How COVID Changed Television Production Forever

Five years ago, the TV industry rose to the occasion to keep news programs, talk shows, late-night and live-to-tape entertainment shows on the air during the harshest months of lockdown and quarantines at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Interviews with 10 industry insiders – including ABC News’ Linsey Davis, CBS News’ Tony Dokoupil and Fox News’ Bill Hemmer – are woven together to take a long look back at the technological innovation, ingenuity and the inevitable on-air mishaps that characterized the ominous early months of the pandemic. The discussion also explores the lasting changes that have taken root long after social distancing mandates have gone away.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Our show Prime launched on February tenth of twenty twenty.
We were making all these plans about how we were
going to be collaborative. We had a brand new team assembled,
and then all of a sudden, within a month.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
We weren't ready for a virtual control room. We had
no real infrastructure in place.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
The day I realized it was real is the day
the Big Eiaest basketball tournament was canceled.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
It felt like one of those movies where you're like
one you wake up and you're wandering through the streets
and a place that's normally bustling is absolutely lifeless.

Speaker 4 (00:48):
Welcome to Strictly Business Varieties weekly podcast featuring conversations with
industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm
Cynthia Littleton, co editor and Variety. We don't typically do
a cold open on this show. That this isn't a
typical episode of Strictly Business. We depart from our standard

(01:09):
solo interview format to take a long look back five
years ago when COVID sank its Pointy Corona fangs into
New York and soon after the rest of the country.
We didn't know it then, but March twenty twenty marked
a huge inflection point for the television business. Stay at
home orders, masks, and antigen tests. It all seems so

(01:33):
distant and not so distant all at once. The story
of how COVID helps supercharge the streaming business and the
streaming wars has been well documented in recent years, but
another big TV story unfolded during the early months of
lockdown that hasn't gotten as much attention. Old fashioned linear

(01:53):
TV rose to the occasion to keep local and national
news outlets on the air. The same was true for
daytime and late night talk shows and live to tape
entertainment such as ABC's America's Funniest Home Videos. The first
few weeks of the pandemic spurred more seat of the
pants innovation to broadcast operations in engineering than had been

(02:18):
done since the days of Sid Caesar and Milton Berle
in the early nineteen fifties. In our business, the show
must go on, Ethos Israel, The last thing TV pros
wanted to do was serve America dead. Air times were
hard enough. By the end of twenty twenty, the death
toll from COVID in the US alone had reached a

(02:40):
staggering four hundred thousand The social distancing conditions imposed forced
producers and crew members and technicians to create virtual control
rooms on the fly. They had to figure out how
to recreate networks for communications and video collaboration tools. In
a matter of days. They ordered a whole lot of

(03:01):
digital video equipment from Amazon to assemble home bureaus in
a box for anchors. Talk shows quickly moved to create
virtual studio audiences. I've been wanting to tackle the story
of the great Scramble of the early COVID months for
several years. I had the privilege of being a fly
on the wall at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

(03:23):
in June twenty twenty one, as Colbert returned to filming
shows with live audiences at the Ed Sullivan Theater. In
those interviews, it became apparent how much daring do and
experimentation had been going on behind the scenes at a
time when production staff was spread far and wide. I
knew there were great stories there, but I didn't know

(03:44):
how good they were until I started interviewing the ten
sources that you'll hear in this episode. They shared stories
that captured this fraught period with moments of humor, moments
of meltdowns involving both tech and tikes, and some true
moments of heartbreak, and in the end, what changes really mattered,

(04:05):
what innovations stuck around? Beyond the crisis, we examine the
lasting legacy of pandemic era workarounds. I'm extremely grateful to
the sources for their time and their candid thoughts on
a most extraordinary time in their careers. My guests are
Lindsey Davis, anchor of ABC News Live Prime and World

(04:27):
News Tonight Sunday. Vin de Bona, executive producer of one
of TV's longest running series, ABC's America's Funniest Home Videos,
Chris Dinan, executive producer of ABC News World News Tonight,
Tony de Koppel, anchor of CBS Mornings, Bill Hemmer, co
anchor of America's Newsroom on Fox News. Jason Kurtz, executive

(04:51):
producer and showrunner of The Drew Barrymore Show, Simone Swink,
executive producer of Good Morning America, SHAWNA. Thomas Excus, executive
producer of CBS Mornings, John Tower, Senior broadcast producer of
CBS Mornings, and Scott Wilder, Executive Vice President of Production
and Operations for Fox news media. Their stories are coming

(05:14):
right up after this break, and we're back with the
story of how TV rose to the occasion to stay
on the air during the pandemic. I started each interview
with the question, when did it sync in that COVID
was going to change the way you work. Here, we'll
hear from ABC's Chris Dinan, CBS's John Tower, and ABC's

(05:38):
Lindsay Davis and Simone Swink.

Speaker 5 (05:40):
When it first began, it seemed somewhat unreal because of
the extent and scope of what people were saying was
going to happen. The idea that America would essentially shut
down was just shocking.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
It didn't quite feel real until the day that we're
up in corporate they had decided to and we were
over in uh West fifty seventh Street over in the
CBS Broadcast Center, and there were sort of rumblings that they're,
you know, they're they're they're talking about something. We know

(06:17):
that they're they're something's happening. And then at the end
of the day we had we had gone home after
the show and I I remember I was on my
way home and I got a call from a colleague
saying they're shutting the broadcast center down, and and it
was it was that abrupt. It was like we were

(06:38):
like okay, and so immediately the question was where are
we going to do the show from? And it wasn't
like we're going to send everybody home. It was again
the pandemic was new. It was just like and so
somewhere it was. It was almost like a corporate decision,
like having the virus around this particular building is not

(07:01):
a risk that we want to take, and so you
have to find another building to broadcast from, which you know,
now in hindsight, seems ridiculous because you're just moving, You're
just moving to another risky space. But that's what we did.
And they decided that we're going to go to DC
because you know, as you also remember in like New

(07:22):
York was sort of like a hotbed.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
I remember the night that it really became real for
us and the NBA canceled a game, and it was
just a moment unlike anything I've ever I've been reporting
for about twenty five years and I have not you know,
it was just I remember texting even you know, friends

(07:47):
of mine about and they were like, wait, no, that
can't be happening, you know, and then it was just
a domino effect of you know, people just I think
the governor of Pennsylvania started telling people, don't go to work,
you know, don't go to school, and it just became
really real, very quickly.

Speaker 6 (08:04):
I think the moment that the company and the show
started creating protocols for how people would be tested and
how people would come to work, and when it really
sank in is that people would have to quarantine. Because
right around that mid March date, about fifteen of us
had to quarantine at home and couldn't come to work.

(08:25):
Right then everybody else was like, what do you mean
you can't come to work? And how is this going
to work? And how are we going to do it?

Speaker 4 (08:30):
CBS is Tony du Koppel remembers taking a fateful call
at the gym.

Speaker 7 (08:35):
The moment I realized this was going to be different
is when I was at the gym and I got
a call this two or three weeks later from Diana Miller,
our former executive producer, and she was like, they've found
COVID at the broadcast center. They're shutting it down. We're
doing the show from Washington tomorrow. You got to get

(08:55):
on a train. Now limit your contact, and I was like,
what is limit my contact? I mean in a room
of one hundred people at a gym. We go to DC.
It's a super weird show because we have no news
reason to be in DC. We have this crisis reason
for being in DC. And then I go back to
the hotel room that night, and in my memory, anyway,

(09:16):
that's the night when I'm watching TV talking to my
wife the news breaks that the NBA shutting down the season.
Tom Hanks and Rita his wife are coming forward and
saying we have it, and Cuomo and Trump and every
other leader you might turn to to say something stabilizing. Suddenly,

(09:37):
in my view as just a citizen of the country,
looking at people and being like, they don't seem like
they have it under control anymore. This seems scary. We
don't have a broadcast center, we don't have a sports league,
we don't have leaders that seem to know what's going on.
I don't know what happens from here. That's when it
really landed like we're going somewhere hard.

