How COVID Changed TV Production Forever

Ten industry insiders reflect on the upheaval of producing news and topical shows during the harsh early months of COVID. 'The idea that America would essentially shut down was just shocking,' says ABC News' Chris Dinan.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, Strictly Business listeners. This is host Cynthia Littleton. Today
we're queuing up a Strictly Business rerun of our very
special extra long episode examining how the pandemic changed television
production forever. I spoke with ten industry insiders, most of
them in TV news, and wove their perspectives together into
a chronicle of how TV stayed on the air during

(00:31):
those difficult early months of the lockdown. This episode ran
March twelfth of this year, around the five year anniversary
of the stay at home orders that rocked our world.
We're sending this out again today to shamelessly brag that
this episode has been nominated by the Los Angeles Press
Club for a national Arts and Entertainment Award. I worked
really hard on this, so I hope you'll give it

(00:53):
a listen. Thank you, and we'll be back next week
with another fresh episode of Strictly Business.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
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 3 (01:20):
We weren't ready for a virtual control room we had
no real infrastructure in place.

Speaker 4 (01:27):
The day I realized it was real is the day
the Big East Basketball Tournament was canceled.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
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 1 (01:51):
Welcome to Strictly Business, Varieties weekly podcast featuring conversations with
industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm
Cynthia Lyttleton, co editor in chief of Variety. We don't
typically do a cold open on this show, but this
isn't a typical episode of Strictly Business. We depart from
our standard solo interview format to take a long look

(02:15):
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

(02:35):
seems so distant and not so distant all at once.
The story of how Covid helped 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

(02:56):
linear TV rose to the occasion to keep local 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 seated the pants

(03:16):
innovation to broadcast operations in engineering than had been done
since the days of Sid Caesar and Milton bur 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.

(03:37):
By the end of twenty twenty, the death toll from
COVID in the US alone had reached a 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

(03:57):
networks for communications and video collaboration tools in a matter
of days. They ordered a whole lot of 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

(04:18):
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 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

(04:39):
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 how good they
were until I started interviewing the ten sources that you'll
hear in this episode. They shared stories that captured this
fraut period with moments of humor, moments of meltdowns involving

(05:00):
both tech and tykes, and some true moments of heartbreak.
And in the end, what changes really mattered, 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

(05:22):
extraordinary time in their careers. My guests are Lindsey Davis,
anchor of ABC News Live Prime and World 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,

(05:45):
anchor of CBS Mornings, Bill Hemmer, co anchor of America's
Newsroom on Fox News. Jason Kurtz, executive producer and showrunner
of The Drew Barrymore Show, Simone Swink, executive producer of
Good Good Morning America, SHAWNA. Thomas, executive producer of CBS Mornings,
John Tower, Senior broadcast producer of CBS Mornings, and Scott Wilder,

(06:11):
Executive Vice President of Production and Operations for Fox News Media.
Their stories are coming 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

(06:31):
sync in that COVID was going to change the way
you were here? We'll hear from ABC's Chris Dinan, CBS's
John Tower, and ABC's Lindsay Davis and Simone Swink.

Speaker 5 (06:43):
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 3 (06:57):
It didn't quite feel real until the day that somewhere
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

(07:20):
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 like, okay,

(07:42):
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 a it was almost like a corporate decision, like
having the virus around this particular building is not a

(08:05):
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.

Speaker 6 (08:18):
But that's what we did.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
And they decided that we're going to go to DC
because you know, as you just remember, in like New
York was sort of like a hotbed.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
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

(08:50):
of mine about it 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 7 (09:07):
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.

(09:27):
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 1 (09:33):
CBS is Tony du Koppel remembers taking a fateful call
at the gym.

Speaker 8 (09:38):
The moment I realized this was going to be different.
When 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 on a train now. I'll limit your contact And

(10:01):
I was like, what this is? Limit my contact? I mean,
I'm in a room of one hundred people at a gym.

Speaker 9 (10:06):
We go to DC.

Speaker 8 (10:07):
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,
that's the night when I'm watching TV talking to my wife,
the news breaks at the NBA shutting down the season.
Tom Hanks and Rita, his wife are coming forward and

(10:31):
saying we have it, and Cuomo and Trump and every
other leader you might turn to to.

