to be doing that particular day i've read the newspaper before i've come in i listened to the radio on the way in i'm fairly diligent about trying to keep up with what is going on in the city that particular day but when you arrive in the studio you when you when you meet the assignment editor it's anything you know i asked him what's going on today and uh he says well you know take your pick or here's what what is going on so what are we doing oh the queen mary financial i heard about that this morning there's the articles on it [Music] there's a background around queen murray all right get into a back nightmare about 1970. do a documentary on it um okay you've got a contact down there that you know okay all right great many of the stories that i'm assigned involved quite a bit of research reviewing past newspaper stories and extensive use of the telephone the phone is essential in not only gathering the information about the story but also setting up the interviews sometimes setting up a story or an interview can take as long as filming the story itself 4101 please right sandy bill redicker channel 7 news how are you this morning my god you're infamous or famous rather [Laughter] yeah quite a write up in the times this morning well you know yeah it was as a matter of fact uh we'd like to come down and talk to you about the situation and i had talked to paul bessler over the news bureau and he said you'd probably be more than willing to do that i mean not that you're advocating it but that uh you wouldn't uh you didn't stand our way certainly yeah right uh apparently the crux of the issue is the single operator business that's what i'm not putting words in your mouth i'm just analyzing and that sounds what it is you know from looking at the article and whatnot yeah well i'd like to talk to both you about it i think what uh what time is best for you this morning after 10 o'clock uh 11 o'clock 11 30. why don't we set it up for about 11 if that's okay the relationship between a reporter and the crew that he works with guys cameraman the sound man the film editor the writer everybody is essential to making that reporter either come off credible or non-credible a good crew a good cameraman that can really make your piece a bad one can destroy it so it's a very tight relationship that you work on we've got the long beach queen mary story the financially distraught marriage be a lot of visual in it one interview i don't see this being a very difficult story you might have to take portable lights inside and that's about it our first interview is set for 11 o'clock there are several different types of news stories that we cover i generally cover either hard feature stories that have news value or spot news stories stories that break while you were on the scene covering them but for the most part hard feature stories stories that you can have an overview on the stories that you can research sandy uh campus all the way down down the stairs tell the girls want to see sandy okay thanks a couple of things that i just wanted to go with you briefly before we begin the interview is an assessment of what what financial shape the ship is in right now taking us all the way back to when it was first brought here in 67 as i recall the city paid about three million dollars for it i don't know what the final budget cost has been since then your area of expertise uncovers what specific basically the museum tour okay but you were the one that submitted this report right yeah but only from our your standpoint which which has to do with the touring tour and generally speaking the you know it can be said that the financial development the ship has not been what everyone hoped to have to be i mean that's known and okay i've got i have some of that information which i will cover in my in my voice track over the film but i want to want you to talk in the interviewer we will talk about anyway about what sort of problems you've had with the tour end of it that you know about why those problems you feel have existed and what the solution is to it that sort of thing okay all right let's do it first of all what sort of problems has the ship experienced especially those mentioned in your report we've had gradual declining paid attendance for the last two years why are all of these problems occurring why has this been happening it isn't anything new it's been happening since 1967 what has led up to all of this uh the closest thing i can think of is that you have a ship with four captains instead of one and this just doesn't work very well is that the solution to replace those four captains with one that's what all of us involved feel is correct all right fine do you have a cover shot already right yeah just give me yeah okay he's gonna move around behind you and shoot some questions of me asking you that i've already done so you don't have to answer them because you already have answered them but it's a film cutting technique which will enable the question to be placed in front of your response okay you only take a second there sure it's fine fine define it the fork happens and one makes sense to you sure the problems that the ship is now experiencing are nothing new they've been going on since it was brought here eight years ago what is the problem uh i'm sorry i've got to get no these are the ones that i've already done in the interview it's just a matter of they're gonna make no no no it's okay you just you stand there because he's filming me uh okay the queen mary's problems are nothing new they've been with the ship since it was brought here about eight years ago what needs to be done to clear it up and so on and so forth i guess that's all i need okay we're going to turn you over to channel 4 now they're waiting for you so thank you very much what do you want to do you want to go inside well i need some visual