Speaker 4 (09:55):
As Covid descended, Drew Barrymore was in pre production ready
to launch her daytime talk show that September. Showrunner Jason
Kurtz remembers the nervousness of the moment.

Speaker 8 (10:07):
It was my first in person Withdrew in March. It
was early March. I had come on in feb so
it was our first I was at our apartment and
we were like kind of like talking about staffing and
structure and getting into the bodies that we were going
to bring on and all these great people. And it
literally was the day that things started to heat up,

(10:32):
and we were both looking at each other like wait,
and I was like, I got a text that the
bridges and tunnels are closing. It was like, you know
in New York, like the rumor started, and I was like,
that's strange, and we both kind of were looking at
each other, getting a lot of texts from people, and
I was like, maybe we should just hit pause and
figure out, like what's going on in the world. And
then literally like three days later, everything shut down.

Speaker 4 (10:54):
Another question I asked all ten sources was what was
the first things your teams do to build alternatives to
your studio and technology setups. Here, we'll hear from Fox
News's Scott Wilder, ABC's Lindsay Davis and Simone Swink and
then Wilder again.

Speaker 9 (11:12):
So it became clear immediately that we were going to
need to start broadcasting from locations outside of our building.

Speaker 10 (11:19):
Really, the.

Speaker 9 (11:21):
Premise at the time was that we weren't going to
be able to broadcast from here at all, like we
were going to need to be cleared from this building.
And so that was the moment that it hit me
that we were going to have this immediate need to
start broadcasting from someplace else. And does that mean that
we're going to go find the location where we send
all of our people or what actually happened where people

(11:43):
start broadcasting from their homes. So you know, that was
the immediate order, and right away we went out and
just started contacting and working with all of our talent
and going to their homes and figuring out what we
can do it each one of them. There was none,
no two that were the shame. They were all a

(12:04):
little bit different.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
My husband, who at that point was working from home
as well, doubled as then my engineer. So he set
up a hole and I'd posted a picture of it
on Instagram at the time. We set up a little
we made our TV into kind of it. Over the
shoulder that had the graphic that said ABC News Live
Prime and set up a desk. And at the time,

(12:29):
my son was six and so we were in the
basement and we did not ever put a lock on
that door or anything. So he just kept coming down
during the broadcast like whispering, you know, as if that
was okay while we're trying to you know, run this
teleprompter remotely and do the broadcast. So needless to say,

(12:51):
we only ever did it one time remotely and and
the rest of the times I just said, look, it's
just it just makes more sense for me to come in.

Speaker 6 (13:01):
We really sort of hit the deadline, Like on Friday,
we were still putting the rundown together the usual way,
and by Monday we you know, you actually can do
a lot of things from home. It's not ideal. It
added five steps to every part of the process, but
it's possible. The one thing I will say is that
we had a group of people who came in every
single day for three four years into the control room.

(13:24):
And without that group of people, you couldn't get the
rest of the show on. So ninety eight percent of
the staff could be from home, but that two percent
kept it on the air every day.

Speaker 9 (13:31):
You know, it was like zone defense. We were just
trying to get people, and we tried to look where
people live. I have a new photographer who lives in
New Jersey and an anchor who lives in New Jersey.
Marry that team up together. I have a new photographer
who lives on Long Island or an anchor lives on
Long Island. That's a team Westchester, Connecticut, and you know,
so on and so forth, keep going. And that's how

(13:55):
we started going back to the edict that it not
it look and sound like Fox News for the viewers.
You know, the hardest part of it. You know, listen,
there's no guest, right these anchors and contributors were in
their home. You're really talking about a glorified live shot.
It's one camera, you know. But now they're anchoring programs. Yeah,

(14:18):
you need teleprompter, you need return video. They're taking press
conferences all day long. They need to interact, and so
you know, really we just relied very heavily. I'm talking
about in the immediate days and those you know, I
really call it a ten day period. I think we
set up over forty home studios within ten days. And

(14:39):
you know, we were relying on the anchors home you know,
internet connection.

Speaker 10 (14:46):
Again.

Speaker 9 (14:46):
You know there's a story that I know it's been
told before, but you know, we had an anchor who
was on TV and their children were playing video games
and we saw degradation in the video quality immediately. So
you know, we had a team of like four people
who were just driving from place to place repairing, fixing, advising,
setting up in addition to the people who were running
those So but again, you know, that all came Honestly,

(15:11):
it may sound cliche, but it came from the top.
We had our leadership who never left the building. They
were here every single day, Suzanne and Jay in particular,
along with several you know others, But they were in
the building every single day. Kind of you know, not
kind of action, steering the ship and giving the guidance
of how we wanted to, you know, make it through

(15:33):
this pandemic that nobody had had any experience, no blueprint.

Speaker 11 (15:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (15:38):
Vin de Bona, the Maestro of Affe, had only one
more show to tape for the twenty nineteen twenty twenty
TV season when lockdown orders upended TV production. Here he
explains why he was one and done with the idea
of doing affe with Alfonso Ribeiro hosting from his home.

Speaker 11 (15:59):
We realized that if we didn't figure out a way
to make it work for the show, you know, who
knows what would have happened with broadcast. So the first
thing that happened is we did one show called at
Home with AFV, and literally it was at home with Alphonso,

(16:26):
who was running his own camera, running his own prompter,
did his own lights. I directed through Zoom, but we
really directed together and he was the sole person on
the show, and we did wrap arounds in different areas

(16:48):
of his house, the kitchen, the living room, the pool,
by his RV, and we put the first show together,
all on Zoom, all linked together with each of our
staff members, and then we would look at the playback

(17:10):
reels that we're going to go into the show. We
would build them and then view them as a team.
Everything was teamwork, really teamwork, and it was it was
actually fairly easy to get it all together. The toughest
part wasn't the video. The toughest part was making sure

(17:34):
audio was great. It's sometimes hard to hear the nuances
when you know when you're on zoom.

Speaker 4 (17:41):
Let's drill down on the ingenuity the cruise techs and
engineers demonstrated under pressure. Here we'll hear from John Tower,
Simone Swink, Vin de Bona and Tower again.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
Over the course of fifteen hours, they had to set
up an entire workable control room and show for the
next day, and under probably normal conditions. I'm just using
like an example that one you maybe give a team
like that a week maybe two to do that, and

(18:14):
they had literally the night.

Speaker 6 (18:16):
One thing that the news division did very quickly was
figure out and build at home sort of kits that
a team could swoop in and set up and so
that everybody could broadcast from home. And then as long
as we could work it out from the control room,
you could actually have all three main anchors from home
in a given broadcast. And that being able to do

(18:36):
that so quickly and realized that we could get on
the air and just sort of adjust the shots from
there gave us a lot of flexibility. It also meant
that we didn't have to substantially change part parts of
the show.

Speaker 11 (18:48):
It was just a few were a viewer.

Speaker 6 (18:49):
The aesthetic changed a little bit because people weren't next
to each other physically, but they were next to each
other in boxes at times got story.