Speaker 9 (10:37):
Say something stabilizing.

Speaker 8 (10:39):
Suddenly, 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 1 (10:58):
As Covid descended and Drew Barrymore was in pre production
getting ready to launch her daytime talk show that September.
Showrunner Jason Kurtz remembers the nervousness of the moment.

Speaker 10 (11:10):
It was my first in person Withdrew in March.

Speaker 11 (11:16):
It was early March. I had come on.

Speaker 10 (11:18):
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, and we were both looking at each other
like wait, and I was like, I got a text

(11:39):
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.

Speaker 11 (11:54):
And then literally like three days later, everything shut down.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
Another question I asked all ten sources was what was
the first things your teams did 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 12 (12:15):
So it became clear immediately that we were going to
need to start broadcasting from locations outside of our building. Really,
the 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

(12:38):
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
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

(12:58):
and going to their own and figuring out what we
can do at each one of them. There was none,
no two that were the shame. They were all a
little bit different.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
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 my

(13:33):
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, we

(13:54):
only ever did it one time remotely, and the rest
of the times I just said, look, it's just it
just makes more sense for me to come in.

Speaker 7 (14:04):
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.

(14:27):
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 13 (14:34):
You know.

Speaker 12 (14:35):
It was like zone defense. We were just trying to
get people, and we tried to look where people live.
I have a news 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 we started

(15:00):
going back to the edict that it looked 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, you need tell a prompter,

(15:22):
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 you know, we were
relying on the anchors home you know, internet connection again.

(15:49):
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,

(16:14):
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

(16:36):
this pandemic that nobody had had any experience, no blueprint.

Speaker 11 (16:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
Vin de Bona, the maestro of AFF, 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 AFF with Alfonso Rivieriro hosting from his home.

Speaker 14 (17:02):
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,

(17:29):
who was running his own camera, running his own prompter,
did his own lights. I directed through Zoom, but we
really directed together.

Speaker 12 (17:42):
And he was.

Speaker 14 (17:45):
The sole person on the show, and we did wraparounds
in different areas 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

(18:08):
of our staff members, and then we would look at
the playback 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.

Speaker 6 (18:25):
It was.

Speaker 14 (18:27):
It was actually fairly easy to get it all together.
The toughest part wasn't the video. The toughest part was
making sure audio was great. It's sometimes hard to hear
the nuances, you know, when you're on Zoom.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
Let's drill down on the ingenuity that Cruz techs and
engineers demonstrated under pressure. Here we'll hear from John Tower,
Simone Swink, Vin Dea Bona and Tower again.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
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 would you maybe give a team
like that a week maybe two to do that, and

(19:16):
they had.

Speaker 6 (19:18):
Literally the night.

Speaker 7 (19:19):
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

(19:39):
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 parts of the show.
It was just a few were a viewer. 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.

Speaker 14 (20:00):
God Story, 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

(20:22):
be broken 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

(20:49):
basically what 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

(21:12):
being ninety six. 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

(21:34):
wasn't just LA, 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

(21:54):
all of that had to be taken care of and
then these ninety six accumulated 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

(22:17):
going to go to a break if you guys want
to take a bath, all that stuff through another producer,
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

(22:39):
audience situation with laughs and reactions as we had in studio,
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

(23:03):
two days before they would show up in studio, 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

(23:26):
that last day when they came in and tested that
they were fine.

Speaker 3 (23:30):
So eventually we made our way to at 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

(23:54):
we had started a wrapperhenser around masking, which seems late
and quick now looking back, but like we'd started wrapprehension
un masking, and so we were we were a few
of us. It was like probably four or five of
us with a director and a t d uh in
a in a uh insulivent theater control room with our

(24:17):
anchors remote, all just putting the show on.

