Speaker 1: Our show Prime launched on February tenth of twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: We were making all these plans about how we were
Speaker 1: going to be collaborative. We had a brand new team assembled,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, within a month.
Speaker 2: We weren't ready for a virtual control room. We had
Speaker 2: no real infrastructure in place.
Speaker 3: The day I realized it was real is the day
Speaker 3: the Big Eiaest basketball tournament was canceled.
Speaker 2: It felt like one of those movies where you're like
Speaker 2: one you wake up and you're wandering through the streets
Speaker 2: and a place that's normally bustling is absolutely lifeless.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Strictly Business Varieties weekly podcast featuring conversations with
Speaker 4: industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm
Speaker 4: Cynthia Littleton, co editor and Variety. We don't typically do
Speaker 4: a cold open on this show. That this isn't a
Speaker 4: typical episode of Strictly Business. We depart from our standard
Speaker 4: solo interview format to take a long look back five
Speaker 4: years ago when COVID sank its Pointy Corona fangs into
Speaker 4: New York and soon after the rest of the country.
Speaker 4: We didn't know it then, but March twenty twenty marked
Speaker 4: a huge inflection point for the television business. Stay at
Speaker 4: home orders, masks, and antigen tests. It all seems so
Speaker 4: distant and not so distant all at once. The story
Speaker 4: of how COVID helps supercharge the streaming business and the
Speaker 4: streaming wars has been well documented in recent years, but
Speaker 4: another big TV story unfolded during the early months of
Speaker 4: lockdown that hasn't gotten as much attention. Old fashioned linear
Speaker 4: TV rose to the occasion to keep local and national
Speaker 4: news outlets on the air. The same was true for
Speaker 4: daytime and late night talk shows and live to tape
Speaker 4: entertainment such as ABC's America's Funniest Home Videos. The first
Speaker 4: few weeks of the pandemic spurred more seat of the
Speaker 4: pants innovation to broadcast operations in engineering than had been
Speaker 4: done since the days of Sid Caesar and Milton Berle
Speaker 4: in the early nineteen fifties. In our business, the show
Speaker 4: must go on, Ethos Israel, The last thing TV pros
Speaker 4: wanted to do was serve America dead. Air times were
Speaker 4: hard enough. By the end of twenty twenty, the death
Speaker 4: toll from COVID in the US alone had reached a
Speaker 4: staggering four hundred thousand The social distancing conditions imposed forced
Speaker 4: producers and crew members and technicians to create virtual control
Speaker 4: rooms on the fly. They had to figure out how
Speaker 4: to recreate networks for communications and video collaboration tools. In
Speaker 4: a matter of days. They ordered a whole lot of
Speaker 4: digital video equipment from Amazon to assemble home bureaus in
Speaker 4: a box for anchors. Talk shows quickly moved to create
Speaker 4: virtual studio audiences. I've been wanting to tackle the story
Speaker 4: of the great Scramble of the early COVID months for
Speaker 4: several years. I had the privilege of being a fly
Speaker 4: on the wall at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Speaker 4: in June twenty twenty one, as Colbert returned to filming
Speaker 4: shows with live audiences at the Ed Sullivan Theater. In
Speaker 4: those interviews, it became apparent how much daring do and
Speaker 4: experimentation had been going on behind the scenes at a
Speaker 4: time when production staff was spread far and wide. I
Speaker 4: knew there were great stories there, but I didn't know
Speaker 4: how good they were until I started interviewing the ten
Speaker 4: sources that you'll hear in this episode. They shared stories
Speaker 4: that captured this fraught period with moments of humor, moments
Speaker 4: of meltdowns involving both tech and tikes, and some true
Speaker 4: moments of heartbreak, and in the end, what changes really mattered,
Speaker 4: what innovations stuck around? Beyond the crisis, we examine the
Speaker 4: lasting legacy of pandemic era workarounds. I'm extremely grateful to
Speaker 4: the sources for their time and their candid thoughts on
Speaker 4: a most extraordinary time in their careers. My guests are
Speaker 4: Lindsey Davis, anchor of ABC News Live Prime and World
Speaker 4: News Tonight Sunday. Vin de Bona, executive producer of one
Speaker 4: of TV's longest running series, ABC's America's Funniest Home Videos,
Speaker 4: Chris Dinan, executive producer of ABC News World News Tonight,
Speaker 4: Tony de Koppel, anchor of CBS Mornings, Bill Hemmer, co
Speaker 4: anchor of America's Newsroom on Fox News. Jason Kurtz, executive
Speaker 4: producer and showrunner of The Drew Barrymore Show, Simone Swink,
Speaker 4: executive producer of Good Morning America, SHAWNA. Thomas Excus, executive
Speaker 4: producer of CBS Mornings, John Tower, Senior broadcast producer of
Speaker 4: CBS Mornings, and Scott Wilder, Executive Vice President of Production
Speaker 4: and Operations for Fox news media. Their stories are coming
Speaker 4: right up after this break, and we're back with the
Speaker 4: story of how TV rose to the occasion to stay
Speaker 4: on the air during the pandemic. I started each interview
Speaker 4: with the question, when did it sync in that COVID
Speaker 4: was going to change the way you work. Here, we'll
Speaker 4: hear from ABC's Chris Dinan, CBS's John Tower, and ABC's
Speaker 4: Lindsay Davis and Simone Swink.
Speaker 5: When it first began, it seemed somewhat unreal because of
Speaker 5: the extent and scope of what people were saying was
Speaker 5: going to happen. The idea that America would essentially shut
Speaker 5: down was just shocking.
Speaker 2: It didn't quite feel real until the day that we're
Speaker 2: up in corporate they had decided to and we were
Speaker 2: over in uh West fifty seventh Street over in the
Speaker 2: CBS Broadcast Center, and there were sort of rumblings that they're,
Speaker 2: you know, they're they're they're talking about something. We know
Speaker 2: that they're they're something's happening. And then at the end
Speaker 2: of the day we had we had gone home after
Speaker 2: the show and I I remember I was on my
Speaker 2: way home and I got a call from a colleague
Speaker 2: saying they're shutting the broadcast center down, and and it
Speaker 2: was it was that abrupt. It was like we were
Speaker 2: like okay, and so immediately the question was where are
Speaker 2: we going to do the show from? And it wasn't
Speaker 2: like we're going to send everybody home. It was again
Speaker 2: the pandemic was new. It was just like and so
Speaker 2: somewhere it was. It was almost like a corporate decision,
Speaker 2: like having the virus around this particular building is not
Speaker 2: a risk that we want to take, and so you
Speaker 2: have to find another building to broadcast from, which you know,
Speaker 2: now in hindsight, seems ridiculous because you're just moving, You're
Speaker 2: just moving to another risky space. But that's what we did.
Speaker 2: And they decided that we're going to go to DC
Speaker 2: because you know, as you also remember in like New
Speaker 2: York was sort of like a hotbed.
Speaker 1: I remember the night that it really became real for
Speaker 1: us and the NBA canceled a game, and it was
Speaker 1: just a moment unlike anything I've ever I've been reporting
Speaker 1: for about twenty five years and I have not you know,
Speaker 1: it was just I remember texting even you know, friends
Speaker 1: of mine about and they were like, wait, no, that
Speaker 1: can't be happening, you know, and then it was just
Speaker 1: a domino effect of you know, people just I think
Speaker 1: the governor of Pennsylvania started telling people, don't go to work,
Speaker 1: you know, don't go to school, and it just became
Speaker 1: really real, very quickly.
Speaker 6: I think the moment that the company and the show
Speaker 6: started creating protocols for how people would be tested and
Speaker 6: how people would come to work, and when it really
Speaker 6: sank in is that people would have to quarantine. Because
Speaker 6: right around that mid March date, about fifteen of us
Speaker 6: had to quarantine at home and couldn't come to work.
Speaker 6: Right then everybody else was like, what do you mean
Speaker 6: you can't come to work? And how is this going
Speaker 6: to work? And how are we going to do it?
Speaker 4: CBS is Tony du Koppel remembers taking a fateful call
Speaker 4: at the gym.
Speaker 7: The moment I realized this was going to be different
Speaker 7: is when I was at the gym and I got
Speaker 7: a call this two or three weeks later from Diana Miller,
Speaker 7: our former executive producer, and she was like, they've found
Speaker 7: COVID at the broadcast center. They're shutting it down. We're
Speaker 7: doing the show from Washington tomorrow. You got to get
Speaker 7: on a train. Now limit your contact, and I was like,
Speaker 7: what is limit my contact? I mean in a room
Speaker 7: of one hundred people at a gym. We go to DC.