shots he wasn't that good of an interview probably won't need that much and so we're going to rely quite a bit on the visual stuff uh he's going to get somebody to give us a tour we'll go around and pick up a lot of different visual things and have to write the thing i don't know because television is a visual medium of visual avenue of telling the news you have to seek out pictures that will reflect what you are saying in your copy you have to be able to tell the story visually so when you're doing a story you look for visual representation of what the story is about it's necessary to show for instance the exterior of the story the exterior of a location that you were shooting to at least put in perspective what it is you were talking about give me another shot looking down this way where you see touring just to see all this empty parkway back in 1934 it cost 30 million dollars to build the queen mary before the jet age she paid for herself as a passenger ship but today nearly 60 million dollars later she is a financial loser and no matter how many management changes are made it will take time and public interest to keep her financially afloat bill rediker channel 7 eyewitness news queen mary in long beach let's do it again cost about 30 million dollars to build the queen mary before the jet age she paid for herself as a passenger ship but now 60 million dollars later she is a money loser okay let me know when you're ready hold it you know it's going to go off again too yeah i'll call them later let's try it again ready yeah sometimes it's difficult to finish the story that you were on because you were called away to another story it could be miles away you can involve a different subject matter it's tremendously frustrating because you're in gear with the story that you were doing and all of a sudden you're called a way to cover a story that has nothing to do with the story that you've been covering when you get there you've got to ask a lot of questions and move around and try to get your shots together and do research on the scene there isn't the chance to sit back and make phone calls the luxury of reading a newspaper or researching it in depth you pretty much have to get out there find out what's happening and get it done because it's going to be over pretty quick unless you do if you see any immigration people going across the roofs looking down through the ducks and that that'd be a good shot also i saw a couple we first got here but i don't see any now but if you do see them be sure you get it there's a whole there's a whole bunch of them yeah yeah somebody get you some height would help if we moved around to this side and coming from that side let's try it all right the biggest factor to deal with in television news is time that limitation cheats the audience out of part of the story that doesn't mean that we're doing a bad job it just means that we're sometimes doing a very incomplete job so all we can expect to give them is a feeling for what went on hopefully accurately give them a little sense of the mood what the importance is to them as an individual viewer and that's about it is there any way my cameraman to get up a little height and look down on this there's nothing to stand on they won't let us pass the gate well no not at all this guy will let you stand on his cart where you get some elevation you get a better shot okay he's gonna come right over here [Music] pick up a shot of the owner over there on the brown cardigan he's the one that was yelling at us do you know if they had illegal aliens here i don't know what the guy here mister i don't know about it i just worked here i don't check nobody's papers to see what you got that's about my job i'm hamming nails there's no doubt that accuracy often suffers in television news because of the time the deadlines involved in trying to crank out one two three sometimes even four stories a day that doesn't necessarily always happen to me as far as a large number of stories every day but even getting one or two stories out if you if you have that deadline your accuracy is going to suffer you can't make the additional phone calls you might need you can't do the additional filming that you want to do you can't spend the time polishing the copy making things succinct that you want to say it's difficult it looks like a plumbing and heating guy i don't know but you shoot him on spec anyway oh is it immigration you got him right okay i can't read from this far out marty we've only got about three or four things left you know we can hold back on the shooting all we need to do is get an interview with the federal people interview hopefully with the owner of the place uh the buses the trucks coming out and then a close we've already shot enough coming in no we're gonna get them coming out here come the federal guys now talk to us at all about what's been happening here who's gonna be able to talk to us you have to talk to the assistant director or the district directors and who is he here let's talk to one of the owners can we talk to you [Music] the classic line and referring to the problems that you have with time is it's a hurry up and weight business hurry up and get over there and cover that story because it's happening now but once you get there wait around and wait around and wait around until you can interview somebody or fill out the story the extent of the raid was this morning uh it's not considered a raid survey what is the survey where we go and try to ascertain those people that are illegally in the united states don't have a right to remain united states majority of time they as evidence here that there are illegals in the factory but some of them are not uh very few some we've already processed and under our controls and uh they're hearing to be coming up shortly isn't it true that this place has its payday