Speaker 11 (18:58):
Our set designer created an idea to build these stacks,
and by stacks, I mean vertical columns with three flat
screens in each column, and the total amount of Zoom
audience members would be ninety six and they'd be broken

(19:20):
up into these three columns. So Al would walk around
studio and he'd walk by a column or two columns,
and the audience saw him live to studio by a
zoom and it was quite an undertaking. We wound up
having four additional technicians in the process. So basically what

(19:47):
we had was each operator had two computers. Each computer
had sixteen people that they were culling from the Zoom
audience to control. So the total was each person had
thirty two people times three, which wound up being ninety six.

(20:11):
And so the three technicians operating the computers would make
sure the signal was strong. We sent out a three
page memorandum to audience members. Audience Plus was the company
that secured audiences for us, and it wasn't just La,

(20:32):
it was all around the country. They put out a
blast and people would write in saying yes, I'd like
to be on the show, Yes I can guarantee you
four hours of my time. Don't wear any identifying t shirts,
no licensed art on the wall, so all of that

(20:52):
had to be taken care of.

Speaker 7 (20:54):
And then.

Speaker 11 (20:56):
These ninety six accumulated video audience members. Then it was
assigned to one producer who would say you up in
the upper corner, be more attentive, you know, or we're
going to go to a break if you guys want
to take a bath. All that stuff through another producer,

(21:21):
and actually we wound up having al talked to the
home viewers asking them, you know, how many you want
to go to raise hands? And it was it was
kind of fun. So we really had as complete an
audience situation with laughs and reactions as we had in studio,

(21:42):
and it was it was actually a great look and
and we kind of missed it when we into studio.
But it was a lot of work. And of course
the other thing was we had to pretest the crew
two days before they would show up in studio, right

(22:04):
and we had to pay them for the test. So
it was a full day to test them. And then
on studio day we'd have to back up key crew
members like lighting director, technical director, and probably one cameraman
and a few other studio people just to make sure
on that last day when they came in and tested

(22:26):
that they were fine.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
So eventually we made our way to ad Solvent Theater
and because Stephen Colbert was off and that was sort
of like our last that was the last space that
was available to use that they were comfortably using. It
took very very minimal amount of crew at that point
they had This was probably a couple of weeks in
to the actual lockdown, the start of the pandemic, and

(22:51):
we had started a Wrapprehensier un masking, which seems late
and quaint now looking back, but like we'd started a
rapprehends her on masks game. And so we were we
were a few of us. It was like probably four
or five of us with a director and a TV
UH in a in a uh Asulivent theater control room

(23:13):
with our anchors remote, all just putting the show on.
All the producers were remote. People had started to like
they'd been using UH. They had developed a system for
saving for remote editors, firing up remotely dating videos onto
you know UH drop boxes that again we did we

(23:35):
were not using often or ever before the pandemic, and
so the technologies that we sort of still use now
where people are you know, it actually makes you know,
obviously clips and in material available in a in a
like sort of a much more remote way. But all those,

(23:58):
all those systems were being built on the flot by
trying to figure out how to get you know, stories
in the air. There are a couple of shows where
we really really didn't have many elements at all. We
were just sort of like doing the show on a
very minimal basis. So when we were in ed Solvent Theater,
I remember when we first got over there, there was
a there's a moment when they kicked us out of

(24:19):
DC and we're like, so where we're going to go next?
And so they had come up with a solution with
ED Solvent Theator because it was really one of the
only control rooms left. There are questions of whether or
that was going to be We're going to use a
freelance control room, like some sort of like hired control
room somewhere, and then they had decided on ed Solvent Theater.
And the reason why they had to signed ED Solvent

(24:39):
Theator I think is because they it still had the
connectivity of our other available control rooms. You could still
patch into, like, you know, whatever they needed to patch
into what.

Speaker 4 (24:50):
Stands out in your mind now as a memory. Then
that reinforced for you the scope of the crisis. The
answers were intriguing. We'll hear from Chris Dinan, followed by
John Tower.

Speaker 5 (25:01):
We had an internal intelligence breathing from a former member
of the government who was very high ranking and very knowledgeable,
and he very matter of factly laid out what was coming,
and it all seemed it all seemed to be a
little unreal, but he was so even keeled and how
he presented it, it seemed like it was a rational

(25:24):
explanation of what we could expect. And then at one
point he mentioned a number seven hundred thousand, and that
number was what he was predicting and experts were predicting
would be fatalities, would be the number of Americans killed.
And I remember sitting back and really being struck by
that number because it was such an enormous figure. I mean,

(25:45):
that's the number of people who died in the US
Civil War, the bloodiest conflict of the country's history.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
While we were in the very deep, deep parts of
the early pandemic in that unsullivant control room. Our my
Land producer Rachel had set up a very analog board
with cases and deaths and the cases in Death's ball.
She'd update every day when she came in and the
new cases, and it took on a very it was

(26:13):
a very present reminder for us of like how dangerous
this thing was, because at some point it was the
numbers were unfathomable for how many people had died and
how many people were getting sick, and they were when
they were really tracking it, when they were really starting
to track it. But like right in the early days
when like we were starting to get numbers, and part

(26:33):
of our broadcast was singularly focused on, like what's the
new number, what's the new cases, what's the new death number?
And so that was just a very real present thing
on the show. But also like right behind us in
the wall in the control room, it was just cases
in death, death number, and so the it was just
always over our shoulder literally.

Speaker 4 (26:53):
For they came into work in Midtown newsrooms, the city
affectionately known as Zoo you was a ghost town. Chris
Dinan shares a vivid memory, as does CBS Mornings Shanna
Thomas and ABC's Lindsay Davis.

Speaker 10 (27:09):
It was unlike anything I'd ever seen, certainly in Manhattan.

Speaker 5 (27:12):
I maybe saw two dozen people during the course of
that very very long bike ride, when you would normally
see hundreds, if not thousands. Fine, and it was in
every way like a classic sci fi movie pose Apocalypse.
There was you know, a few people that draggled on
the streets and nothing else. So that really I still

(27:33):
remember how that felt.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
It was.

Speaker 10 (27:35):
It was memorable.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
New York City was a ghost top. It was an
actual it felt like it felt like one of those
movies where you're like wander You wake up and you're
wandering through the streets and a place that's normally bustling
is absolutely lifeless, And it was actually exactly like that.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
It was strange, you know, I would feel like I
was in this mood, you know a movie where you
they're like turning the radio channels and you know you
don't hear anything on it, you know, when those like
kind of end of Days movies, yea, and people are
just kind of looking for a signal to say, you know,
is anybody out there? Because the highways would just be empty.

(28:16):
I mean, there were It was not uncommon for me
to leave my house and go into Manhattan and maybe
I'd see five cars that whole trip, you know, I
mean it was and even once you got into Manhattan,
it was desolate, you know.

Speaker 7 (28:36):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
And and we actually had gotten some passes printed out
I remember uh from the city basically saying that we
were essential workers in case there was you know, it
never got to that point where I had to show
anybody that paperwork. But I think it was so unknown
that ABC just wanted to prepare for any sin in

(29:00):
case you got pulled over or whatever might happen, that
we could prove that, you know, we had to still
be on the road and go to work.

Speaker 4 (29:08):
How did your colleagues adjust to radically different working conditions.
Chris Dinan, Jason Kurtz, and Tony da Koppel discuss.

Speaker 5 (29:17):
It was interesting how quickly people adapted. They just had
ways to work around issues and work around problems and
make something happen. And I always look back at that
time as a very innovative time or you know, an
industry that had never operated like that. Nobody generationally had

(29:37):
experienced anything like this, so it was completely new.

Speaker 10 (29:40):
At one point.