Speaker 7: It's a super weird show because we have no news
Speaker 7: reason to be in DC. We have this crisis reason
Speaker 7: for being in DC. And then I go back to
Speaker 7: the hotel room that night, and in my memory, anyway,
Speaker 7: that's the night when I'm watching TV talking to my
Speaker 7: wife the news breaks that the NBA shutting down the season.
Speaker 7: Tom Hanks and Rita his wife are coming forward and
Speaker 7: saying we have it, and Cuomo and Trump and every
Speaker 7: other leader you might turn to to say something stabilizing. Suddenly,
Speaker 7: in my view as just a citizen of the country,
Speaker 7: looking at people and being like, they don't seem like
Speaker 7: they have it under control anymore. This seems scary. We
Speaker 7: don't have a broadcast center, we don't have a sports league,
Speaker 7: we don't have leaders that seem to know what's going on.
Speaker 7: I don't know what happens from here. That's when it
Speaker 7: really landed like we're going somewhere hard.
Speaker 4: As Covid descended, Drew Barrymore was in pre production ready
Speaker 4: to launch her daytime talk show that September. Showrunner Jason
Speaker 4: Kurtz remembers the nervousness of the moment.
Speaker 8: It was my first in person Withdrew in March. It
Speaker 8: was early March. I had come on in feb so
Speaker 8: it was our first I was at our apartment and
Speaker 8: we were like kind of like talking about staffing and
Speaker 8: structure and getting into the bodies that we were going
Speaker 8: to bring on and all these great people. And it
Speaker 8: literally was the day that things started to heat up,
Speaker 8: and we were both looking at each other like wait,
Speaker 8: and I was like, I got a text that the
Speaker 8: bridges and tunnels are closing. It was like, you know
Speaker 8: in New York, like the rumor started, and I was like,
Speaker 8: that's strange, and we both kind of were looking at
Speaker 8: each other, getting a lot of texts from people, and
Speaker 8: I was like, maybe we should just hit pause and
Speaker 8: figure out, like what's going on in the world. And
Speaker 8: then literally like three days later, everything shut down.
Speaker 4: Another question I asked all ten sources was what was
Speaker 4: the first things your teams do to build alternatives to
Speaker 4: your studio and technology setups. Here, we'll hear from Fox
Speaker 4: News's Scott Wilder, ABC's Lindsay Davis and Simone Swink and
Speaker 4: then Wilder again.
Speaker 9: So it became clear immediately that we were going to
Speaker 9: need to start broadcasting from locations outside of our building.
Speaker 10: Really, the.
Speaker 9: Premise at the time was that we weren't going to
Speaker 9: be able to broadcast from here at all, like we
Speaker 9: were going to need to be cleared from this building.
Speaker 9: And so that was the moment that it hit me
Speaker 9: that we were going to have this immediate need to
Speaker 9: start broadcasting from someplace else. And does that mean that
Speaker 9: we're going to go find the location where we send
Speaker 9: all of our people or what actually happened where people
Speaker 9: start broadcasting from their homes. So you know, that was
Speaker 9: the immediate order, and right away we went out and
Speaker 9: just started contacting and working with all of our talent
Speaker 9: and going to their homes and figuring out what we
Speaker 9: can do it each one of them. There was none,
Speaker 9: no two that were the shame. They were all a
Speaker 9: little bit different.
Speaker 1: My husband, who at that point was working from home
Speaker 1: as well, doubled as then my engineer. So he set
Speaker 1: up a hole and I'd posted a picture of it
Speaker 1: on Instagram at the time. We set up a little
Speaker 1: we made our TV into kind of it. Over the
Speaker 1: shoulder that had the graphic that said ABC News Live
Speaker 1: Prime and set up a desk. And at the time,
Speaker 1: my son was six and so we were in the
Speaker 1: basement and we did not ever put a lock on
Speaker 1: that door or anything. So he just kept coming down
Speaker 1: during the broadcast like whispering, you know, as if that
Speaker 1: was okay while we're trying to you know, run this
Speaker 1: teleprompter remotely and do the broadcast. So needless to say,
Speaker 1: we only ever did it one time remotely and and
Speaker 1: the rest of the times I just said, look, it's
Speaker 1: just it just makes more sense for me to come in.
Speaker 6: We really sort of hit the deadline, Like on Friday,
Speaker 6: we were still putting the rundown together the usual way,
Speaker 6: and by Monday we you know, you actually can do
Speaker 6: a lot of things from home. It's not ideal. It
Speaker 6: added five steps to every part of the process, but
Speaker 6: it's possible. The one thing I will say is that
Speaker 6: we had a group of people who came in every
Speaker 6: single day for three four years into the control room.
Speaker 6: And without that group of people, you couldn't get the
Speaker 6: rest of the show on. So ninety eight percent of
Speaker 6: the staff could be from home, but that two percent
Speaker 6: kept it on the air every day.
Speaker 9: You know, it was like zone defense. We were just
Speaker 9: trying to get people, and we tried to look where
Speaker 9: people live. I have a new photographer who lives in
Speaker 9: New Jersey and an anchor who lives in New Jersey.
Speaker 9: Marry that team up together. I have a new photographer
Speaker 9: who lives on Long Island or an anchor lives on
Speaker 9: Long Island. That's a team Westchester, Connecticut, and you know,
Speaker 9: so on and so forth, keep going. And that's how
Speaker 9: we started going back to the edict that it not
Speaker 9: it look and sound like Fox News for the viewers.
Speaker 9: You know, the hardest part of it. You know, listen,
Speaker 9: there's no guest, right these anchors and contributors were in
Speaker 9: their home. You're really talking about a glorified live shot.
Speaker 9: It's one camera, you know. But now they're anchoring programs. Yeah,
Speaker 9: you need teleprompter, you need return video. They're taking press
Speaker 9: conferences all day long. They need to interact, and so
Speaker 9: you know, really we just relied very heavily. I'm talking
Speaker 9: about in the immediate days and those you know, I
Speaker 9: really call it a ten day period. I think we
Speaker 9: set up over forty home studios within ten days. And
Speaker 9: you know, we were relying on the anchors home you know,
Speaker 9: internet connection.
Speaker 10: Again.
Speaker 9: You know there's a story that I know it's been
Speaker 9: told before, but you know, we had an anchor who
Speaker 9: was on TV and their children were playing video games
Speaker 9: and we saw degradation in the video quality immediately. So
Speaker 9: you know, we had a team of like four people
Speaker 9: who were just driving from place to place repairing, fixing, advising,
Speaker 9: setting up in addition to the people who were running
Speaker 9: those So but again, you know, that all came Honestly,
Speaker 9: it may sound cliche, but it came from the top.
Speaker 9: We had our leadership who never left the building. They
Speaker 9: were here every single day, Suzanne and Jay in particular,
Speaker 9: along with several you know others, But they were in
Speaker 9: the building every single day. Kind of you know, not
Speaker 9: kind of action, steering the ship and giving the guidance
Speaker 9: of how we wanted to, you know, make it through
Speaker 9: this pandemic that nobody had had any experience, no blueprint.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Vin de Bona, the Maestro of Affe, had only one
Speaker 4: more show to tape for the twenty nineteen twenty twenty
Speaker 4: TV season when lockdown orders upended TV production. Here he
Speaker 4: explains why he was one and done with the idea
Speaker 4: of doing affe with Alfonso Ribeiro hosting from his home.
Speaker 11: We realized that if we didn't figure out a way
Speaker 11: to make it work for the show, you know, who
Speaker 11: knows what would have happened with broadcast. So the first
Speaker 11: thing that happened is we did one show called at
Speaker 11: Home with AFV, and literally it was at home with Alphonso,
Speaker 11: who was running his own camera, running his own prompter,
Speaker 11: did his own lights. I directed through Zoom, but we
Speaker 11: really directed together and he was the sole person on
Speaker 11: the show, and we did wrap arounds in different areas
Speaker 11: of his house, the kitchen, the living room, the pool,
Speaker 11: by his RV, and we put the first show together,
Speaker 11: all on Zoom, all linked together with each of our
Speaker 11: staff members, and then we would look at the playback
Speaker 11: reels that we're going to go into the show. We
Speaker 11: would build them and then view them as a team.
Speaker 11: Everything was teamwork, really teamwork, and it was it was
Speaker 11: actually fairly easy to get it all together. The toughest
Speaker 11: part wasn't the video. The toughest part was making sure
Speaker 11: audio was great. It's sometimes hard to hear the nuances
Speaker 11: when you know when you're on zoom.
