In the second discovery session with Technical Manager of Late Night with Seth Meyers on NBC, Lane McFarland, we got more insight into the control room workflow and TM's needs of the software.
For each interview, we prepared separate scripts to ask more contextual questions per participant.
For the interview with the Technical Manager, we focused on daily responsibilities, who they work with and pain-points with carrying out their work.
Our Script for our Technical Manager Interview
Interview walkthrough with the Lane McFarland, Technical Manager for Late Night with Seth Meyers on NBC, at 30 Rock NYC on January 28th, 2019.
Interview walkthrough with a Technical Manager at 30 Rock in New York City
Lane is a Tech Manager. His role is similar to that of a Technical Production Manager (TPM), but he does more management and scheduling and is working on the network side. TPMs work on the cable side, while Tech Managers and Production Managers work on the network side (network side is free and has millions of viewers; meanwhile cable side isn’t free and has less viewers). Lane works primarily a network show, Late Night with Seth Meyers. When that show is off he will fill in for cable shows like Nightly news and the Today Show.
Manage crews and resolve staffing problems
Keep track of guests in iNews
Keep chaos at a minimum
Lane has been in TV since 1996. He has been a Technical Manager for a little over 3 years.
Someone from the show sends a note of who the guest is.
A Technical Production Manager (TPM) sends a list out to Media Traffic via e-mail.
Media Traffic sends back the REMs via e-mail.
The TM prints out the rundown and gives it to the Technical Director (TD).
The TD routes the signals manually (they assign the RSes) and works with audio to make sure everything is running properly.
iNews
Excel
Outlook
Phones
Sharing is an issue.
Many different shows can vie for a live shot so while one show has control of a shot, other shows will need to wait.
There are too many pieces to the current workflow.
Different shows may have different workflows. The network side and cable side also have very different workflows.
Nightly News has their own production manual and so does the Today Show.
Different control rooms do things differently, and the same show could be in different controls rooms at different times of the day.
During specials and breaking news, emails are used to keep track of guests - it is usually chaotic.
There’s not enough time to keep printing new live shot sheets.
There can be a lot of verbal communication between the TD and audio since the TD doesn’t always have time to keep re-printing live shot sheets out.
Ability to see all pertinent information in one view without having to go to many different pages.
Window is an important piece of data to see.
Notifications (i.e., if another control room is trying to take ownership of a live shot you have control of) should pop-up and users can action on them directly
Bigger UI is important in order to see everything easily at a glance
The control room is constantly looking at iNews because things can change without anyone alerting the control room.
Lane’s team does not use Guest Tracker.
In network, audio engineers assign mics and IFBs.
Currently, the method of “taking” and “grabbing” is done by the TDs who have a panel they manually route.
In the control room, the act of transferring control room ownership is referred to as “Swinging”
Sometimes things get so chaotic within the control room that there needs to be two TDs in to handle everything.
They also need to bring another monitor into the control room to view the many new REMs during breaking news
All remotes, including NBC Sports at Stamford, route through 30 Rock.
Cable vs. Network
Cable: requires a box, is not free to everybody
Only TPMs are in cable.
Network: there are millions of viewers but it is free to everybody; gets priority since makes more money
There are Tech Managers and Production Managers in network.