Speaker 8 (29:41):
It was like, you know, we found out there was
definitely not going to be a studio audience, so we
were like, let's save the money, not build half the
set since we're not even going to have a studio audience,
and we can put that money towards technology. And we
looked into the virtual audience that we had, we called
them the vffs, and we were able to build this community.
So we had that the best we could in this

(30:03):
new normal, like that audience, energy and interaction. Then it
was no one's traveling guests aren't going to be able
to come in, So how do we now overcome that obstacle?
And that's when we started looking into green screen technology
and virtual studios, and luckily we were able to build
a green screen studio in Los Angeles and basically teleport

(30:28):
guests into our studio in a seamless way that you
wouldn't even know a lot of times Spiels didn't even know.
And we were able to get Drew and Lucy obviously
in New York, but then Cameron via the La Studio
and that became our premiere. So what long story short,
we were just constantly looking to create from ground, from scratch,

(30:51):
and that really benefited us because we weren't struggling looking backwards.
We were only looking forwards.

Speaker 7 (30:58):
I tried to convince myself I was like gay least
so I'd interviewed before, and who used to put a
suit on to walk from the top floor was Brownstone
down to the basement to go to work as a writer,
And that was kind of like what I did. I
got up, I put a suit on, and I walked
from the living room down one floor to the basement
and tried to be a professional, but it was. It

(31:19):
was a very unfinished basement with water bugs let's call them,
we won't say cockroaches crawling up out of the drain
on a nightly basis, and you had to throw vanity
out the window because you're doing your own makeup. The
lighting is the best it can be. Everything has a
kind of ghoulish severe quality to it, and.

Speaker 10 (31:40):
You and you go for it.

Speaker 7 (31:42):
It's amazing how quickly people got comfortable with.

Speaker 10 (31:46):
Not really.

Speaker 7 (31:49):
Not crystal clear pictures and not crystal clear sound.

Speaker 8 (31:52):
And that's also when we decided to sort of create
a hybrid live model, knowing the celebrity interviews were going
to be hard for us timing wise, because we were
live at nine am in New York. So then we
started post taping and taping the celebrity interviews when the
timing worked out better, and we sort of created this
hybrid model of the top of the show, which was

(32:14):
Drew's News Live, a live segment after that, and then
we would drop in a pre recorded edit it celebrity interview,
and then we would finish the show. Yeah, I think
it was just being creative within everything that was coming
at us at once.

Speaker 4 (32:29):
Bill Hemmer of Fox News simply could not stay home bound.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
I found it very difficult to replicate the energy from
a basement at Sag Harbor, New York. And I'm a
people person absolutely. I think I get energy from others
and hopefully I give them a little bit too, you know.
Having said that, we've reported on stories on wars, on
terror attacks all over the world for twenty thirty years,

(32:56):
and what you're doing in that scenario is you're out
and you can hear the audio in your ear, but
you're basically talking into a round circle on that camera
for hours, for days, for weeks. But yet I felt
I was I had the energy to do that, but
I just I couldn't do it from my house I tried,

(33:18):
but it wasn't It wasn't doing it for me. I
don't know how else to say it. I wanted to
be closer to the story, and working remotely, I felt
as if it was just taking me further away from
understanding what was happening day by day. Now that's not

(33:39):
to take anything away from my colleagues, either here or
elsewhere at other networks. They make their own decisions. But
for me personally, I felt a strong desire to be
in the building and it helped me with the human
connection through a story like that, which I think a
lot of people, frankly were looking for. And I'd say too,
like our CEO, she did not outsource it. She was

(34:02):
here as well, Suzanne Scott. I made some fast friends
with a bar restaurant over here on a street that
I will not name because I do not want to
get them in trouble. And there was a period where
the city reopened for a week or two, do you
remember that, and everything slamming back down again. But during
that week or two I made friends with them, and

(34:23):
they said, you know, Bill, We've got a room upstairs.
It has no windows, and you're welcome to come anytime.
And that really became a refuge for me. You know,
I'm not married, and I'm either going home to an
apartment or I'm going to what I called my COVID
speak easy. So on occasion, Cynthia I would bring a

(34:45):
colleague or a friend and we would go upstairs in
this room and you know, we could eat with them
and you know, have a beer, and maybe it's just
an hour, hour and a half time, but it gave
us something to do.

Speaker 4 (35:02):
Let's call this section anchor management. We'll hear from John Tower,
Simone Swink, and Lindsey Davis.

Speaker 2 (35:09):
Managing anchors remotely is a challenge because they don't see
or hear each other, right, so in the beginning, like
they're stepping on each other. They don't understand, like the
Gale talks and then Tony talks, and then Gail stops,
and then Tony stops, and then you know, so getting
them used to coordinating was something that I was used
to coming from Rning Joe, where most of our anchors

(35:32):
were remote saying who's next, who comes next, who does this,
who does that? And so that was a that was
a huge learning curve for them because you know, remote
show maybe having one anchor or remote on a remote
show is something that you like are used to, but
like having all three anchors who are bouncing scripts, who
are like trying to interact with each other for every topic,

(35:55):
like that's that's a sort of like a new It's
luck left brain, right brain for them, And so it
was about getting them used to hearing me in their
ear and like them being comfortable with me being like
Gail talks next. Hey, Gail talks next. Hey, Anthony talks next.
What do you mean the Anthony talks next? I have
something to say.

Speaker 6 (36:13):
We almost always had at least one anchor in the studio,
so even if they so let's say, if Michael was
in the studio and Robin was in a box and
George was in a box, there was always a way
to get the show on the air. And so, like you,
if you're used to being on deadline, you're probably also
good at improvisation even when you don't want to be.
So there was always a way to have a plan,

(36:33):
and worst case scenario, someone else's shot went down, then
whoever was in the studio could take the reins and
take us to the next reporter or have the conversation
or do the interview, and there were definitely a few
times I was trying to think of them. But there
were definitely a few times that somebody on remote Zoom
was scheduled to do an interview and something went wrong
and so someone else came took over and did the interview.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
So Flavio Juir was my audio tech who all so
doubled as my studio floor director, and it was just
the two of us every single day. So then they
started doing two week rotations, so there would be teams
basically that would be in the office for two weeks

(37:17):
and then at home for two weeks. Basically just kind
of trying to figure out the incubation period so that
you always had a plan B for I if that
team or multiple people on that team got sick, you
had reserves, so that essentially everybody wasn't going to get
sick at the same time. So I was not seeing

(37:41):
anyone except for Flavio. We were not you know, we
would we would meet on Zoom. A lot was done
through email and text, but physically, well, I'm sorry, I
would see also a hair makeup team that they would
you know, have gloves and masks and everything, but otherwise

(38:01):
in the building. Yeah, it was just it was just
the two of us.

Speaker 4 (38:05):
It's hard to believe that this story hasn't been turned
into a sitcom or a Netflix rom com. Tony Dukoppel
had an unusual situation at his home because he had
to share his basement studio with his wife, NBC News
correspondent Katie Tour. Occasionally hilarity would ensue. I understand that
your basement doubled as the NBC bureau as well as

(38:27):
the CBS News bureau. Well was that Were there any
traffic jams for you and Katie at any time?

Speaker 7 (38:33):
Huge now, because not only did it double as, but
the NBC people came down and, as I recall, un
ceremoniously moved some of the CBS stuff in order to
get their pick of corners for their setup, so they
had a longer camera shot.

Speaker 10 (38:49):
I was more squeezed.

Speaker 7 (38:51):
But on the other hand, the NBC crew, they're the
ones that took the made the investment of drilling the
enhanced Internet cable down directly from where it comes into
the house into the basement, so they, I guess they
felt they had license. But I do remember there was
like a call that I was not on but between
our crew folks and the NBC crew folks to iron
out who was disrespecting who on this, and then there

(39:14):
was like there were questions of like, well, what happens
if they both need to be on air at the
same time, And then a moment later we thought, well,
if that's the case, something even worse than this terribleness
were going through has to happen, So let's just pray
that doesn't occur.