Speaker 4: Let's drill down on the ingenuity the cruise techs and
Speaker 4: engineers demonstrated under pressure. Here we'll hear from John Tower,
Speaker 4: Simone Swink, Vin de Bona and Tower again.
Speaker 2: Over the course of fifteen hours, they had to set
Speaker 2: up an entire workable control room and show for the
Speaker 2: next day, and under probably normal conditions. I'm just using
Speaker 2: like an example that one you maybe give a team
Speaker 2: like that a week maybe two to do that, and
Speaker 2: they had literally the night.
Speaker 6: One thing that the news division did very quickly was
Speaker 6: figure out and build at home sort of kits that
Speaker 6: a team could swoop in and set up and so
Speaker 6: that everybody could broadcast from home. And then as long
Speaker 6: as we could work it out from the control room,
Speaker 6: you could actually have all three main anchors from home
Speaker 6: in a given broadcast. And that being able to do
Speaker 6: that so quickly and realized that we could get on
Speaker 6: the air and just sort of adjust the shots from
Speaker 6: there gave us a lot of flexibility. It also meant
Speaker 6: that we didn't have to substantially change part parts of
Speaker 6: the show.
Speaker 11: It was just a few were a viewer.
Speaker 6: The aesthetic changed a little bit because people weren't next
Speaker 6: to each other physically, but they were next to each
Speaker 6: other in boxes at times got story.
Speaker 11: Our set designer created an idea to build these stacks,
Speaker 11: and by stacks, I mean vertical columns with three flat
Speaker 11: screens in each column, and the total amount of Zoom
Speaker 11: audience members would be ninety six and they'd be broken
Speaker 11: up into these three columns. So Al would walk around
Speaker 11: studio and he'd walk by a column or two columns,
Speaker 11: and the audience saw him live to studio by a
Speaker 11: zoom and it was quite an undertaking. We wound up
Speaker 11: having four additional technicians in the process. So basically what
Speaker 11: we had was each operator had two computers. Each computer
Speaker 11: had sixteen people that they were culling from the Zoom
Speaker 11: audience to control. So the total was each person had
Speaker 11: thirty two people times three, which wound up being ninety six.
Speaker 11: And so the three technicians operating the computers would make
Speaker 11: sure the signal was strong. We sent out a three
Speaker 11: page memorandum to audience members. Audience Plus was the company
Speaker 11: that secured audiences for us, and it wasn't just La,
Speaker 11: it was all around the country. They put out a
Speaker 11: blast and people would write in saying yes, I'd like
Speaker 11: to be on the show, Yes I can guarantee you
Speaker 11: four hours of my time. Don't wear any identifying t shirts,
Speaker 11: no licensed art on the wall, so all of that
Speaker 11: had to be taken care of.
Speaker 7: And then.
Speaker 11: These ninety six accumulated video audience members. Then it was
Speaker 11: assigned to one producer who would say you up in
Speaker 11: the upper corner, be more attentive, you know, or we're
Speaker 11: going to go to a break if you guys want
Speaker 11: to take a bath. All that stuff through another producer,
Speaker 11: and actually we wound up having al talked to the
Speaker 11: home viewers asking them, you know, how many you want
Speaker 11: to go to raise hands? And it was it was
Speaker 11: kind of fun. So we really had as complete an
Speaker 11: audience situation with laughs and reactions as we had in studio,
Speaker 11: and it was it was actually a great look and
Speaker 11: and we kind of missed it when we into studio.
Speaker 11: But it was a lot of work. And of course
Speaker 11: the other thing was we had to pretest the crew
Speaker 11: two days before they would show up in studio, right
Speaker 11: and we had to pay them for the test. So
Speaker 11: it was a full day to test them. And then
Speaker 11: on studio day we'd have to back up key crew
Speaker 11: members like lighting director, technical director, and probably one cameraman
Speaker 11: and a few other studio people just to make sure
Speaker 11: on that last day when they came in and tested
Speaker 11: that they were fine.
Speaker 2: So eventually we made our way to ad Solvent Theater
Speaker 2: and because Stephen Colbert was off and that was sort
Speaker 2: of like our last that was the last space that
Speaker 2: was available to use that they were comfortably using. It
Speaker 2: took very very minimal amount of crew at that point
Speaker 2: they had This was probably a couple of weeks in
Speaker 2: to the actual lockdown, the start of the pandemic, and
Speaker 2: we had started a Wrapprehensier un masking, which seems late
Speaker 2: and quaint now looking back, but like we'd started a
Speaker 2: rapprehends her on masks game. And so we were we
Speaker 2: were a few of us. It was like probably four
Speaker 2: or five of us with a director and a TV
Speaker 2: UH in a in a uh Asulivent theater control room
Speaker 2: with our anchors remote, all just putting the show on.
Speaker 2: All the producers were remote. People had started to like
Speaker 2: they'd been using UH. They had developed a system for
Speaker 2: saving for remote editors, firing up remotely dating videos onto
Speaker 2: you know UH drop boxes that again we did we
Speaker 2: were not using often or ever before the pandemic, and
Speaker 2: so the technologies that we sort of still use now
Speaker 2: where people are you know, it actually makes you know,
Speaker 2: obviously clips and in material available in a in a
Speaker 2: like sort of a much more remote way. But all those,
Speaker 2: all those systems were being built on the flot by
Speaker 2: trying to figure out how to get you know, stories
Speaker 2: in the air. There are a couple of shows where
Speaker 2: we really really didn't have many elements at all. We
Speaker 2: were just sort of like doing the show on a
Speaker 2: very minimal basis. So when we were in ed Solvent Theater,
Speaker 2: I remember when we first got over there, there was
Speaker 2: a there's a moment when they kicked us out of
Speaker 2: DC and we're like, so where we're going to go next?
Speaker 2: And so they had come up with a solution with
Speaker 2: ED Solvent Theator because it was really one of the
Speaker 2: only control rooms left. There are questions of whether or
Speaker 2: that was going to be We're going to use a
Speaker 2: freelance control room, like some sort of like hired control
Speaker 2: room somewhere, and then they had decided on ed Solvent Theater.
Speaker 2: And the reason why they had to signed ED Solvent
Speaker 2: Theator I think is because they it still had the
Speaker 2: connectivity of our other available control rooms. You could still
Speaker 2: patch into, like, you know, whatever they needed to patch
Speaker 2: into what.
Speaker 4: Stands out in your mind now as a memory. Then
Speaker 4: that reinforced for you the scope of the crisis. The
Speaker 4: answers were intriguing. We'll hear from Chris Dinan, followed by
Speaker 4: John Tower.
Speaker 5: We had an internal intelligence breathing from a former member
Speaker 5: of the government who was very high ranking and very knowledgeable,
Speaker 5: and he very matter of factly laid out what was coming,
Speaker 5: and it all seemed it all seemed to be a
Speaker 5: little unreal, but he was so even keeled and how
Speaker 5: he presented it, it seemed like it was a rational
Speaker 5: explanation of what we could expect. And then at one
Speaker 5: point he mentioned a number seven hundred thousand, and that
Speaker 5: number was what he was predicting and experts were predicting
Speaker 5: would be fatalities, would be the number of Americans killed.
Speaker 5: And I remember sitting back and really being struck by
Speaker 5: that number because it was such an enormous figure. I mean,
Speaker 5: that's the number of people who died in the US
Speaker 5: Civil War, the bloodiest conflict of the country's history.
Speaker 2: While we were in the very deep, deep parts of
Speaker 2: the early pandemic in that unsullivant control room. Our my
Speaker 2: Land producer Rachel had set up a very analog board
Speaker 2: with cases and deaths and the cases in Death's ball.
Speaker 2: She'd update every day when she came in and the
Speaker 2: new cases, and it took on a very it was
Speaker 2: a very present reminder for us of like how dangerous
Speaker 2: this thing was, because at some point it was the
Speaker 2: numbers were unfathomable for how many people had died and
Speaker 2: how many people were getting sick, and they were when
Speaker 2: they were really tracking it, when they were really starting
Speaker 2: to track it. But like right in the early days
Speaker 2: when like we were starting to get numbers, and part
Speaker 2: of our broadcast was singularly focused on, like what's the
Speaker 2: new number, what's the new cases, what's the new death number?
Speaker 2: And so that was just a very real present thing
Speaker 2: on the show. But also like right behind us in
Speaker 2: the wall in the control room, it was just cases
Speaker 2: in death, death number, and so the it was just
Speaker 2: always over our shoulder literally.