Speaker 6 (24:20):
All the producers were remote.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
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 were not using often or
ever before the pandemic, and so the technologies that we

(24:46):
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 all those systems were
being built on the flot by trying to figure out
how to get you know stories in the air. There

(25:07):
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. Uh 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 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

(25:28):
it was really one of the only control rooms left.
There were 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 Theatre. And the reason
why they had to signed ED Solvent Theator, I think
is because they it still had the connectivity of our
other available control rooms. You could still patch into, like

(25:51):
you know, whatever they needed to patch into what.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
Stands out in your mind now as a memory. Then
that reinforced for you the scope of the crisis. The
answer were intriguing. We'll hear from Chris Dinan followed by
John Tower.

Speaker 5 (26:04):
We had an internal intelligence briefing 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.

Speaker 13 (26:25):
It seemed like it was a rational explanation of what
we could expect.

Speaker 5 (26:29):
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, that's the number of people
who died in the US Civil War, the bloodiest conflict

(26:53):
of the country's history.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
While we were in the very deep, deep parts of
the early pandemic that ed Sullivan 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

(27:16):
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

(27:36):
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
and death, death number, and so the it was just
always over our shoulder literally.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
For they came into work in Midtown News, the city
affectionately known as Zoo York was a ghost town. Chris
Dinan shares a vivid memory, as does CBS Mornings Shanna
Thomas and ABC's Lindsey Davis.

Speaker 13 (28:12):
It was unlike anything I'd ever seen.

Speaker 5 (28:13):
Certainly in Manhattan, 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 post apocalypse.

Speaker 13 (28:31):
There was you know a few people that draggled on
the streets.

Speaker 5 (28:33):
And nothing else, so that really I still remember how
that felt.

Speaker 6 (28:37):
It was.

Speaker 13 (28:39):
Memorable.

Speaker 6 (28:40):
New York City was a ghost town.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
It was an actual It felt like 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 6 (28:54):
And it was actually exactly like that.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
It was strange, you know, I would feel like I
was in this move you know, a movie where you
almost 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's anybody out there, because the highways would just

(29:18):
be empty. 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 1 (29:39):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
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 scenario in

(30:03):
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 1 (30:11):
How did your colleagues adjust to radically different working conditions.
Chris Dinan, Jason Kurtz, and Tony D.

Speaker 15 (30:18):
Koppel discuss 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

(30:40):
had experienced anything like this, so it was completely new.

Speaker 10 (30:43):
At one point, 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 we
call them the vffs, and we were able to build
this community. So we had that the best we could

(31:06):
in this new normal, like that audience, energy and interaction.

Speaker 11 (31:10):
Then it was no one's traveling.

Speaker 10 (31:13):
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 guests into our
studio in a seamless way that you wouldn't even know

(31:34):
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, and that

(31:55):
really benefited us because we weren't struggling looking backwards, we
were only looking forwards.

Speaker 8 (32:01):
I tried to convince myself I was like Gates 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 a

(32:22):
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 you go for it.

(32:45):
It's amazing how quickly people got comfortable with.

Speaker 9 (32:49):
Not really not crystal clear pictures and not crystal clear sound.

Speaker 10 (32:55):
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

(33:17):
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 1 (33:32):
Bill Hammer of Fox News simply could not stay home bound.

Speaker 4 (33:37):
I found it very difficult to replicate the energy from
a basement at shag Harbord, 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,

(33:59):
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,

(34:21):
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

(34:42):
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
to 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

(35:05):
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

(35:26):
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

(35:48):
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 or an hour and a half time, but
it gave us something to do.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
Let's call this section anchor management. We'll hear from John Tower,
Simone Swink, and Lindsey Davis.

Speaker 3 (36:12):
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

(36:35):
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,

(36:58):
like that's a that's a sort of like an knew
it's left left brain, right brain for them, and so
getting it was about getting them used to hearing me
in their ear and like and like them being comfortable
with me being like, Gaiels talks next, Hey, Gail talks next. Hey,
Anthony talks next. What do you mean the Anthony talks next?
I have something to say.

Speaker 7 (37:16):
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,

(37:36):
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 2 (37:58):
So Flavio Juar was my audio tech who also 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 and

(38:20):
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 anyone except

(38:45):
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 in the building, yeah,
it was just it was just the two of us.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
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

(39:30):
the CBS News bureau. Well was that were there any
traffic jams for you and Katie at any time?