Speaker 10 (39:27):
And it didn't.

Speaker 7 (39:28):
It didn't know, But sometimes the one thing that would happen, though,
is I would have to I'd go off air, and
then I would use the desk behind me as my
work desk during the day because i'd have the baby
upstairs and Katie would sometimes beyond, but i'd have a
script deadline. I was still trying to be productive as
I could, and the bathroom was across her camera shot,

(39:50):
so it'd have to sometimes army crawl threw her very
serious life or death conversation to take care of the
more mundane acts of daily lif and then I'd be
in my own head because I'd be thinking about a script,
so I wouldn't think about whether she's on. So you know,
if you listen closely. There's probably toilet flushes in the
background of Katchit reports during those days. Sorry, honey, Fox.

Speaker 4 (40:13):
News is Scott Wilder was not the only one to
point out the harmonic convergence that helped TV during COVID.
Video sharing platforms and cloud based collaboration tools were hitting
new strides just as the world needed to set a
virtual meeting or two. Wilder explains it.

Speaker 9 (40:32):
Well, Listen, this pandemic happened five years earlier. We would
not have had a satellite truck to send to each
person's home. The fact that we were broadcasting largely using
bonded cellular technology and the Internet that you have in
your home and I have in my home without adding
any services. Over time, we did bolster some of the

(40:54):
Internet services, but five years ago, three years ago, before
the pandem three years prior to the pandemic, we would
not have been able to do that. And so because
of that technology, we were talking about how we can
do live shots and home studios and those things with
equipment like live view and you know, your Verizon Internet

(41:18):
that you.

Speaker 5 (41:19):
Have in your home.

Speaker 4 (41:20):
Tech tools were the saviors of businesses across the spectrum
during lockdown, but Inevitably, there were snaffoos. Here's a string
of fun anecdotes from John Tower, Lindsay Davis, Simone Swink,
and Tony Dkoppel.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
There would be times when our anchor cameras would like
just disappear right, so like Gail's connection would go down ooops, yeah,
and then Tony's all go down or antheons are going down,
and you know those are okay. Our attitude about that
is like that's okay. We're in a pandemic, like we're
managed to staying we like. Our personal approach was just
like say it on the air, say it, don't try

(41:58):
to like, you know, dump in our about it, like
have fun with it. And there was in whatever respect
you can. But there were moments when you lose somebody
and you know, there's a lot of scrambling bonds scenes,
a lot of people running around, but for the show,
you just you know, go pick up Tony script and
you keep moving.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
There were definitely a few times where the packages were
not sent or sent incorrectly, or maybe there was no
sound on them. I mean, because it was just such
a and I and I felt our team really rose
to the occasion. I think it was such a baptism
by fire. Again, many of them this was their first
or second job, and they had looked to be looked

(42:40):
forward to being mentored, and now that opportunity, they were
just having to figure it out, and many of it
by trial and error. You know, there were a lot
of glitches. But I think people at home understood, you know,
that was my belief anyway, that people knew what we
were dealing with because they were trying to piece things

(43:02):
together themselves.

Speaker 6 (43:04):
When Lara Spencer went home, it was something we always
called the jokingly the Gretitch Bureau, because she and her
producer and a few other folks all of up in
Connecticut and she broadcasts from her home for I think
it was over two years did Pop News did Deals
and Steals. It would just be set up all over
parts of her house, Like Deals and Steels would be
out in the yard, Pop News would be inside in
the kitchen. One of our most memorable episodes or broadcast

(43:27):
during COVID is we really thought we had it nailed about.
I think it was a year in her producer would
drive over to her house because they were essentially their
own COVID bubble, and she would run the prompter and
the camera and Lara, as you may know from watching
our show, loves to adopt dogs and she had for
sure she had adopted a rescue that was blind, so
we had to keep he always had to be kept
out during the broadcast. And one day Dandy got in

(43:51):
and then walked into the tripod and live on air,
you know, the shots like this, and suddenly it's like this,
and Lara, to her credit, just kept broadcasting. And so
that morning Pop News was just upside down, but it
also spoke to the reality of what was going on,
Like everybody was learning how to use this technology on
air and in their lives, and it sort of helped

(44:11):
having these moments of humor that we just as a
television show would keep going with. You know, we didn't
immediately cut it. It was just it was actually quite funny,
and she's so great live that she just kept going.

Speaker 7 (44:21):
Oh and then I remember, like all kinds of SNAPf
foos happened that would never happen before. Where I'm sitting
there in a commercial break reading something on my lap
which is just out of camera shot, and somebody is
trying to tell me we're coming back from commercial but
instead of Patty or our stage director being right in
front of me, snapping her fingers, being like, Tony, you're
back at ten. I have no IFB it's fallen out.
So they just come back to me live picture of

(44:44):
me just looking down. It appears as though I'm sleeping,
like my chin is on my chest and I'm just
out cold. So it's just ten seconds of that with
Jaunty Morning Show music, and then it goes back to
commercial and everybody was like, did we just catch that
guy sleeping? So it was a it was a it
was messy.

Speaker 4 (45:03):
You don't want to miss what's coming up next. We'll
be right back with more tales of TV during COVID
after this break, and we're back with more about how
TV stayed on the air during COVID. Did you ever
have a tech challenge so bad you feared you might

(45:24):
miss your airtime or not deliver your episode on time?
Chris Dinan, Jason Kurtz, and Shawn and Thomas each paused
a bit before they answered, I don't.

Speaker 5 (45:34):
Think we ever felt like we weren't going to get
on TV. I think that there were doubts and on
certaindays about how exactly that would happen. But I mean
this is there is you know there really it's it's
a zero some dame that there is no alternative. We
have to get on television though not doing that. So
I think everybody was determined to find the ways to

(45:54):
do it, as you know, as it wasn't a there
were moments where you are uncertain where something would operate
from them, whether a piece would roll or whether you know,
something like that would happen, whether a live shot would
pop up appropriately, And those were all individual scares, but
in general, I think that there was a real determination

(46:16):
to you know, meet the challenge, do the job. And
I would say that, you know, people really made sacrifices
and they really, you know, they chose to get the
job done. I mean, David could have stayed at home
at a home studio if he had wanted to.

Speaker 10 (46:33):
Many people did, and that was an obvious choice.

Speaker 5 (46:36):
But he came every day to the set to just
send a reassuring message that you know, there were people here,
people you could trust, people who would deliver information that
are back based and in context, and I think that
the audience warmed to that.

Speaker 4 (46:53):
Did you ever think about postponing the launch from September?

Speaker 8 (46:56):
There was conversations, but they were shut down down very quickly.
We all just collectively, you know, executives at CBS, myself, Drue,
all the wonderful people that work here. It was just
this collective feeling of we're we're doing this, and we're

(47:16):
focused and maybe the world needs this bright spot right
now and hopefully we can be that. And that was
sort of just collectively how we all felt. It was
never really said out loud. It was never this big, raw,
raw mission. It just was this undertone and feeling we

(47:37):
all had together that this was we're doing this and
we'll see everyone in September.

Speaker 12 (47:42):
The thing is, and I know this is a cliche,
but I also come from a theater background. The show
must go on no matter I always think about this
show as, no matter what, at seven am Eastern time,
we're not gonna put black on air like we're gonna
do something. So however we have to do that, we

(48:03):
will make it happen. And I've never worked anywhere CBS
News or anywhere else where. Everyone does not have that
work ethic.