Speaker 4: For they came into work in Midtown newsrooms, the city
Speaker 4: affectionately known as Zoo you was a ghost town. Chris
Speaker 4: Dinan shares a vivid memory, as does CBS Mornings Shanna
Speaker 4: Thomas and ABC's Lindsay Davis.
Speaker 10: It was unlike anything I'd ever seen, certainly in Manhattan.
Speaker 5: I maybe saw two dozen people during the course of
Speaker 5: that very very long bike ride, when you would normally
Speaker 5: see hundreds, if not thousands. Fine, and it was in
Speaker 5: every way like a classic sci fi movie pose Apocalypse.
Speaker 5: There was you know, a few people that draggled on
Speaker 5: the streets and nothing else. So that really I still
Speaker 5: remember how that felt.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 10: It was memorable.
Speaker 2: New York City was a ghost top. It was an
Speaker 2: actual it felt like it felt like one of those
Speaker 2: movies where you're like wander You wake up and you're
Speaker 2: wandering through the streets and a place that's normally bustling
Speaker 2: is absolutely lifeless, And it was actually exactly like that.
Speaker 1: It was strange, you know, I would feel like I
Speaker 1: was in this mood, you know a movie where you
Speaker 1: they're like turning the radio channels and you know you
Speaker 1: don't hear anything on it, you know, when those like
Speaker 1: kind of end of Days movies, yea, and people are
Speaker 1: just kind of looking for a signal to say, you know,
Speaker 1: is anybody out there? Because the highways would just be empty.
Speaker 1: I mean, there were It was not uncommon for me
Speaker 1: to leave my house and go into Manhattan and maybe
Speaker 1: I'd see five cars that whole trip, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean it was and even once you got into Manhattan,
Speaker 1: it was desolate, you know.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 1: And and we actually had gotten some passes printed out
Speaker 1: I remember uh from the city basically saying that we
Speaker 1: were essential workers in case there was you know, it
Speaker 1: never got to that point where I had to show
Speaker 1: anybody that paperwork. But I think it was so unknown
Speaker 1: that ABC just wanted to prepare for any sin in
Speaker 1: case you got pulled over or whatever might happen, that
Speaker 1: we could prove that, you know, we had to still
Speaker 1: be on the road and go to work.
Speaker 4: How did your colleagues adjust to radically different working conditions.
Speaker 4: Chris Dinan, Jason Kurtz, and Tony da Koppel discuss.
Speaker 5: It was interesting how quickly people adapted. They just had
Speaker 5: ways to work around issues and work around problems and
Speaker 5: make something happen. And I always look back at that
Speaker 5: time as a very innovative time or you know, an
Speaker 5: industry that had never operated like that. Nobody generationally had
Speaker 5: experienced anything like this, so it was completely new.
Speaker 10: At one point.
Speaker 8: It was like, you know, we found out there was
Speaker 8: definitely not going to be a studio audience, so we
Speaker 8: were like, let's save the money, not build half the
Speaker 8: set since we're not even going to have a studio audience,
Speaker 8: and we can put that money towards technology. And we
Speaker 8: looked into the virtual audience that we had, we called
Speaker 8: them the vffs, and we were able to build this community.
Speaker 8: So we had that the best we could in this
Speaker 8: new normal, like that audience, energy and interaction. Then it
Speaker 8: was no one's traveling guests aren't going to be able
Speaker 8: to come in, So how do we now overcome that obstacle?
Speaker 8: And that's when we started looking into green screen technology
Speaker 8: and virtual studios, and luckily we were able to build
Speaker 8: a green screen studio in Los Angeles and basically teleport
Speaker 8: guests into our studio in a seamless way that you
Speaker 8: wouldn't even know a lot of times Spiels didn't even know.
Speaker 8: And we were able to get Drew and Lucy obviously
Speaker 8: in New York, but then Cameron via the La Studio
Speaker 8: and that became our premiere. So what long story short,
Speaker 8: we were just constantly looking to create from ground, from scratch,
Speaker 8: and that really benefited us because we weren't struggling looking backwards.
Speaker 8: We were only looking forwards.
Speaker 7: I tried to convince myself I was like gay least
Speaker 7: so I'd interviewed before, and who used to put a
Speaker 7: suit on to walk from the top floor was Brownstone
Speaker 7: down to the basement to go to work as a writer,
Speaker 7: And that was kind of like what I did. I
Speaker 7: got up, I put a suit on, and I walked
Speaker 7: from the living room down one floor to the basement
Speaker 7: and tried to be a professional, but it was. It
Speaker 7: was a very unfinished basement with water bugs let's call them,
Speaker 7: we won't say cockroaches crawling up out of the drain
Speaker 7: on a nightly basis, and you had to throw vanity
Speaker 7: out the window because you're doing your own makeup. The
Speaker 7: lighting is the best it can be. Everything has a
Speaker 7: kind of ghoulish severe quality to it, and.
Speaker 10: You and you go for it.
Speaker 7: It's amazing how quickly people got comfortable with.
Speaker 10: Not really.
Speaker 7: Not crystal clear pictures and not crystal clear sound.
Speaker 8: And that's also when we decided to sort of create
Speaker 8: a hybrid live model, knowing the celebrity interviews were going
Speaker 8: to be hard for us timing wise, because we were
Speaker 8: live at nine am in New York. So then we
Speaker 8: started post taping and taping the celebrity interviews when the
Speaker 8: timing worked out better, and we sort of created this
Speaker 8: hybrid model of the top of the show, which was
Speaker 8: Drew's News Live, a live segment after that, and then
Speaker 8: we would drop in a pre recorded edit it celebrity interview,
Speaker 8: and then we would finish the show. Yeah, I think
Speaker 8: it was just being creative within everything that was coming
Speaker 8: at us at once.
Speaker 4: Bill Hemmer of Fox News simply could not stay home bound.
Speaker 3: I found it very difficult to replicate the energy from
Speaker 3: a basement at Sag Harbor, New York. And I'm a
Speaker 3: people person absolutely. I think I get energy from others
Speaker 3: and hopefully I give them a little bit too, you know.
Speaker 3: Having said that, we've reported on stories on wars, on
Speaker 3: terror attacks all over the world for twenty thirty years,
Speaker 3: and what you're doing in that scenario is you're out
Speaker 3: and you can hear the audio in your ear, but
Speaker 3: you're basically talking into a round circle on that camera
Speaker 3: for hours, for days, for weeks. But yet I felt
Speaker 3: I was I had the energy to do that, but
Speaker 3: I just I couldn't do it from my house I tried,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't It wasn't doing it for me. I
Speaker 3: don't know how else to say it. I wanted to
Speaker 3: be closer to the story, and working remotely, I felt
Speaker 3: as if it was just taking me further away from
Speaker 3: understanding what was happening day by day. Now that's not
Speaker 3: to take anything away from my colleagues, either here or
Speaker 3: elsewhere at other networks. They make their own decisions. But
Speaker 3: for me personally, I felt a strong desire to be
Speaker 3: in the building and it helped me with the human
Speaker 3: connection through a story like that, which I think a
Speaker 3: lot of people, frankly were looking for. And I'd say too,
Speaker 3: like our CEO, she did not outsource it. She was
Speaker 3: here as well, Suzanne Scott. I made some fast friends
Speaker 3: with a bar restaurant over here on a street that
Speaker 3: I will not name because I do not want to
Speaker 3: get them in trouble. And there was a period where
Speaker 3: the city reopened for a week or two, do you
Speaker 3: remember that, and everything slamming back down again. But during
Speaker 3: that week or two I made friends with them, and
Speaker 3: they said, you know, Bill, We've got a room upstairs.
Speaker 3: It has no windows, and you're welcome to come anytime.
Speaker 3: And that really became a refuge for me. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm not married, and I'm either going home to an
Speaker 3: apartment or I'm going to what I called my COVID
Speaker 3: speak easy. So on occasion, Cynthia I would bring a
Speaker 3: colleague or a friend and we would go upstairs in
Speaker 3: this room and you know, we could eat with them
Speaker 3: and you know, have a beer, and maybe it's just
Speaker 3: an hour, hour and a half time, but it gave
Speaker 3: us something to do.
Speaker 4: Let's call this section anchor management. We'll hear from John Tower,
Speaker 4: Simone Swink, and Lindsey Davis.
