A Year in Pictures of Working

Job #1: TV-47 Cameraman

When I was 16 I spent the summer in this building working as a cameraman for Hometown, Ohio’s local television station, TV-47. It wasn’t much of a station, mostly set up to air local high school sporting events (and those weren't even live, but taped and then aired the next day). There was also a morning show, a noon news, an evening news and a late night news. Every day I was the cameraman for all of these shows. I was constantly driving back and forth to work, technically only working (and being paid) for forty hours a week, but from 6am to midnight, I was always on my way to or from work.

There was very little actual news to be reported. A large percentage of each newscast was simply pulled from the satellite feeds. Over that one summer I say half a dozen reports on bungee jumping accidents because there was nothing else to fill the time.

I’m not sure why, but everyone at the studio seemed to hate the weatherman. During the commercial break the anchors would sing “Bring in the Clowns” as the weatherman would come out to the green screen to give his forecast. He did his best to ignore them and remain professional.

I only worked there for the summer. When the high school student cameramen went back to school, the only people they could find who would take the job for minimum wage were senior citizens. I tried to train a few of them but they seemed baffled by the cameras and whenever the director would bark orders at them through their headsets, they would become frazzled and shout back things like, “I’m doing my best here,” in the middle of a live news broadcast.

TV-47 didn’t last very long.

# posted by Arnie : 7:39 PM