Speaker 4 (48:11):
Simon Swink wasn't the only one to marvel in hindsight
at how much they were able to achieve under COVID conditions.
Scott Wilder and Jason Kurtz also chime in on this subject.

Speaker 6 (48:22):
But our menu actually didn't change that much. I would
say if you took any broadcast from four years ago
at this moment and right now, it's probably the same
number of segments. Because what we found is we had
enough people that really knew how the show worked and
could figure out, Okay, I'm going to add a few
extra steps, but the guest isn't coming, so we're going
to do this on Zoom, or we're going to tape

(48:42):
interviews on zoom or whatever it might be. We can
edit from home and we can feed in this way
over various servers. We came up with enough workarounds very
quickly because it's a smart creative group, that it didn't
change our segment number. But it did really change our
production number. And the most noticeable We've always done a
lot of live performances on the show, live music performances,

(49:04):
and we couldn't do those. I mean, we had to
kick off our summer I think was to kick off
our summer concert series. We had we had a special
crew tested and we filmed Katie Perry in her backyard
singing her brand new song Daisies, and I would argue
it was actually in many ways it was very cool
that we had been forced to innovate into that because

(49:26):
we were seeing a very famous pop star bring us
a new song in a different kind of environment. You know,
it wasn't the usual slick stage production. So in some
cases the innovation's forced I think some great television.

Speaker 9 (49:40):
Our leaderships, specifically Susan Scott, who's our CEO, was very
adamant that we needed to look like we were in
television studios and needed to have a high bar of
being a professional television facility. If that facility was going
to be in an anchor's home, it didn't matter. It

(50:01):
was very important from all leadership that the viewer turned
on the TV and feel like they're watching Fox News.
People were starving for information, right These were scary times,
and so it just that was one thing that across
the board, our leadership knew that they did not want
to change. Nobody wanted to turn the TV on and

(50:22):
look at, you know, somebody's living room or kitchen.

Speaker 8 (50:25):
My memory is that none of that. We just kept
moving and we just weren't giving up and it was
just this really supportive, amazing group from CBS executives to
Drew to you know, Flower Films, Chris Miller and Amber Truesdale,
myself and everyone that just worked here. It was just
this collective and I sound Sacharine and but it really

(50:49):
just was this beautiful group of people that just had
one common goal and we were focused and we were
just not stopping. So that's really my memory, and that
was so nice and helpful, especially during such a dark
time with everything happening, that it was just this really
amazing group of people that just got to work together
and just wanted to stay focused and bring Drew to

(51:11):
everyone's home and hopefully create like just a fun, bright
little place to be.

Speaker 4 (51:18):
Of course, all of this work under extreme pressure is
being done while everyone is also dealing with personal struggles
and health threats made worse by the pandemic. Jason Kurtz,
Shawna Thomas, Simone Swink, and Lindsey Davis share hard stories.

Speaker 8 (51:36):
There was a heaviness to what we were all dealing
with personally, and you know, we all that was another
you know, silver lining, and it is that our group
bonded very fast during those times because we were supporting
each other, not just professionally but personally.

Speaker 12 (51:51):
CBS News, I believe, was one of the first COVID
clusters in New York City in March of twenty twenty.
And I know that because while I was not working
technically for CBS News, I was working for Quibi, the
now incredibly defult Quibby. But I was a development executive
that was in charge of sixty and six, which was

(52:13):
like the sixty minutes product, and in I think about
a week before maybe a week and a half before
they had to shut down the broadcast center, we had
had a launch party there that it near CBS, near
the broadcast Center, in one of the restaurants that I
remember being there with Susan Zarenski and Bill Owens, and

(52:36):
everyone was like, we're going to do this new thing.
It's going to be on Quibbi. We're making this like
mini version of sixty minutes with Seth Doane and these
other reporters and it's going to be fantastic. And I
remember looking at Zee, who I had known for a
while just through being in television news for many years,
and looking at her and we weren't wearing masks and

(52:58):
being like, am I supposed to hug you? Are we hugged?

Speaker 11 (53:00):
Like?

Speaker 7 (53:00):
What do we do right now?

Speaker 8 (53:02):
Is this real?

Speaker 11 (53:02):
Is this not?

Speaker 12 (53:03):
It goes back to kind of what Tara was saying,
and she was like, I'm a hugger. And I personally
believe I got COVID from that party, because almost soon
after that, I was going back and forth between New
York and d C because I was still partially based
in DC while working for Quibbi. And it did the

(53:28):
the fears at CBS had started. Things in New York
City had were just starting to get worse and worse.
And I basically told my boss, who also used to
be the executive producer of CBS, this morning, Ryan kdro
Ryan looking for Quibbi. It's all very incestuous, really, that
I was not going to come back to New York City.
And then a couple of days after that, I came

(53:49):
down with one hundred and two fever that did not
go away for ten days.

Speaker 6 (53:52):
We had a colleague who was quite sick and in
the hospital and she didn't she was she didn't understand
why nobody would visit her and have COVID. She had
something else, and none of us could leave our rooms
and she died, and it was like COVID is not
only disrupting regular day to day work, it's disrupting that

(54:13):
all these people can't go see a close friend and colleague.
And then we actually didn't have her funeral for another
or couldn't attend a memorial for another two years. I
was not only coming in every day at a certain point,
but that was like my only contact with the outside world,
it felt like, was to come to the studio. And
I had been dealing with a health battle because I
had found it I quite severe cancer in the middle

(54:36):
of it. So to actually be able to come to
work during all that was a lifesaver because it really
gave me something to focus on. And everybody was so
caught up and how are we solving problems that no
one's looking at the cancer patients. So for me, it
was this unexpected boon in the midst of all this
mist of all this misery and and you know, separation.

(55:02):
So I actually loved coming into work.

Speaker 12 (55:04):
There was at least one or two times where we
got one of the anchors results while they were on
TV and during a commercial break, I would come out
and be like, Hey, why don't you come with me.
Let let's go outside for a second. And I think
at least maybe once, I think I pulled Nate like
he was in a segment in one part of the
show and then suddenly not there anymore because I pulled

(55:27):
them and you put a mask on him, you put
him in a car, and you're like, you gotta go home,
go home. We need you to leave immediately, and then
retest everybody in the studio. And it seems funny now,
but then you're like, what are we going to tell
the audience? This is his own personal medical business. What
do we do they're gonna notice? And then I think
that one time we had to do two more segments,

(55:49):
didn't say anything until the end of the show, and
said a little bit of something and then got off
the air to start to figure out how we were
going to do tomorrow.

Speaker 11 (56:00):
But there was it.

Speaker 12 (56:02):
It was constantly being thrown some kind of weird curveball
about how are we going to make this work because
this virus is still going around and I still have
to figure out how to do the show and protect people.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
Unfortunately, early on it was April. My mom then got
COVID and this is before the you know, vaccine, and
it was like older people and people of color, you know,
black people, my mom's a black woman, were dying you know, regularly.
So that was really hard for me reporting on this

(56:39):
and to try to, you know, remove myself from the
emotion of when we were talking about the disproportionate you know,
the elderly and people of color who were dying, and
that was a really just the first time anything in
that way was so personal, and it made it more

(57:03):
urgent for me, you know, to almost inform people because
I wanted to know as a real kind of you know,
I don't want to say victim, but just the feeling,
the impact personally, you know, on the home front really
was was significant.

Speaker 4 (57:25):
News pros were driven by the knowledge that their work
mattered greatly. Here's Chris Dinan and Simone Swink.