Speaker 2: Managing anchors remotely is a challenge because they don't see
Speaker 2: or hear each other, right, so in the beginning, like
Speaker 2: they're stepping on each other. They don't understand, like the
Speaker 2: Gale talks and then Tony talks, and then Gail stops,
Speaker 2: and then Tony stops, and then you know, so getting
Speaker 2: them used to coordinating was something that I was used
Speaker 2: to coming from Rning Joe, where most of our anchors
Speaker 2: were remote saying who's next, who comes next, who does this,
Speaker 2: who does that? And so that was a that was
Speaker 2: a huge learning curve for them because you know, remote
Speaker 2: show maybe having one anchor or remote on a remote
Speaker 2: show is something that you like are used to, but
Speaker 2: like having all three anchors who are bouncing scripts, who
Speaker 2: are like trying to interact with each other for every topic,
Speaker 2: like that's that's a sort of like a new It's
Speaker 2: luck left brain, right brain for them, And so it
Speaker 2: was about getting them used to hearing me in their
Speaker 2: ear and like them being comfortable with me being like
Speaker 2: Gail talks next. Hey, Gail talks next. Hey, Anthony talks next.
Speaker 2: What do you mean the Anthony talks next? I have
Speaker 2: something to say.
Speaker 6: We almost always had at least one anchor in the studio,
Speaker 6: so even if they so let's say, if Michael was
Speaker 6: in the studio and Robin was in a box and
Speaker 6: George was in a box, there was always a way
Speaker 6: to get the show on the air. And so, like you,
Speaker 6: if you're used to being on deadline, you're probably also
Speaker 6: good at improvisation even when you don't want to be.
Speaker 6: So there was always a way to have a plan,
Speaker 6: and worst case scenario, someone else's shot went down, then
Speaker 6: whoever was in the studio could take the reins and
Speaker 6: take us to the next reporter or have the conversation
Speaker 6: or do the interview, and there were definitely a few
Speaker 6: times I was trying to think of them. But there
Speaker 6: were definitely a few times that somebody on remote Zoom
Speaker 6: was scheduled to do an interview and something went wrong
Speaker 6: and so someone else came took over and did the interview.
Speaker 1: So Flavio Juir was my audio tech who all so
Speaker 1: doubled as my studio floor director, and it was just
Speaker 1: the two of us every single day. So then they
Speaker 1: started doing two week rotations, so there would be teams
Speaker 1: basically that would be in the office for two weeks
Speaker 1: and then at home for two weeks. Basically just kind
Speaker 1: of trying to figure out the incubation period so that
Speaker 1: you always had a plan B for I if that
Speaker 1: team or multiple people on that team got sick, you
Speaker 1: had reserves, so that essentially everybody wasn't going to get
Speaker 1: sick at the same time. So I was not seeing
Speaker 1: anyone except for Flavio. We were not you know, we
Speaker 1: would we would meet on Zoom. A lot was done
Speaker 1: through email and text, but physically, well, I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: would see also a hair makeup team that they would
Speaker 1: you know, have gloves and masks and everything, but otherwise
Speaker 1: in the building. Yeah, it was just it was just
Speaker 1: the two of us.
Speaker 4: It's hard to believe that this story hasn't been turned
Speaker 4: into a sitcom or a Netflix rom com. Tony Dukoppel
Speaker 4: had an unusual situation at his home because he had
Speaker 4: to share his basement studio with his wife, NBC News
Speaker 4: correspondent Katie Tour. Occasionally hilarity would ensue. I understand that
Speaker 4: your basement doubled as the NBC bureau as well as
Speaker 4: the CBS News bureau. Well was that Were there any
Speaker 4: traffic jams for you and Katie at any time?
Speaker 7: Huge now, because not only did it double as, but
Speaker 7: the NBC people came down and, as I recall, un
Speaker 7: ceremoniously moved some of the CBS stuff in order to
Speaker 7: get their pick of corners for their setup, so they
Speaker 7: had a longer camera shot.
Speaker 10: I was more squeezed.
Speaker 7: But on the other hand, the NBC crew, they're the
Speaker 7: ones that took the made the investment of drilling the
Speaker 7: enhanced Internet cable down directly from where it comes into
Speaker 7: the house into the basement, so they, I guess they
Speaker 7: felt they had license. But I do remember there was
Speaker 7: like a call that I was not on but between
Speaker 7: our crew folks and the NBC crew folks to iron
Speaker 7: out who was disrespecting who on this, and then there
Speaker 7: was like there were questions of like, well, what happens
Speaker 7: if they both need to be on air at the
Speaker 7: same time, And then a moment later we thought, well,
Speaker 7: if that's the case, something even worse than this terribleness
Speaker 7: were going through has to happen, So let's just pray
Speaker 7: that doesn't occur.
Speaker 10: And it didn't.
Speaker 7: It didn't know, But sometimes the one thing that would happen, though,
Speaker 7: is I would have to I'd go off air, and
Speaker 7: then I would use the desk behind me as my
Speaker 7: work desk during the day because i'd have the baby
Speaker 7: upstairs and Katie would sometimes beyond, but i'd have a
Speaker 7: script deadline. I was still trying to be productive as
Speaker 7: I could, and the bathroom was across her camera shot,
Speaker 7: so it'd have to sometimes army crawl threw her very
Speaker 7: serious life or death conversation to take care of the
Speaker 7: more mundane acts of daily lif and then I'd be
Speaker 7: in my own head because I'd be thinking about a script,
Speaker 7: so I wouldn't think about whether she's on. So you know,
Speaker 7: if you listen closely. There's probably toilet flushes in the
Speaker 7: background of Katchit reports during those days. Sorry, honey, Fox.
Speaker 4: News is Scott Wilder was not the only one to
Speaker 4: point out the harmonic convergence that helped TV during COVID.
Speaker 4: Video sharing platforms and cloud based collaboration tools were hitting
Speaker 4: new strides just as the world needed to set a
Speaker 4: virtual meeting or two. Wilder explains it.
Speaker 9: Well, Listen, this pandemic happened five years earlier. We would
Speaker 9: not have had a satellite truck to send to each
Speaker 9: person's home. The fact that we were broadcasting largely using
Speaker 9: bonded cellular technology and the Internet that you have in
Speaker 9: your home and I have in my home without adding
Speaker 9: any services. Over time, we did bolster some of the
Speaker 9: Internet services, but five years ago, three years ago, before
Speaker 9: the pandem three years prior to the pandemic, we would
Speaker 9: not have been able to do that. And so because
Speaker 9: of that technology, we were talking about how we can
Speaker 9: do live shots and home studios and those things with
Speaker 9: equipment like live view and you know, your Verizon Internet
Speaker 9: that you.
Speaker 5: Have in your home.
Speaker 4: Tech tools were the saviors of businesses across the spectrum
Speaker 4: during lockdown, but Inevitably, there were snaffoos. Here's a string
Speaker 4: of fun anecdotes from John Tower, Lindsay Davis, Simone Swink,
Speaker 4: and Tony Dkoppel.
Speaker 2: There would be times when our anchor cameras would like
Speaker 2: just disappear right, so like Gail's connection would go down ooops, yeah,
Speaker 2: and then Tony's all go down or antheons are going down,
Speaker 2: and you know those are okay. Our attitude about that
Speaker 2: is like that's okay. We're in a pandemic, like we're
Speaker 2: managed to staying we like. Our personal approach was just
Speaker 2: like say it on the air, say it, don't try
Speaker 2: to like, you know, dump in our about it, like
Speaker 2: have fun with it. And there was in whatever respect
Speaker 2: you can. But there were moments when you lose somebody
Speaker 2: and you know, there's a lot of scrambling bonds scenes,
Speaker 2: a lot of people running around, but for the show,
Speaker 2: you just you know, go pick up Tony script and
Speaker 2: you keep moving.
Speaker 1: There were definitely a few times where the packages were
Speaker 1: not sent or sent incorrectly, or maybe there was no
Speaker 1: sound on them. I mean, because it was just such
Speaker 1: a and I and I felt our team really rose
Speaker 1: to the occasion. I think it was such a baptism
Speaker 1: by fire. Again, many of them this was their first
Speaker 1: or second job, and they had looked to be looked
Speaker 1: forward to being mentored, and now that opportunity, they were
Speaker 1: just having to figure it out, and many of it
Speaker 1: by trial and error. You know, there were a lot
Speaker 1: of glitches. But I think people at home understood, you know,
Speaker 1: that was my belief anyway, that people knew what we
Speaker 1: were dealing with because they were trying to piece things
Speaker 1: together themselves.
Speaker 6: When Lara Spencer went home, it was something we always
Speaker 6: called the jokingly the Gretitch Bureau, because she and her
Speaker 6: producer and a few other folks all of up in
Speaker 6: Connecticut and she broadcasts from her home for I think
Speaker 6: it was over two years did Pop News did Deals
Speaker 6: and Steals. It would just be set up all over
Speaker 6: parts of her house, Like Deals and Steels would be
Speaker 6: out in the yard, Pop News would be inside in
Speaker 6: the kitchen. One of our most memorable episodes or broadcast
Speaker 6: during COVID is we really thought we had it nailed about.
