Final Interview

This is Sherrylou Blower. As you can see, she doesn't look very excited for her interview.

This is Craig Murray. He often had a lot to say and often what he said was very useful. During the interview he was quite calm.

NBC 7/39 the news on what goes on behind the news

My mentors Craig Murray and Sherrylou Blower are at work on their daily tasks. Craig is currently filling out billing information for a new shipment of laptops that came in the day before. Sherrylou is busy writing a rundown (description on paper of how the news will go) of the days newscast.

Craig is a tall thin man, often wearing a black pollo shirt, a leather jacket, and jeans. His hair was always well kept. On a normal day he works on updating current machines, fixing broken ones, or installing NBC software on brand new computers. He had been at the company for 14 years as a technology manager. Ever since he was with NBC Craig worked on installation of all NBC programming. Before he was there he worked for a manufacturing company. When I walk into his office, the smell of freshly printed paper fills the room. The sound of the different computers in his office drowns out all other sounds. There’s a smile on his face when I ask him “is it ok if I interview you?”.

Sherrylou Blower is a short middle-aged woman, and on an average day she wears a sweater, jeans, and a baseball cap. On an average workday she is found sitting at her desk working on the rundown for the days newscast. She never went to college. She originally started at a local Wyoming news station then later worked her way up the ranks to become a director at NBC. She now makes sure that everything runs the way it should during a live newscast. Her workstation is filled with papers of past rundowns. The room is very open with very little sound to disrupt the constant clicking and clacking of her typing up the days’ rundown. She wasn’t eager to be interviewed because she is never recorded, but thats ok.

Can you tell me your name, job title, and years you’ve been working at NBC?

Craig- My name is Craig Murray, I’m a technology manager at NBC and I’ve worked here for 14 years

Sherrylou- My name is Sherrylou Blower, I’ve been at NBC for 14 years as a director

What do you actually do?

Craig- My responsibility is to make sure that users of computers have everything they need for day to day operations which includes upgrades of the computers. I also keep the servers, and network running.

Sherrylou- I’m a director at NBC, I coordinate with producers, shots, pre pro, whatever graphics we might need for newscast, during the actual broadcast I’m on headsets with 7 other crew members telling them each shot that we take, each tape that we take. I’m actually telling someone to put all the graphics you see on the air. I’m responsible for everything that happens on camera

How did the interns help you

Craig- they upgraded the computers downstairs with better software and hardware after upgrades all the computers were up and running. They had no problems with start up. All the workers who received them were very happy with them.

Is there anything you would do differently knowing what you know now?

Craig- Knowing what I know now, I would have gotten a technology degree, my degree isn’t in technology, another thing is I would have geared up more for software skills.

Sherrylou- I probably would have taken more advantage of technology today. It seems like technology and TV has passed me up, and its hard to catch up.

What skills are necessary for your position?

Craig – My background is in manufacturing not IT. I got started because the manufacturing company I worked for needed an IT guy and they didn’t want to hire one so I got the skills in IT by just on the job training. To keep my current job one would need to have PC upgrade and buildup skills, the ability to analyze network operations as far as how computers attach together, the ability to integrate software into PCs and into the network, and able to understand the hardware aspects of all of that.

Sherrylou - I learned everything on the job, I didn’t take any extra courses, I didn’t go to college. I started at a television company in Wyoming as the gardener, after doing that for 2 years the production manager asked me if I wanted to do master control. I had no idea what that was but it sounded like fun and that’s how my career got started.

Were you happy with your interns? Would you do this again with another set of high school interns?

Craig - Ya I would, I sit at the board NBAS on Crawford high school. Once a month I meet with their staff to outline what their students should be doing and we have interns from them all the time. I think its a valuable process to have people from high school and college come in to see how things actually work in todays workplace.

Sherrylou – It’s also been a lot of work trying to do my job and making sure you guys have something to do its been difficult, I’m not sure I would do it again just for that reason because it does take a lot of time out of your day and I wasn’t really anticipating that.