Speaker 5 (57:33):
You know, I've in network news for decades now, and
I know that there's been the discussion the decline of
the broadcast networks, but during the course of this pandemic,
millions of people turned for their information to the broadcast networks.
At one point, we were having thirteen million bluers a

(57:54):
night and were the number one show across the ball
and broadcasts and came, which is a remarkable accomplishment. If
you told me that an uscasts would have that cided
number and be in that position, I don't know that
I would have thought that was possible.

Speaker 10 (58:09):
That people turned in great numbers.

Speaker 5 (58:12):
Because they knew that they would get reliable in sense
of the information that they could trust, and I thought
that was it's always been reassuring that.

Speaker 6 (58:21):
You just reminded me of one thing that I forgot
that was a very big deal during the pandemic, which
is that we kept doing deals and steals and Tory
Johnson and the show got something like one hundred and
fifty letters. She showed me a lot of them, the
number of small business owners in this country that wrote
to GMA and Tory and said, you saved our business
during the pandemic. This was the only way that anyone

(58:42):
could learn what we were doing. And so that meant
that if they were in deals and steals, and then
Tory told their story and the viewers got a deal,
so somebody bought a twelve dollars dishcloth. We literally had
people writing to us saying we were able to keep
everybody on payroll, We could close payroll people were able
to get the healthcare that they needed in order to
help the members of their family who had COVID. I mean,

(59:04):
the ripple effect just on its own from deals and
steals during that time was amazing.

Speaker 4 (59:10):
There were heroic efforts made by TV's frontline workers. Here's
Scott Wilder, Chris Dinan, and Bill Hammer.

Speaker 9 (59:18):
We asked our news photographers to kind of be the
front line of the people who were doing that with
our anchors and reporters and contributors, because they're the people
who are used to really being at the front lines
of adversity and dangerous situations and hostile situations, and so
they I like to think that they put a lot
of people at ease and they were comfortable continuing to work.

(59:43):
You know, I have to go back and give a
lot of praise to our talent.

Speaker 5 (59:45):
You know, we hadn't based anything this dramatic or to
Tonian ever in terms of our ability to cover stories.
And I would just say that there were heroic efforts
by reporters field producers who were actually out in the field,
you know, in close proximity to this terrible pandemic, doing

(01:00:06):
their jobs as best they could and doing spectacular work.

Speaker 10 (01:00:08):
And bringing home the stories of you.

Speaker 5 (01:00:11):
The terrible suffering that was going on, which I did
think over time also took a toll on the people
who were covering it and the producers who were here,
who day in and day out would see very heart
wrenching videos and people suffering and in the last throws
of their lives as.

Speaker 10 (01:00:26):
They hard to deal with, you know, the unthinkable.

Speaker 5 (01:00:29):
So it took an emotional pale on people, I'm sure,
but to a person, everyone you know, set that aside
when they had to and made a point of delivering
the news in the most objective way they could.

Speaker 3 (01:00:42):
But I would defer to my colleagues who also you know,
you didn't see a lot of them on camera because
they weren't behind the scenes, but so many of them
that they weren't just writing from different states, you know,
and producing for different stays. They were in the building.

Speaker 10 (01:00:55):
And I mentioned Suzanne, and.

Speaker 3 (01:00:59):
That is really important. That means a lot when your
leader is here. And yeah, I also think it means
a lot of viewers when they know that you're still
there for them every day, so you're.

Speaker 7 (01:01:11):
Doing what you can.

Speaker 4 (01:01:12):
Yeah, after more than a year of quarantines and ppe,
the pandemic slowly began to loosen its grip. Their return
to normal news gathering and production conditions was a process
unto itself. Here we hear from Scott Wilder, Jason Kurtz,
Vin de Bona, and John Tower.

Speaker 9 (01:01:32):
The majority of our staff cannot wait to get back,
and it was can I please have my spare bedroom back?
And I please have the space in my living room back?
I really, you know, I just can't stand. My kids
are tripping over this equipment. So yeah, I mean, you know,
those same teams who went and set them up, you know,

(01:01:52):
would would take them back. So we have a plethora
of sixty five inch monitors in this building somewhere.

Speaker 8 (01:02:00):
It wasn't until after the fact that Drew and I realized,
like we never had the benefit of a studio audience
giving direct feedback. Like we didn't even think that way
until season two when we had a studio audience and
we're like, oh, wow, they're laughing. It's not you know,
like oh my god, Like they're emoting like we It
was funny because we just didn't have it, so we

(01:02:20):
didn't think about it. And then when we had it
in season two, we're like, wow, we missed out on
like real time feedback, and so that was interesting realizing that.
But then we brought them back and we brought in
the studio audience in season two, and that sort of
obviously changed the energy of the room and brought so
much life to the show. Showed that side of drew,

(01:02:41):
that personal connection that she can get from, you know,
any individual, and just her love of the audience.

Speaker 11 (01:02:49):
Actually, we had to figure out how to reblock the show.
What we did was, and that's a really good question.
You know, we had a huge group of audience members
in bleachers and that was sort of the camera left
area of the studio, and we decided not to use

(01:03:11):
the bleachers anymore. We were still trying to figure out
if cod if COVID could kick back, you know, and
so limiting the audience. We wound up using coffee tables,
high school tables, high top tables and scattered around the

(01:03:31):
studio and it was more of a kind of a
community look than a bleacher look. And so we've kept
that and it works quite well.

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
I'm not a cranky, like get everybody back to the
office kind of person. I'm not, but I do think
that there's something lost when people aren't like actually physically
present with each other, and so like that affects the
news too, and that affects it the way we like
tell stories interact, and you know, it affects how the
anchors are. You know, the show's much better together with
then when they're like remote, you still put a shoe on,

(01:04:03):
but it's there's just there's something there. So I think
figuring that out and get and you know, getting back
to a world where we are truly together again, if
that is even a possibility, I think that that would
contribute to sort of a better product.

Speaker 4 (01:04:18):
Now that we have the benefit of hindsight. What have
been the lasting impact of changes implemented during COVID times
in twenty twenty. Once I did my fourth or fifth
media hit via Zoom, I knew that local stations and
networks would rarely, if ever again send a full crew

(01:04:38):
to our offices for a routine news interview. Here we
get perspective from Simone Swink, Scott Wilder, Chris Dinan, and
Bill Hammer.

Speaker 6 (01:04:47):
It shook up people's idea of what was possible, and
I think that's always good. This industry is always changing,
and that was at least a positive thing to come
out of it. I also think, at least for me,
I think empathy at work is really important, and I
don't think sometimes we talk about it enough. I think
a lot of people are dealing with a lot of things,

(01:05:08):
and certainly were during COVID, and you have to get
the best show on the air. It's a very competitive environment.
But I do think leading with empathy, working with empathy
and trying to assume or at least lead with the
idea that everybody is trying to do their best work
or figure out how to get them there. And that's
not always going to work. But if you start from

(01:05:30):
an empathetic but firm place, I think you're going to
end up in a better place as a broadcast. And
I also think I think COVID was a time of
immense struggle for so many people. I think so many
people had just so much. They were dealing with family,
personal struggles, the idea of just being in lockdown. It
was such a disruption to the system in general, and

(01:05:52):
I think that that meant that empathy and patience in
so many ways are emerged as key leadership characteristics in
a way that I don't think they were held up
that way prior to COVID.

Speaker 9 (01:06:05):
I think that we're prepared to respond to breaking news
in a way that we never were because in certain
instances where we've decided to keep or install or lean
on something we've already done, we still have the ability
to do that right. So that to me is the
lasting impact that we can go you know, something could

(01:06:26):
happen at three am and I can call somebody and
have them on TV within you know, fifteen minutes, as
opposed to dispatch the van getting them into this building. Yeah,
the art of learning where and when to do that,
I think is the hardware.