Speaker 6: I think it was a year in her producer would
Speaker 6: drive over to her house because they were essentially their
Speaker 6: own COVID bubble, and she would run the prompter and
Speaker 6: the camera and Lara, as you may know from watching
Speaker 6: our show, loves to adopt dogs and she had for
Speaker 6: sure she had adopted a rescue that was blind, so
Speaker 6: we had to keep he always had to be kept
Speaker 6: out during the broadcast. And one day Dandy got in
Speaker 6: and then walked into the tripod and live on air,
Speaker 6: you know, the shots like this, and suddenly it's like this,
Speaker 6: and Lara, to her credit, just kept broadcasting. And so
Speaker 6: that morning Pop News was just upside down, but it
Speaker 6: also spoke to the reality of what was going on,
Speaker 6: Like everybody was learning how to use this technology on
Speaker 6: air and in their lives, and it sort of helped
Speaker 6: having these moments of humor that we just as a
Speaker 6: television show would keep going with. You know, we didn't
Speaker 6: immediately cut it. It was just it was actually quite funny,
Speaker 6: and she's so great live that she just kept going.
Speaker 7: Oh and then I remember, like all kinds of SNAPf
Speaker 7: foos happened that would never happen before. Where I'm sitting
Speaker 7: there in a commercial break reading something on my lap
Speaker 7: which is just out of camera shot, and somebody is
Speaker 7: trying to tell me we're coming back from commercial but
Speaker 7: instead of Patty or our stage director being right in
Speaker 7: front of me, snapping her fingers, being like, Tony, you're
Speaker 7: back at ten. I have no IFB it's fallen out.
Speaker 7: So they just come back to me live picture of
Speaker 7: me just looking down. It appears as though I'm sleeping,
Speaker 7: like my chin is on my chest and I'm just
Speaker 7: out cold. So it's just ten seconds of that with
Speaker 7: Jaunty Morning Show music, and then it goes back to
Speaker 7: commercial and everybody was like, did we just catch that
Speaker 7: guy sleeping? So it was a it was a it
Speaker 7: was messy.
Speaker 4: You don't want to miss what's coming up next. We'll
Speaker 4: be right back with more tales of TV during COVID
Speaker 4: after this break, and we're back with more about how
Speaker 4: TV stayed on the air during COVID. Did you ever
Speaker 4: have a tech challenge so bad you feared you might
Speaker 4: miss your airtime or not deliver your episode on time?
Speaker 4: Chris Dinan, Jason Kurtz, and Shawn and Thomas each paused
Speaker 4: a bit before they answered, I don't.
Speaker 5: Think we ever felt like we weren't going to get
Speaker 5: on TV. I think that there were doubts and on
Speaker 5: certaindays about how exactly that would happen. But I mean
Speaker 5: this is there is you know there really it's it's
Speaker 5: a zero some dame that there is no alternative. We
Speaker 5: have to get on television though not doing that. So
Speaker 5: I think everybody was determined to find the ways to
Speaker 5: do it, as you know, as it wasn't a there
Speaker 5: were moments where you are uncertain where something would operate
Speaker 5: from them, whether a piece would roll or whether you know,
Speaker 5: something like that would happen, whether a live shot would
Speaker 5: pop up appropriately, And those were all individual scares, but
Speaker 5: in general, I think that there was a real determination
Speaker 5: to you know, meet the challenge, do the job. And
Speaker 5: I would say that, you know, people really made sacrifices
Speaker 5: and they really, you know, they chose to get the
Speaker 5: job done. I mean, David could have stayed at home
Speaker 5: at a home studio if he had wanted to.
Speaker 10: Many people did, and that was an obvious choice.
Speaker 5: But he came every day to the set to just
Speaker 5: send a reassuring message that you know, there were people here,
Speaker 5: people you could trust, people who would deliver information that
Speaker 5: are back based and in context, and I think that
Speaker 5: the audience warmed to that.
Speaker 4: Did you ever think about postponing the launch from September?
Speaker 8: There was conversations, but they were shut down down very quickly.
Speaker 8: We all just collectively, you know, executives at CBS, myself, Drue,
Speaker 8: all the wonderful people that work here. It was just
Speaker 8: this collective feeling of we're we're doing this, and we're
Speaker 8: focused and maybe the world needs this bright spot right
Speaker 8: now and hopefully we can be that. And that was
Speaker 8: sort of just collectively how we all felt. It was
Speaker 8: never really said out loud. It was never this big, raw,
Speaker 8: raw mission. It just was this undertone and feeling we
Speaker 8: all had together that this was we're doing this and
Speaker 8: we'll see everyone in September.
Speaker 12: The thing is, and I know this is a cliche,
Speaker 12: but I also come from a theater background. The show
Speaker 12: must go on no matter I always think about this
Speaker 12: show as, no matter what, at seven am Eastern time,
Speaker 12: we're not gonna put black on air like we're gonna
Speaker 12: do something. So however we have to do that, we
Speaker 12: will make it happen. And I've never worked anywhere CBS
Speaker 12: News or anywhere else where. Everyone does not have that
Speaker 12: work ethic.
Speaker 4: Simon Swink wasn't the only one to marvel in hindsight
Speaker 4: at how much they were able to achieve under COVID conditions.
Speaker 4: Scott Wilder and Jason Kurtz also chime in on this subject.
Speaker 6: But our menu actually didn't change that much. I would
Speaker 6: say if you took any broadcast from four years ago
Speaker 6: at this moment and right now, it's probably the same
Speaker 6: number of segments. Because what we found is we had
Speaker 6: enough people that really knew how the show worked and
Speaker 6: could figure out, Okay, I'm going to add a few
Speaker 6: extra steps, but the guest isn't coming, so we're going
Speaker 6: to do this on Zoom, or we're going to tape
Speaker 6: interviews on zoom or whatever it might be. We can
Speaker 6: edit from home and we can feed in this way
Speaker 6: over various servers. We came up with enough workarounds very
Speaker 6: quickly because it's a smart creative group, that it didn't
Speaker 6: change our segment number. But it did really change our
Speaker 6: production number. And the most noticeable We've always done a
Speaker 6: lot of live performances on the show, live music performances,
Speaker 6: and we couldn't do those. I mean, we had to
Speaker 6: kick off our summer I think was to kick off
Speaker 6: our summer concert series. We had we had a special
Speaker 6: crew tested and we filmed Katie Perry in her backyard
Speaker 6: singing her brand new song Daisies, and I would argue
Speaker 6: it was actually in many ways it was very cool
Speaker 6: that we had been forced to innovate into that because
Speaker 6: we were seeing a very famous pop star bring us
Speaker 6: a new song in a different kind of environment. You know,
Speaker 6: it wasn't the usual slick stage production. So in some
Speaker 6: cases the innovation's forced I think some great television.
Speaker 9: Our leaderships, specifically Susan Scott, who's our CEO, was very
Speaker 9: adamant that we needed to look like we were in
Speaker 9: television studios and needed to have a high bar of
Speaker 9: being a professional television facility. If that facility was going
Speaker 9: to be in an anchor's home, it didn't matter. It
Speaker 9: was very important from all leadership that the viewer turned
Speaker 9: on the TV and feel like they're watching Fox News.
Speaker 9: People were starving for information, right These were scary times,
Speaker 9: and so it just that was one thing that across
Speaker 9: the board, our leadership knew that they did not want
Speaker 9: to change. Nobody wanted to turn the TV on and
Speaker 9: look at, you know, somebody's living room or kitchen.
Speaker 8: My memory is that none of that. We just kept
Speaker 8: moving and we just weren't giving up and it was
Speaker 8: just this really supportive, amazing group from CBS executives to
Speaker 8: Drew to you know, Flower Films, Chris Miller and Amber Truesdale,
Speaker 8: myself and everyone that just worked here. It was just
Speaker 8: this collective and I sound Sacharine and but it really
Speaker 8: just was this beautiful group of people that just had
Speaker 8: one common goal and we were focused and we were
Speaker 8: just not stopping. So that's really my memory, and that
Speaker 8: was so nice and helpful, especially during such a dark
Speaker 8: time with everything happening, that it was just this really
Speaker 8: amazing group of people that just got to work together
Speaker 8: and just wanted to stay focused and bring Drew to
Speaker 8: everyone's home and hopefully create like just a fun, bright
Speaker 8: little place to be.
