It's nice to know it was finally done right.
I have now done 168 editions of “Life in the 906”, and 167 of them have come off without a hitch. Oh, sure, there have been a few where visuals didn't pop up or popped up in the wrong order, and there have certainly been more than a few where the person presenting it stumbled upon a word or didn't do it justice (that person, of course, being an occasional idiot), but there was only one that so totally flamed out that it has been banished from my brain forever.
But now it's welcome back.
The bit to which I'm referring occurred a year ago this week. Kevin was sick, and a fill-in anchor didn't know how to operate the teleprompter. During the first three segments of the show that anchor missed a few stories made up some of the copy, because the 'prompter had shot ahead (and that anchor didn't know how to rewind it). When my segment came up the first sentence was fine, and then all heck broke loose. I tried to stumble my way through it, the director has no idea where to put the graphics, and I ended up reading the last half of it from a hard copy that I always keep in my jacket pocket.
The only time, I should add, that I've ever needed to use that printed out copy. Doing live TV is always a bit like walking a tightrope, and that night was the only time I've ever been pushed off.
When I was walking home after the show that night I vowed to myself that when the next chance to use it presented itself I'd do it again, only this time (hopefully) the way in which it was intended. And since it was written for this particular time of the year, last night I hauled out the script and the graphics from last year, updated it just a bit, and this time it came out the way it was supposed to--
I can now say that every single segment I've written for “Life in the 906”, all 167 of them, have been presented the way I envisioned. We'll just ignore the fact that one of those scripts took two attempts (and someone who knows how to work a teleprompter) to get right.
8-)
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