tomorrow i don't know i have no idea i didn't ask management i guess so any indication that management may have turned it in so that he does not have to pay them no no definitely not why would he sacrifice all the money oh yes he sure does he sure does writing the story is probably the most time consuming of any television news story you can go out and film without too many problems sure you have the interruptions you can interview yeah that takes some thought some consideration but to succinctly put down on paper in a minute and a half what you want to tell that requires time requires a lot of thought i think that's one of the most difficult parts of it getting a lot of static 642-74 working on it just got to get a crew leland nakahara are you back there can you come around to the desk please you and your sound person feedback when i first arrived in this market in this television station i was told that they were going to fire me after two or three nights because i did not live up to what they expected i wasn't forceful enough in my delivery well i i frankly wasn't very good at what they wanted i thought that i did a credible job as a news reporter but i wasn't hammering out the copy in the style in the tone and the intonation that they wanted thanks tell me when you're rolling they wanted me to shout a little bit more than i was i was told it wasn't a matter of shouting it was a matter of communicating well to me it seemed like shouting because i'd never pronounced and thrown the copy like that before but if it gets the communication process between you and the viewer going i can't disagree with it normally crowded tour groups now accommodate only a handful of spectators other tourism sites in southern california did well this summer so the trade here is healthy but no one pick up other tourism sites in southern california did well this summer so the trade is healthy here but no pick up again sometimes i wonder if we if we hype copy too much if we punch it out too much if we make every story seem like it's the end of the world and i don't like that because i believe in perspective of a news story and if you can't put the thing into some sort of relative sanity uh then you're misleading people that's it cut [Applause] thank you much i gotta really run on this thing thank you much see you later [Applause] it will take time and public interest to keep her financially afloat bill redeker channel 7 eyewitness news on the queen mary in long beach kind of long i was thinking maybe you can cover the first part of that with some other visual uh a tour group it was incredible they're you know they're taking in this shop we have a writer that because of the union regulations that must be present when a film package is being glued together in the editing room along with the reporter if he's doing it live on the set you've got to talk to that writer the writer's got to talk back to you you've got to be communicating about what you're trying to tell in that story or he's going to go off in one direction you're going to go another direction before that it can't be it goes down to proper matter and you go there keep going keep going there's another keep it then we do we're on the side all right keep going oh the best thing that a film editor can do for you is reflect what you are trying to do in your story very well if he sees the story differently than you then you better talk about it and you should take his input because sometimes he will point out things that you don't see as a reporter and in that respect a good film editor like a good film cameraman can make or break a story very reliant on one another seven seconds to start with okay uh split what up the shots of the ship static save save the sound for him at six o'clock to make that at least that part of a little bit different i'm trimming out some of the copy too but the rest will be the same all the way down okay what's wrong show me my own car that's right you're gonna get you're gonna get me into trouble you're gonna stay all right no no no no no all right uh then get us up on board but so far that dream hasn't been fully realized the queen mary is financially sinking see a little money and that sort of thing that's another five seconds okay revenues are down and the reason is simple there was a time when television news occupied 15 minutes of the broadcast day and it was developed to half an hour then to an hour now we have two hours of local news to fill every day there's probably enough news in los angeles to market this size to fill two hours of local news but there isn't the staff size to cover it so we don't we do a lot of rehashing on the six o'clock from stories in the five o'clock why are we at two hours well because news has become very very marketable in the last few years that's why there are two hours of it news is a money maker management knows that how about you drop that last segment you can make it as long as the film supports it i'm bringing it back to mats the general manager of the television station has begun to assume more of a role in news department decision making before that wasn't the case it was a very autonomous operation the news director the news department was completely separate from the general manager the individual that controls the entire operation to me that was healthier than what it is today we're seeing more and more controlled by management it's not overwhelming but there are signs of it and that bothers me and i don't think it's going to change until you do get rid of the commercial end of it until you have a fully non-sponsored news program do i have to worry about everything each show has a producer who is responsible for organizing the events in the show most of them are writers or have been writers their job more than anything else is to direct traffic look at the input from the fields