Speaker 4: Of course, all of this work under extreme pressure is
Speaker 4: being done while everyone is also dealing with personal struggles
Speaker 4: and health threats made worse by the pandemic. Jason Kurtz,
Speaker 4: Shawna Thomas, Simone Swink, and Lindsey Davis share hard stories.
Speaker 8: There was a heaviness to what we were all dealing
Speaker 8: with personally, and you know, we all that was another
Speaker 8: you know, silver lining, and it is that our group
Speaker 8: bonded very fast during those times because we were supporting
Speaker 8: each other, not just professionally but personally.
Speaker 12: CBS News, I believe, was one of the first COVID
Speaker 12: clusters in New York City in March of twenty twenty.
Speaker 12: And I know that because while I was not working
Speaker 12: technically for CBS News, I was working for Quibi, the
Speaker 12: now incredibly defult Quibby. But I was a development executive
Speaker 12: that was in charge of sixty and six, which was
Speaker 12: like the sixty minutes product, and in I think about
Speaker 12: a week before maybe a week and a half before
Speaker 12: they had to shut down the broadcast center, we had
Speaker 12: had a launch party there that it near CBS, near
Speaker 12: the broadcast Center, in one of the restaurants that I
Speaker 12: remember being there with Susan Zarenski and Bill Owens, and
Speaker 12: everyone was like, we're going to do this new thing.
Speaker 12: It's going to be on Quibbi. We're making this like
Speaker 12: mini version of sixty minutes with Seth Doane and these
Speaker 12: other reporters and it's going to be fantastic. And I
Speaker 12: remember looking at Zee, who I had known for a
Speaker 12: while just through being in television news for many years,
Speaker 12: and looking at her and we weren't wearing masks and
Speaker 12: being like, am I supposed to hug you? Are we hugged?
Speaker 11: Like?
Speaker 7: What do we do right now?
Speaker 8: Is this real?
Speaker 11: Is this not?
Speaker 12: It goes back to kind of what Tara was saying,
Speaker 12: and she was like, I'm a hugger. And I personally
Speaker 12: believe I got COVID from that party, because almost soon
Speaker 12: after that, I was going back and forth between New
Speaker 12: York and d C because I was still partially based
Speaker 12: in DC while working for Quibbi. And it did the
Speaker 12: the fears at CBS had started. Things in New York
Speaker 12: City had were just starting to get worse and worse.
Speaker 12: And I basically told my boss, who also used to
Speaker 12: be the executive producer of CBS, this morning, Ryan kdro
Speaker 12: Ryan looking for Quibbi. It's all very incestuous, really, that
Speaker 12: I was not going to come back to New York City.
Speaker 12: And then a couple of days after that, I came
Speaker 12: down with one hundred and two fever that did not
Speaker 12: go away for ten days.
Speaker 6: We had a colleague who was quite sick and in
Speaker 6: the hospital and she didn't she was she didn't understand
Speaker 6: why nobody would visit her and have COVID. She had
Speaker 6: something else, and none of us could leave our rooms
Speaker 6: and she died, and it was like COVID is not
Speaker 6: only disrupting regular day to day work, it's disrupting that
Speaker 6: all these people can't go see a close friend and colleague.
Speaker 6: And then we actually didn't have her funeral for another
Speaker 6: or couldn't attend a memorial for another two years. I
Speaker 6: was not only coming in every day at a certain point,
Speaker 6: but that was like my only contact with the outside world,
Speaker 6: it felt like, was to come to the studio. And
Speaker 6: I had been dealing with a health battle because I
Speaker 6: had found it I quite severe cancer in the middle
Speaker 6: of it. So to actually be able to come to
Speaker 6: work during all that was a lifesaver because it really
Speaker 6: gave me something to focus on. And everybody was so
Speaker 6: caught up and how are we solving problems that no
Speaker 6: one's looking at the cancer patients. So for me, it
Speaker 6: was this unexpected boon in the midst of all this
Speaker 6: mist of all this misery and and you know, separation.
Speaker 6: So I actually loved coming into work.
Speaker 12: There was at least one or two times where we
Speaker 12: got one of the anchors results while they were on
Speaker 12: TV and during a commercial break, I would come out
Speaker 12: and be like, Hey, why don't you come with me.
Speaker 12: Let let's go outside for a second. And I think
Speaker 12: at least maybe once, I think I pulled Nate like
Speaker 12: he was in a segment in one part of the
Speaker 12: show and then suddenly not there anymore because I pulled
Speaker 12: them and you put a mask on him, you put
Speaker 12: him in a car, and you're like, you gotta go home,
Speaker 12: go home. We need you to leave immediately, and then
Speaker 12: retest everybody in the studio. And it seems funny now,
Speaker 12: but then you're like, what are we going to tell
Speaker 12: the audience? This is his own personal medical business. What
Speaker 12: do we do they're gonna notice? And then I think
Speaker 12: that one time we had to do two more segments,
Speaker 12: didn't say anything until the end of the show, and
Speaker 12: said a little bit of something and then got off
Speaker 12: the air to start to figure out how we were
Speaker 12: going to do tomorrow.
Speaker 11: But there was it.
Speaker 12: It was constantly being thrown some kind of weird curveball
Speaker 12: about how are we going to make this work because
Speaker 12: this virus is still going around and I still have
Speaker 12: to figure out how to do the show and protect people.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, early on it was April. My mom then got
Speaker 1: COVID and this is before the you know, vaccine, and
Speaker 1: it was like older people and people of color, you know,
Speaker 1: black people, my mom's a black woman, were dying you know, regularly.
Speaker 1: So that was really hard for me reporting on this
Speaker 1: and to try to, you know, remove myself from the
Speaker 1: emotion of when we were talking about the disproportionate you know,
Speaker 1: the elderly and people of color who were dying, and
Speaker 1: that was a really just the first time anything in
Speaker 1: that way was so personal, and it made it more
Speaker 1: urgent for me, you know, to almost inform people because
Speaker 1: I wanted to know as a real kind of you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to say victim, but just the feeling,
Speaker 1: the impact personally, you know, on the home front really
Speaker 1: was was significant.
Speaker 4: News pros were driven by the knowledge that their work
Speaker 4: mattered greatly. Here's Chris Dinan and Simone Swink.
Speaker 5: You know, I've in network news for decades now, and
Speaker 5: I know that there's been the discussion the decline of
Speaker 5: the broadcast networks, but during the course of this pandemic,
Speaker 5: millions of people turned for their information to the broadcast networks.
Speaker 5: At one point, we were having thirteen million bluers a
Speaker 5: night and were the number one show across the ball
Speaker 5: and broadcasts and came, which is a remarkable accomplishment. If
Speaker 5: you told me that an uscasts would have that cided
Speaker 5: number and be in that position, I don't know that
Speaker 5: I would have thought that was possible.
Speaker 10: That people turned in great numbers.
Speaker 5: Because they knew that they would get reliable in sense
Speaker 5: of the information that they could trust, and I thought
Speaker 5: that was it's always been reassuring that.
Speaker 6: You just reminded me of one thing that I forgot
Speaker 6: that was a very big deal during the pandemic, which
Speaker 6: is that we kept doing deals and steals and Tory
Speaker 6: Johnson and the show got something like one hundred and
Speaker 6: fifty letters. She showed me a lot of them, the
Speaker 6: number of small business owners in this country that wrote
Speaker 6: to GMA and Tory and said, you saved our business
Speaker 6: during the pandemic. This was the only way that anyone
Speaker 6: could learn what we were doing. And so that meant
Speaker 6: that if they were in deals and steals, and then
Speaker 6: Tory told their story and the viewers got a deal,
Speaker 6: so somebody bought a twelve dollars dishcloth. We literally had
Speaker 6: people writing to us saying we were able to keep
Speaker 6: everybody on payroll, We could close payroll people were able
Speaker 6: to get the healthcare that they needed in order to
Speaker 6: help the members of their family who had COVID. I mean,
Speaker 6: the ripple effect just on its own from deals and
Speaker 6: steals during that time was amazing.
Speaker 4: There were heroic efforts made by TV's frontline workers. Here's
Speaker 4: Scott Wilder, Chris Dinan, and Bill Hammer.
Speaker 9: We asked our news photographers to kind of be the
Speaker 9: front line of the people who were doing that with
Speaker 9: our anchors and reporters and contributors, because they're the people
Speaker 9: who are used to really being at the front lines
Speaker 9: of adversity and dangerous situations and hostile situations, and so
Speaker 9: they I like to think that they put a lot
Speaker 9: of people at ease and they were comfortable continuing to work.