Speaker 8 (39:36):
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.

Speaker 9 (39:49):
For their setup so they had a longer camera shot.
I was more squeezed.

Speaker 8 (39:54):
But on the other hand, the NBC crew, they're the
ones that took the made the investment of drilling the
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

(40:16):
there was like there.

Speaker 9 (40:17):
Were questions of like, well, what happens if they both
need to.

Speaker 8 (40:19):
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 we're going through has to happen,
So let's just pray that doesn't occur.

Speaker 9 (40:30):
And it didn't. It didn't know.

Speaker 8 (40:33):
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, so it'd

(40:53):
have to sometimes army crawl threw her very serious life
or death conversation to take care of the more mundane
acts of daily life. 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 kat Churit reports during those days, Sorry, honey.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
Fox 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, well.

Speaker 12 (41:35):
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 Internet services,

(41:58):
but five years ago, three years ago, before the pandemic,
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

(42:19):
view and you know, your Verizon Internet that you have.

Speaker 13 (42:22):
In your home.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
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 D. Koppel.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
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 auld go down or anthems 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

(43:01):
to like, you know, don't be nervous 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, got picked up Tony script and
you keep moving.

Speaker 2 (43:20):
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

(43:43):
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

(44:05):
together themselves.

Speaker 7 (44:07):
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. They 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

(44:30):
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

(44:54):
and been 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

(45:14):
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 8 (45:24):
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 A ten, I have no IFB it's fallen out,
so they just come back to me live picture of

(45:47):
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.

Speaker 9 (45:59):
Every was like, did we just catch that guy sleeping?
So it was a it was a it was messy.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
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

(46:27):
miss your airtime or not deliver your episode on time?
Chris Dinan, Jason Kurtz, and SHAWNA. Thomas each paused a
bit before they answered, I don't.

Speaker 13 (46:37):
Think we ever felt like we weren't going to get
on TV.

Speaker 5 (46:39):
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 do it,
as you know, as it wasn't there were moments where

(47:02):
you were uncertain where something would operate from him, 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 to you know,
meet the challenge, do the job. And I would say that,

(47:24):
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. Many people did, and that was
an obvious choice. But he came every day to the
set to just send a reassuring message that you know,

(47:45):
there were people here, people you could trust, people who
would deliver information that are back based and in context.

Speaker 13 (47:52):
And I think that the audience warmed to that.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
Did you ever think about postponing the launch from September?

Speaker 10 (47:59):
There were conversations, but they were shut 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

(48:19):
focused and maybe the world needs this bright spot right now.

Speaker 11 (48:25):
And hopefully we can be that.

Speaker 10 (48:27):
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 all had together that this was we're
doing this and we'll see everyone in September.

Speaker 16 (48:45):
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 it, like we're going
to do something right. So however we have to do that,

(49:06):
we will make it happen. And I've never worked anywhere
CBS News or anywhere else where. Everyone does not have
that work ethic.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
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 7 (49:25):
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 interviews on

(49:46):
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. You know, we've always done a lot of
live performances on the show, live music performances, and we

(50:09):
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 we were

(50:29):
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 innovations forced I think some great television.

Speaker 12 (50:43):
Our leaderships, specifically Susann Scott, he'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.

Speaker 6 (51:00):
That facility was.

Speaker 12 (51:00):
Going to be in an anchor's home, it didn't matter.
It 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

(51:22):
to change. Nobody wanted to turn the TV on and
look at you know, somebody's living room or kitchen.

Speaker 10 (51:28):
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

(51:52):
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 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 everyone's

(52:15):
home and hopefully create like just a fun, bright little
place to be.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
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 10 (52:38):
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 16 (52:54):
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 defunt quibi.

Speaker 9 (53:11):
But I was a development.

Speaker 16 (53:12):
Executive that was in charge of sixty and six, which
was 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

(53:34):
I remember being there with Susan Zarenski and Billowens, and
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,

(53:56):
and looking at her and we weren't wearing masks and
being like, am I supposed to hug you?

Speaker 13 (54:03):
Are?

