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July 2008
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This week we ship off over 1 1/2 tons of equipment that will help make up our “newsroom” in Italy for the month of February. It’s not just KING5 News gear. Seattle is the gathering point for gear from all of our other Belo-owned NBC stations. Equipment for crews from Portland (KGW), Boise (KTVB), Charlotte (WCNC), and Belo's Washington D.C. bureau. We all coordinate our work as a group to be more effective once we’re there – and believe it or not - cut down on the gear we have to haul. And we're just a subset of the larger NBC Newsroom in Torino. The NBC News operation will be housed in its own separate building in Torino. It’s a wholly separate undertaking than the NBC Olympics & Sports facilities based at the International Broadcast Center. We will be located in a building near the Ice Skating/Short Track Speed Skating venue (Palavela). This will be the February home for NBC Nightly News, MSNBC, Today Show staff, and all the NBC affiliates with crews in Torino. These ‘temporary” newsrooms can be pretty amazing. They form out of vast empty spaces, buzz with 24/7 activity for 4 weeks, then disappear. Yes, I’ll post plenty of pics.
That 3,000 pounds of gear we’re shipping this week will be combined with equipment from a couple other NBC station groups we work with closely. Gear from Salt Lake City, Denver, Phoenix, Atlanta will all be on the same flight overseas. All that is still just a fraction of the cargo. Yet other affiliates and NBC News already sent their gear bundled into 40’ containers that left on a ship last month. Once all the gear hits the road, we're back into the logistics details - blocking out our daily rundowns for the covering local athletes, events and live shot schedules so Allen, Mimi and the rest of us get the news from 20th Winter Games back home to you. Fortunately there’s no salt water nearby to drop the tapes in this time (Allen…!). 1 Comments |
Seattle - It begins… well, actually planning for our Olympics operation in Torino started months before we even set up shop in Athens for the 2004 Olympics - now we’re in the home stretch. This is the time when everyone in the building here takes notice that “something’s happening.” Cases of equipment everywhere. Even in a newsroom that’s used to covering the big story well, words are repeated by all who walk by… “Wow, that’s a lot of stuff” and “When are you leaving?” We’re not leaving quite yet, but it’s time for the nearly 40 cases of gear to hit the road to Torino... 
Bottom line, lists, lists lists… for inventory, customs and sanity. We will set up video editing, signal routing & transmission, data networks and live news camera positions.
Wow. Just... wow. And to think I was getting a headache trying to pack everything just so for a an eight-hour safari to Macworld on Tuesday. Your level of logistics alternately fascinates me and makes me want to run screaming from my computer.