Speaker 5 (01:06:40):
There have been many examples, of course the American history
where you know, the country has stepped up and found
a way to deal with something challenging, and this was clearly,
you know, one of the most dramatic examples of that.

Speaker 10 (01:06:53):
So I think, you know, it's changed the cultures.

Speaker 5 (01:06:57):
As you mentioned, the phenomena of working from home is
something that people very much embrace and it's allowed.

Speaker 10 (01:07:05):
I think it's also a lot of certain confidence.

Speaker 5 (01:07:07):
I think that with the advances and technology that we
saw this time, and you know, with the kind of
success in covering the news during this time, probably as
challenging a time as there's ever been in being the
journalists because very you're very reassuring that you can do
almost anything if you know the will is there.

Speaker 3 (01:07:27):
You know, this is the birth of the live mobile van.
You have anchors now who are doing entire entire shows
from a van, like on the side of a street somewhere,
and you don't know where it is. So that's another change.
I think It's enabled us from a news gathering perspective,
to reach guests who would normally not be available to

(01:07:52):
us because I don't know, you name it, they're X
amount of miles or hours away from a studio, and
now we could send them the equipment meant where we
could broadcast their face and their image and their audio.
So that's all changed entirely, and.

Speaker 6 (01:08:08):
I think it broke some of the some of the
broadcast norms of it always has to be a crew,
it always has to be on sticks. There's many, many
ways to do things, and the combination of COVID and
also the rise of the iPhone, which had already been
going on for a while. I think viewers are much
I think viewers just want to see whatever it is,

(01:08:28):
and they are much more willing to put up with
the aesthetics of a shot that before it might have
been deemed not for broadcast. It sort of infiltrated big
ways in small ways in terms of that switch over technologically,
and I think it changed the esthetic for good. I mean,
we use zoom interviews now and a lot of pieces
in a way that we would not have five years ago.

(01:08:50):
And I think viewers are adjusted to it. They're fine
with it. I don't think they think, oh, that show
looks too different or too low budget to watch. It's
just that's how people talk to each other now of
the time.

Speaker 7 (01:09:00):
When the undeniable lasting changes, everybody got used to and
comfortable with really lower quality camera and sound that people
are setting up themselves. It was now acceptable to be like, yeah,
I'll be on your show, but I'm going to stay
in Newton, Massachusetts. Or yeah I'll be on your show,
but I'm at my third house in Wyoming for the
next week.

Speaker 10 (01:09:20):
Is that okay? Of course it is.

Speaker 7 (01:09:21):
Yeah, And that's just the reality of it. So that
was both That's a double edged sword, because the good
thing is you could do things more cheaply, but the
bad thing is they realized they could do things more cheaply,
and that always means jobs in our business.

Speaker 4 (01:09:36):
One big change that Vin de Bona and the AFV
team made to the format of the show out of
expediency has since been baked in for good.

Speaker 11 (01:09:45):
You know, up until that point, we brought audience members
in winners of not winners, but participants in the contest
in with their families.

Speaker 13 (01:09:56):
Right right, I've noticed that, yeah, right, And obviously we
couldn't do that, so we sent for each show, we
sent ring cameras and.

Speaker 11 (01:10:11):
Ring lights, with cameras and instructions and once again before
tape date, we would make sure that the signal from
their router was strong enough so that when we had
the families come on, they wouldn't freeze, which they did sometimes.

(01:10:32):
And so but basically we were sending out cause three
shows a day, we were sending out, you know, nine
sets of cameras, and then they had to return them,
and then we had to send them on to the
next group of families. So all that was keeping track
of not the easiest thing in the world, just good coordination.

(01:10:54):
But what we found was because the potent winners, we
set up a system where they came in on flat
screens three separate flat screens, and Al would walk to
screen one and chat with them, and go to screen
two and chat. The chats were much better than they

(01:11:16):
had ever been in studio, really so uh and and
interestingly enough, I talked to one of the producers on
American Idol and they had the same situation with their
home audiences and home participants, where there were much more
at ease. Al had more fun with them. So we've

(01:11:40):
kept it and it's not part of the show, and
and and it's always what's really funny is the kids
are much more at ease. And so you know, you'll
see al' sactor when we had a little girl uh
last week, and she's going like this throughout the whole thing.

(01:12:01):
She was so excited, and it makes for a great show.

Speaker 4 (01:12:04):
The television business was tested and tried during COVID. The
industry showed up with creativity and ingenuity. The shows did
stay on. Here we'll have Simone Swink, Vin de Bona,
and Lindsey Davis reflect on jobs well done, at least
for me.

Speaker 6 (01:12:22):
I think empathy at work is really important, and I
don't think sometimes we talk about it enough. I think
a lot of people are dealing with a lot of things,
and certainly we're during COVID and you have to get
the best show on the air. It's a very competitive environment.
But I do think leading with empathy, working with empathy,
and trying to assume or at least lead with the

(01:12:45):
idea that everybody is trying to do their best work
or figure out how to get them there. And that's
not always going to work. But if you start from
an empathetic but firm place, I think you're going to
end up in a better place as a broadcast. I
also think I think COVID was a time of immense
struggle for so many people. I think so many people
had just so much. They were dealing with family, personal struggles,

(01:13:09):
the idea of just being in lockdown. It was such
a disruption to the system in general. And I think
that that meant that empathy and patience in so many
ways emerged as key leadership characteristics in a way that
I don't think they were held up that way prior
to COVID.

Speaker 11 (01:13:28):
The poignant piece of that is that we kept people
working and it was a very very difficult time, but
we had work and hopefully we kept America laughing, and

(01:13:48):
you know, that's our job.

Speaker 1 (01:13:50):
Well, I think it's made us all more innovative. We're
able to see what's possible, for better or for worse.
You know, I think that there is a sense that
if anything happens, we don't all have to be physically
in the building. There are workarounds, you know. So it's
it's just a way of rather than looking at everything

(01:14:11):
as a problem, just looking at Okay, there are solutions,
and we've seen these solutions happen, and you know, people
needed to be clever. And I think that that has
really been a big statement for and this is not

(01:14:31):
just you know, for our team, but for the television
industry as a whole, just that the news is will
remain undeterred regardless of the scenario. And you know, hopefully
we do not have to enduse something like that again.
But I think we've learned a lot about what we're

(01:14:52):
capable of. Sometimes you don't know until you've really been
put to the test, and you know, we certainly were
and I think you know, we given the circumstances, I
think we all collectively really did a good job of
keeping people informed, which really is you know, our number

(01:15:13):
one mission.

Speaker 4 (01:15:16):
Well, that's our show my deepest thanks to all who
contributed to this passion project of mine that includes Strictly
Businesses amazing editor Aaron Grenewald. So thank you for listening.
Be sure to leave us a review at Apple Podcasts
or Amazon Music. We love to hear from listeners. Please

(01:15:37):
go to Variety dot com and sign up for the
free weekly Strictly Business newsletter, and don't forget to tune
in next week for another episode of Strictly Business.

Speaker 9 (01:15:47):
I think after whatever it was, ten eleven, twelve days,
my family was ready for me to come back to me.

Speaker 10 (01:15:54):
We miss you.

Speaker 9 (01:15:55):
They were ready for go, you know, they were ready
for me to go back to work. There were odd times,
you know you people were doing schoolwork and and and working.

Speaker 10 (01:16:05):
Out of the houses.

Speaker 9 (01:16:05):
And how no matter how big your house is, and
they don't have a big house. But no matter how
big your house is, it's not big enough. H