Speaker 16 (54:03):
We hugged? Like what do we do right now? Is
this real?

Speaker 9 (54:05):
Is this not?

Speaker 16 (54:06):
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

(54:31):
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.

Speaker 14 (54:43):
Ryan looking for Quibbi.

Speaker 16 (54:44):
It's all very incestuous, really, that I was not going
to come back to New York City. And then a
couple days after that, I came down with one hundred
and two fever that did not go away for ten days.

Speaker 7 (54:55):
We had a colleague who was quite sick and in
the hospital and she didn't she didn't understand why nobody
would visit her. She didn't 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 all these people

(55:17):
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 out I had quite severe cancer in the

(55:39):
middle 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 miss, all this misery and you know, separation. So

(56:05):
I actually loved coming into work.

Speaker 16 (56:07):
There was at least one or two times where we
got one of the Inchors 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's uh, 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

(56:30):
pulled them and you put a mask on him, you
put 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,

(56:52):
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. But there was it. It was
constantly being thrown some kind of weird curveball about how
are we going to make this work because this virus

(57:14):
is still going around and I still have to figure
out how to do the show and protect people.

Speaker 2 (57:19):
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

(57:42):
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 uh just the first anything in
that way was so personal, and it made it more

(58:06):
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 1 (58:28):
News pros were driven by the knowledge that their work
mattered greatly. Here's Chris Dinan and Simone Swink.

Speaker 5 (58:36):
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 brewers a

(58:57):
night and were the number one show all and broadcast came,
which is a remarkable accomplishment. If you told me that
any newscast would have that cided number and be in
that position, I don't know that thought that was possible.

Speaker 13 (59:12):
But people turn in great numbers because.

Speaker 5 (59:15):
They knew that they would get reliable and sense of
information that they could trust.

Speaker 13 (59:19):
And I thought that was It's always been reassuring.

Speaker 6 (59:22):
To know that.

Speaker 7 (59:24):
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

(59:45):
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, 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,

(01:00:07):
the ripple effect just on its own from deals and
steals during that time was amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
There were heroic efforts made by TV's frontline workers. Here's
Scott Wilder, Chris Dinan and Bill Hammer.

Speaker 12 (01:00:21):
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 hospital situations, and so
they I like to think that they put a lot
of people at ease and they were comfortable continuing to work.

(01:00:46):
You know, I have to go back and give a
lot of praise to our talent.

Speaker 5 (01:00:48):
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 a reporter field producers who were actually out in
the field, you know, in close proximity to this terrible pandemic,
doing their jobs as best they could and doing spectacular

(01:01:11):
work and bringing home the stories of you 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 they hard to deal with you know, the unthinkable.

(01:01:32):
So it took an emotional toll 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 4 (01:01:45):
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 states. They were in the building.
And I mentioned Suzanne, and.

Speaker 11 (01:02:02):
That is really important.

Speaker 4 (01:02:03):
That means a.

Speaker 13 (01:02:04):
Lot when your leader is here.

Speaker 4 (01:02:07):
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 11 (01:02:14):
Doing what you can.

Speaker 12 (01:02:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
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 12 (01:02:35):
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,

(01:02:55):
would would take them back. So we have a plethora
of sixty five monitors in this building somewhere.

Speaker 10 (01:03:03):
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 didn't

(01:03:23):
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,

(01:03:44):
that personal connection that she can get from you know,
any individual.

Speaker 11 (01:03:49):
And just her love of the audience.

Speaker 14 (01:03:52):
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

(01:04:14):
the bleachers anymore. We were still trying to figure out
if CODD, 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

(01:04:34):
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 3 (01:04:43):
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, afects how the anchors are.
You know, the show's much better together than when they're

(01:05:04):
like remote. You still put a show on, 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 would that would contribute
to sort of a better product.

Speaker 1 (01:05:21):
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

(01:05:41):
to our offices for a routine news interview. Here we
get perspective from Simone Swink, Scott Wilder, Chris Dinan, and
Bill Hammer.

Speaker 7 (01:05:50):
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,

(01:06:11):
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
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

(01:06:33):
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

(01:06:55):
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 12 (01:07:08):
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

(01:07:29):
happen at three am, and I can call somebody and
have them on TV within you know, fifteen minutes.

