In our second discovery session with Senior Technical Production Manager of Deadline White House, Anthony Amador, we got more insight into the control room workflow and TPM's needs of the software.
For each interview, we prepared separate scripts to ask more contextual questions per participant.
For the interview with the Senior Technical Production Manager, we focused on daily responsibilities, who they work with and pain-points with carrying out their work.
Our Script for our Technical Production Manager Interview
Interview walkthrough with the Anthony Amador, Senior Technical Production Manager for Deadline White House on MSNBC, at 30 Rock NYC on January 28th, 2019.
Interview walkthrough with a Ad Product Integration manager at NBC in New York City
Anthony is a Technical Production Manager. He is assigned Deadline White House but he also works on special projects and newly launched shows. His role involves a lot of creative and dynamic thinking, as the control room is a chaotic environment where things are changing instantaneously.
Serve as the front-line manager between news (their client) and tech ops.
Clients are the various editorial desks/bureaus such NY, LA, Southeast, Washington D.C., London, CNBC, NBC News
Gather and centralize information from many different sources so they can execute the live shot plan in the control room.
Anthony has been in TV for 30 years. He has been a Technical Production Manager for 15 years.
The booking department that services dayside finds the guest, books the guest, and enters them into Guest Tracker.
Guest Tracker generates an alert to the TPC. The alert contains the studio they want to book to accommodate the guest.
TPMs have a shared inbox in outlook with the TPCs.
iNews has a list of all studios.
TPCs book the studio.
80% of studios are outside vendors.
TPC input all the of the information about the guest and all the information the TPM needs to put together the show into the iNews Desk Log.
TPM goes into the iNews Desk Log and creates an Excel sheet called the Live Shot Sheet. They input all information except the REM and P.O. #.
Each TPM does this slightly differently but they all have the same information essentially.
There is one sheet for each hour they will be on air.
TPM emails the sheet to Media Traffic.
Media Traffic books the transmission lines and inputs the REM and P.O. #.
Media Traffic used to be known as Media Traffic; the department’s name changed because we are moving away from satellites.
Media Traffic sends the sheet back to the TPM.
TPM finishes filling in any information they need to and transfers the following information to iNews: RS, IFB, and PL.
Remote Source: where we route it to (the control room)
IFB - where the guest hears our programming
PL - where the technicians hears our directors
TPM takes it into the control room and tells the Technical Director (TD) that the information is all ready. The TD executes the plan for that hour.
The TPM instructs the TD to move the button switcher in the control room to route lines based on the iNews rundown.
A director calls incremental orders in steps called “takes” that goes down each row in the Live Shot Sheet. A TD will move the RS switch for each take.
TPMs do all the booking for primetime.
Primetime may have specific bookers for those shows. However, the exception is that if the TPM is not in, then the booker goes through a TPC.
Primetime bookers do not use Guest Tracker, they only use phone calls and e-mails.
Their workflow is very fluid.
iNews
Guest Tracker
Excel
Outlook
Phones
ScheduAll
TPMs gather information from so many different places and they need to search through so many sources.
A TPM’s workflow really varies depending on the client. All of the clients communicate in their own way.
There are different forms of communication between the different departments.
There are 3-5 places to look in iNews alone.
There can be 50,000 e-mails/day.
The control room environment is very fast paced and shots change often.
Reporters aren’t always where they say they need to be.
Often change the order of blocks around.
A centralized workflow so that there is one place where a TPM can gather their information.
I.e., in a perfect world, everyone would first register their guests into Guest Tracker.
Big UI is important to TPMs because they want to easily see all the information they need.
Ability to see the following information at a glance:
Window
Hit Time
Studio Location
Studio Contact
Transmission
Name of Guest
REM #
IFB - where the guest hears our programming
PL
RS - Remote Source: where we route it to
P.O. # - Purchase order number: TPMs need to do invoice reconciliation
TPMs need to signal that a show is ready for air.
Media Traffic should signal that they have reviewed the live shot.
Each hit time needs to generate its own P.O. #.
Objects should expire at 3 AM following the last show aired with the option to extend.
The ability to drag live shots around a time blocks would be useful since things are very dynamic in the broadcasting world.
There are 2 different categories of people on TV: reporters + anchors and guests.
These 2 worlds come together in the control room.
Anchors generally are based in a home base studio because they have a recurring show.
Guest don’t occur in a single studio because they are news dependent.
There are 2 different paths: dayside and primetime. These are 2 different workflows and dayside their biggest client.
Every TPM does 2 shows - dayside and primetime.
There’s a lot of nuance to their workflow and it’s not a straightforward line.
Pertinent information on the Live Shot Sheets:
Window
Hit Time
Studio Location
Studio Contact
Transmission
Fiber, Satellite, Vivex, LTN
Name of Guest
REM #
IFB - where the guest hears our programming
PL
RS - Remote Source: where we route it to
P.O. # - Purchase order number: TPMs need to do invoice reconciliation
TPMs use ScheduAll to do live shot verification
The live shot sheet organizes live shots by hit times into blocks.
There are 16 total IFBs and PLs.
Directors are constantly looking at iNews.
When they book outside vendor studios, they typically all have their own requirements and ways of communicating.
Anthony typically books most of the weekend shows that don’t have steady TPM.
TPMs are not allowed to call the affiliate stations directly for booking; only the NBC News Channel desk in North Carolina can contact affiliates.
There are different editorial desks/bureaus with different workflows:
Desk = a group of editors
Main New York desk
Uses iNews logs
Los Angeles Bureau
Don’t have any logs - prefers everything via email
Works very verbally
Washington D.C. Bureau
Uses iNews logs
South East Bureau
Don’t have any logs - prefer phone calls
London - handles everything EU, Russia, and some Asia
Asia has their own desk as well
CNBC
NBC News in Charlotte, NC
TPMs deal with the anchors. Working with them is very involved; there are lots of cameras and monitors required.
Windows booked for a show are dependent on the client. They can be 15 mins before and after the hit time, for example.
Objects should expire at 1 AM with the option to extend in case a TPM makes a mistake. It’s very daunting if an object disappears from the list when a window ends.
Some objects also never have an expiration date.
TPCs work for TPMS.
