WINOL - 5 October

This week was not our best week. I think everything will improve now as wehave hit rock bottom. Most of our problems were technical in the studio but the reporters packages were not too bad. They are learning quickly and are having fewer problems with the camera like white balancing and focus. To add to the worst week of WINOL this year we had Rachel Hepworth in from ITV Meridian. She was very complimentary and gave us some great feedback.

We tried to do an OB from the newsroom today which did not go to plan. Everything was set up but the sound was not checked until about 2, as we were starting rehearsals. This problem was not able to be fixed so we had to move the interview in to the studio. This was a decision made at 2.45 which I think was a little too late. It meant that there was not a full run through, the interviewee, Felicity did not get to have a full run through and although the sport presenter, Sam was really good, he too did not get much of a rehearsal.

We missed our first deadline of 3pm and decided to go 10 minutes later which also got missed and we finally went 'live' at 3.15pm. Which is extremely late for us. We can not miss our deadline of 3pm. We are imitating a live television broadcast and in reality if we were to miss our deadline we would be in deep water, it just would not be done.

The headlines were not recorded until 1.20pm which is over an hour late. This was due to bad organisation, and people not knowing what they were meant to be doing. I have always been completely organised and ready for any eventuality, like breaking news but that has come with weeks of practice and things going wrong that I have then learnt from and not allowed it to go wrong again. Jack is still learning and he will learn from the mistakes he has made from the last two weeks.

We have had an ongoing problem with the script. It is not laid out correctly, it does not work on the autocue so we have to type it up and this week there were not enough scripts in the gallery or the studio. We need at least six scripts for everyone but we only had three.

Reachel said that she had no idea who was in charge or who was doing what in the gallery and this was true. An outsider should be able to walk in to the gallery and know what job everyone is doing, it is that clear. However I was running in and out making sure everything was working and running to the loan counter to check on batteries and wires, when this should have been done earlier in the day. Jack should have been doing this instead of being director but due to a shortage in the amount of people on the production team he had to take up more roles. This did not help anyone in the studio and another person should have been found.

We can only get better from now on and I think everyone has now seen how hard they have to work to get the bulletin out. On the surface when it is good everything flows but when it is not flowing so well everything can fall apart. We have to be organised and stick to deadlines.