Speaker 1 (01:07:35):
As opposed to dispatch the van.

Speaker 13 (01:07:37):
Getting them into this building.

Speaker 12 (01:07:38):
Yeah, the art of learning where and when to do that,
I think is the hardware.

Speaker 5 (01:07:43):
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 one of the most dramatic examples of that.

Speaker 13 (01:07:56):
So I think, you know, it's changed the culture.

Speaker 5 (01:08:00):
As you mentioned, the phenomena of working from home is
something that people very much embrace and it's allowed.

Speaker 13 (01:08:08):
I think it's also a lot of certain confidence.

Speaker 5 (01:08:10):
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 4 (01:08:30):
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.

Speaker 13 (01:08:44):
So that's another change.

Speaker 4 (01:08:46):
I think it's enabled us, from a news gathering perspective,
to reach guests who would normally not be available to
us because I don't know, you name it, they're X
amount of miles or hours away from studio, and now
we could send them the equipment where we could broadcast
their face and their.

Speaker 13 (01:09:06):
Image and their audio.

Speaker 4 (01:09:08):
So that's all changed entirely.

Speaker 7 (01:09:11):
And 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 bun 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,

(01:09:31):
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.

(01:09:53):
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.

Speaker 8 (01:10:02):
A lot of the time, 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 I'll be on your show, but I'm at my
third house in Wyoming for the next week.

Speaker 9 (01:10:23):
Is that okay? Of course it is.

Speaker 8 (01:10:24):
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 can do things more cheaply, but the
bad thing is they realize they can do things more cheaply,
and that always means jobs in our business.

Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
One big change that Vin de Bona and the AFB
team made to the format of the show out of
expediency has since been baked in for good.

Speaker 14 (01:10:48):
You know, up until that point, we brought audience members
in winners, not winners, but participants in the contest in
with their families.

Speaker 11 (01:10:59):
Right, I've noticed that.

Speaker 14 (01:11:01):
Yeah, and obviously we couldn't do that, so we sent
for each show, we sent ring cameras and ring lights
with cameras and instructions, and once again before tape date,

(01:11:22):
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 and
so but basically we were sending out cause three shows
a day, we were sending out, you know, nine sets

(01:11:43):
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.

Speaker 17 (01:11:56):
But what we found was because the the potential winners,
we set up a system where they came in on
flat screens, three separate flat screens, and Al would walk to.

Speaker 14 (01:12:13):
Screen one and chat with them, and go to screen
two and chat. The chats were much better than they
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

(01:12:34):
home audiences and home participants, where there were much more
at ease. Al had more fun with them, so we've
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

(01:12:56):
see al'saketor when we had a little girl, uh last weekend,
She's like this throughout the whole thing. She was so excited,
and it makes for a great show.

Speaker 1 (01:13:07):
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 Lindsay Davis reflect on jobs well done, at least
for me.

Speaker 7 (01:13:25):
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

(01:13:48):
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 aodcast, And I also
think I think COVID was a time of immense struggle
for so many people. I think so many people had

(01:14:09):
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 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

(01:14:29):
to COVID.

Speaker 14 (01:14:31):
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

(01:14:51):
you know that's our job.

Speaker 2 (01:14:53):
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

(01:15:14):
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

(01:15:34):
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

(01:15:55):
capable of. Sometimes you don't know until you've really been
put to the test, and you know, we certainly were tested,
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

(01:16:16):
one mission.

Speaker 1 (01:16:19):
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

(01:16:40):
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 12 (01:16:50):
I think after whatever it was, ten eleven, twelve days,
my family was ready for me to come back to me.

Speaker 13 (01:16:57):
We miss you.

Speaker 12 (01:16:58):
They were ready were ready for me to go back
to work. Therese were hard times, you know you. People
were doing schoolwork and and and working out of the houses.
And how no matter how big your house is, and
they don't have a big house.

Speaker 6 (01:17:12):
But no matter how big

Speaker 12 (01:17:13):
Your house is, it's not big enough.