rough draft interview

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

On the first day of walking into internship there were many people rushing up an down the 6 elevators of the NBC building. It smelled like a constant vacuum was being run in the main lobby. Up on the third floor, Mr. Craig Murray an Ms. Sherrylou Blower were both diligently working on their tasks at hand. Both very busy and both with their starbucks close by.

Craig had been at the company for 14 years as a technology manager. He had worked on installation of all NBC programming since he had been with the company. Before he was there he was working for a manufacturing company.

Sherrylou Blower never went to college. She started in wyoming as a gardener for a news station then worked her way up the ranks to a director. She now makes sure that everything runs the way it should during a live newscast.

Name, job title, years working?

Craig- My name is Craig Murray, My job title is tech manager, I’ve worked her for 14 years

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

What do you actually do?

Craig- My responsibility is to make sure that all the clients which are all the users of machines here have everything they need for day to day operations. Sales, news, keep the servers running, keep the network running, do upgrades and installs of software and various things, anything having to do with keeping clients and customer service happy.

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. All the graphics that you see on the air, im actually telling someone to put that on the air. I’m responsible for everything that happens on camera

How did the interns help you

Craig- you guys did a couple of good installs, all the machines that we installed and upgraded downstairs in the newsroom were up and running. They had no problems with start up and I did a check up on the clients down there that had the machines and they are very happy with them and they were very happy with the process with which we got them done. I’d say it was a success.

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

Craig- ya. Knowing what I know now, as far as education goes, I would have gotten a technology degree, my degree is not 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. Learning more, it seems like technology has passed me up, and I’m trying to catch up with everything that’s new. TV keeps changing everyday, technology keeps changing everyday and I’m trying to keep up, it’s hard.

What skills are necessary for your position?

Craig – My background is in manufacturing, it isn’t in 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. What’s required to keep my job is you have to have PC upgrade and buildup skills. You have to have the ability to analyze network operations as far as computers how attach together, you have to have the ability to integrate software into PCs and into the network and be able to understand the hardware aspects of all of that.

Sherrylou - In my case 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 thats 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 NBAS is the media visual arts school (Crawford is broken up into four different high schools) 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 been interesting having you guys around, its also been a lot of work. Trying to do my job and making sure you guys have something to do its been kinda 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.