and reporters and from the writers but their job is to plug it all into one hour long program and time it out calls are made back and forth to ensure that the thing somehow fits but it never does stories are dropped and added on during the the course of an hour show right uh oh all right yeah sure i'll send it right there christine and judd need their headlines but you're naive to assume that television news isn't in fact part entertainment it is part of television it has pizzazz it is a visual medium it has sound lights go on people talk images flash before viewers eyes that's taken away from a lot of the journalistic uh implications that television news used to have it's dangerous in so much that we're worrying more about production these days and we are about content of a story if we don't have the pictures to to represent what we're saying we're going to have to drop that if a man's sound bite the amount of time that he takes to say something on film is too long but it's important we have to cut him down we haven't got the time oh well good luck you're always aware that you are in a show business environment from the time you you get up in the morning till the time you go to the makeup chair the amount of people that have on the stage running around the cameras the placement everything is geared towards a fast-paced show okay tonight jeff smith brings us a california person who can teach you bingo and step over toehold all in one day the secret service reveals details on a plot to kill president ford and others and the parents of a girl being kept alive by machines plead for her dignified [Applause] this is channel 7's eyewitness news with jed hambrick christine lund eddie alexander dr george and the entire eyewitness news team good evening i'm john hambrick here's what's happening at five o'clock in this the entertainment capital of the world a major attraction is in trouble tonight in this case that also spells trouble for an entire city bill redicker is here to tell us why bill just eight years ago when the queen mary arrived in long beach city fathers figured they had struck it rich here was a tourist attraction that could return a handsome profit so they spent money investing about 60 million dollars in all but so far their investment has not paid off and today the queen mary is in serious financial trouble revenues are down here and the reason is simple fewer and fewer people are coming to visit the boat fewer people are spending their tourist dollars on the attraction attendance this summer dropped nearly 13 percent normally crowded tour groups now accommodate only a handful of spectators the 50 merchants on board are also suffering in fact some restaurants have closed for a few days a week the ship's associate director blames bad management he says too many directors are running the place and that has resulted in bad financial decisions the ship developed with three operators on board which was not the original plan but developed that way and as and plus a city department which takes care of the maintenance and so what uh the closest thing i can think of is that you have a ship with four captains instead of one and this you know it just doesn't work very well no matter how hard we work we barely keep our heads above water and we all feel that if it came under one management that the ship could develop in a proper manner back in 1934 it cost 30 million dollars to build the queen mary before the jet age she paid for herself as a passenger ship but today nearly 60 million dollars later she is a financial loser and no matter how many management changes are made it will take time and public interest to keep her financially afloat bill redeker channel 7 eyewitness news on the queen mary in long beach coming up next on eyewitness news the film report on what it costs each of us to pay for white-collar crime two minutes again stand by here we go here we go the illegal alien question surfaced again today in the los angeles area igniting the fuse was an immigration service raid in the south bay area and our bill redicker was there immigration agents picked up more than 350 illegal aliens at the fun stride shoe company near marina del rey early this morning it was a big operation requiring the entire immigration criminal division this was the second time in two months that fundstride had been caught and company management was not willing to talk to us about it can we talk to you at all about this [Music] tomorrow is payday here some speculated that the raid might benefit the employer because he wouldn't have to pay the workers their wages but immigration officials say that's not true isn't it true that this place has its payday tomorrow i don't know i have no idea i didn't ask management i guess so any indication that management may have turned it in so that he does not have to pay them no no definitely not why wouldn't happens to the owner now nothing right now unless we can uh nothing he's not fine or penalized no why not well we had to wait for a bill to be passed but today's bust will hurt this employer at least temporarily because for the time being he has lost 90 percent of his workforce bill redeker channel 7 eyewitness news in being a venice news reporter is tremendously frustrating at times but there's also the reward of being able to do a lot of things that a lot of people can't do you have access to knowledge you meet people you travel you have the creative ability of being able to write your material see it filmed cutting it producing it put it on the air and it pays pretty well too but the biggest factor is it's just a it's a desire if you like to learn if you like to grow if you like to experience television news affords you that opportunity i can't think of anything else that i would rather be doing that's your basic clean show you did a nice job [Music] [Music] you