Speaker 9: You know, I have to go back and give a
Speaker 9: lot of praise to our talent.
Speaker 5: You know, we hadn't based anything this dramatic or to
Speaker 5: Tonian ever in terms of our ability to cover stories.
Speaker 5: And I would just say that there were heroic efforts
Speaker 5: by reporters field producers who were actually out in the field,
Speaker 5: you know, in close proximity to this terrible pandemic, doing
Speaker 5: their jobs as best they could and doing spectacular work.
Speaker 10: And bringing home the stories of you.
Speaker 5: The terrible suffering that was going on, which I did
Speaker 5: think over time also took a toll on the people
Speaker 5: who were covering it and the producers who were here,
Speaker 5: who day in and day out would see very heart
Speaker 5: wrenching videos and people suffering and in the last throws
Speaker 5: of their lives as.
Speaker 10: They hard to deal with, you know, the unthinkable.
Speaker 5: So it took an emotional pale on people, I'm sure,
Speaker 5: but to a person, everyone you know, set that aside
Speaker 5: when they had to and made a point of delivering
Speaker 5: the news in the most objective way they could.
Speaker 3: But I would defer to my colleagues who also you know,
Speaker 3: you didn't see a lot of them on camera because
Speaker 3: they weren't behind the scenes, but so many of them
Speaker 3: that they weren't just writing from different states, you know,
Speaker 3: and producing for different stays. They were in the building.
Speaker 10: And I mentioned Suzanne, and.
Speaker 3: That is really important. That means a lot when your
Speaker 3: leader is here. And yeah, I also think it means
Speaker 3: a lot of viewers when they know that you're still
Speaker 3: there for them every day, so you're.
Speaker 7: Doing what you can.
Speaker 4: Yeah, after more than a year of quarantines and ppe,
Speaker 4: the pandemic slowly began to loosen its grip. Their return
Speaker 4: to normal news gathering and production conditions was a process
Speaker 4: unto itself. Here we hear from Scott Wilder, Jason Kurtz,
Speaker 4: Vin de Bona, and John Tower.
Speaker 9: The majority of our staff cannot wait to get back,
Speaker 9: and it was can I please have my spare bedroom back?
Speaker 9: And I please have the space in my living room back?
Speaker 9: I really, you know, I just can't stand. My kids
Speaker 9: are tripping over this equipment. So yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 9: those same teams who went and set them up, you know,
Speaker 9: would would take them back. So we have a plethora
Speaker 9: of sixty five inch monitors in this building somewhere.
Speaker 8: It wasn't until after the fact that Drew and I realized,
Speaker 8: like we never had the benefit of a studio audience
Speaker 8: giving direct feedback. Like we didn't even think that way
Speaker 8: until season two when we had a studio audience and
Speaker 8: we're like, oh, wow, they're laughing. It's not you know,
Speaker 8: like oh my god, Like they're emoting like we It
Speaker 8: was funny because we just didn't have it, so we
Speaker 8: didn't think about it. And then when we had it
Speaker 8: in season two, we're like, wow, we missed out on
Speaker 8: like real time feedback, and so that was interesting realizing that.
Speaker 8: But then we brought them back and we brought in
Speaker 8: the studio audience in season two, and that sort of
Speaker 8: obviously changed the energy of the room and brought so
Speaker 8: much life to the show. Showed that side of drew,
Speaker 8: that personal connection that she can get from, you know,
Speaker 8: any individual, and just her love of the audience.
Speaker 11: Actually, we had to figure out how to reblock the show.
Speaker 11: What we did was, and that's a really good question.
Speaker 11: You know, we had a huge group of audience members
Speaker 11: in bleachers and that was sort of the camera left
Speaker 11: area of the studio, and we decided not to use
Speaker 11: the bleachers anymore. We were still trying to figure out
Speaker 11: if cod if COVID could kick back, you know, and
Speaker 11: so limiting the audience. We wound up using coffee tables,
Speaker 11: high school tables, high top tables and scattered around the
Speaker 11: studio and it was more of a kind of a
Speaker 11: community look than a bleacher look. And so we've kept
Speaker 11: that and it works quite well.
Speaker 2: I'm not a cranky, like get everybody back to the
Speaker 2: office kind of person. I'm not, but I do think
Speaker 2: that there's something lost when people aren't like actually physically
Speaker 2: present with each other, and so like that affects the
Speaker 2: news too, and that affects it the way we like
Speaker 2: tell stories interact, and you know, it affects how the
Speaker 2: anchors are. You know, the show's much better together with
Speaker 2: then when they're like remote, you still put a shoe on,
Speaker 2: but it's there's just there's something there. So I think
Speaker 2: figuring that out and get and you know, getting back
Speaker 2: to a world where we are truly together again, if
Speaker 2: that is even a possibility, I think that that would
Speaker 2: contribute to sort of a better product.
Speaker 4: Now that we have the benefit of hindsight. What have
Speaker 4: been the lasting impact of changes implemented during COVID times
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty. Once I did my fourth or fifth
Speaker 4: media hit via Zoom, I knew that local stations and
Speaker 4: networks would rarely, if ever again send a full crew
Speaker 4: to our offices for a routine news interview. Here we
Speaker 4: get perspective from Simone Swink, Scott Wilder, Chris Dinan, and
Speaker 4: Bill Hammer.
Speaker 6: It shook up people's idea of what was possible, and
Speaker 6: I think that's always good. This industry is always changing,
Speaker 6: and that was at least a positive thing to come
Speaker 6: out of it. I also think, at least for me,
Speaker 6: I think empathy at work is really important, and I
Speaker 6: don't think sometimes we talk about it enough. I think
Speaker 6: a lot of people are dealing with a lot of things,
Speaker 6: and certainly were during COVID, and you have to get
Speaker 6: the best show on the air. It's a very competitive environment.
Speaker 6: But I do think leading with empathy, working with empathy
Speaker 6: and trying to assume or at least lead with the
Speaker 6: idea that everybody is trying to do their best work
Speaker 6: or figure out how to get them there. And that's
Speaker 6: not always going to work. But if you start from
Speaker 6: an empathetic but firm place, I think you're going to
Speaker 6: end up in a better place as a broadcast. And
Speaker 6: I also think I think COVID was a time of
Speaker 6: immense struggle for so many people. I think so many
Speaker 6: people had just so much. They were dealing with family,
Speaker 6: personal struggles, the idea of just being in lockdown. It
Speaker 6: was such a disruption to the system in general, and
Speaker 6: I think that that meant that empathy and patience in
Speaker 6: so many ways are emerged as key leadership characteristics in
Speaker 6: a way that I don't think they were held up
Speaker 6: that way prior to COVID.
Speaker 9: I think that we're prepared to respond to breaking news
Speaker 9: in a way that we never were because in certain
Speaker 9: instances where we've decided to keep or install or lean
Speaker 9: on something we've already done, we still have the ability
Speaker 9: to do that right. So that to me is the
Speaker 9: lasting impact that we can go you know, something could
Speaker 9: happen at three am and I can call somebody and
Speaker 9: have them on TV within you know, fifteen minutes, as
Speaker 9: opposed to dispatch the van getting them into this building. Yeah,
Speaker 9: the art of learning where and when to do that,
Speaker 9: I think is the hardware.
Speaker 5: There have been many examples, of course the American history
Speaker 5: where you know, the country has stepped up and found
Speaker 5: a way to deal with something challenging, and this was clearly,
Speaker 5: you know, one of the most dramatic examples of that.
Speaker 10: So I think, you know, it's changed the cultures.
Speaker 5: As you mentioned, the phenomena of working from home is
Speaker 5: something that people very much embrace and it's allowed.
Speaker 10: I think it's also a lot of certain confidence.
Speaker 5: I think that with the advances and technology that we
Speaker 5: saw this time, and you know, with the kind of
Speaker 5: success in covering the news during this time, probably as
Speaker 5: challenging a time as there's ever been in being the
Speaker 5: journalists because very you're very reassuring that you can do
Speaker 5: almost anything if you know the will is there.
Speaker 3: You know, this is the birth of the live mobile van.
Speaker 3: You have anchors now who are doing entire entire shows
Speaker 3: from a van, like on the side of a street somewhere,
Speaker 3: and you don't know where it is. So that's another change.
Speaker 3: I think It's enabled us from a news gathering perspective,
Speaker 3: to reach guests who would normally not be available to
Speaker 3: us because I don't know, you name it, they're X
Speaker 3: amount of miles or hours away from a studio, and
Speaker 3: now we could send them the equipment meant where we
Speaker 3: could broadcast their face and their image and their audio.
Speaker 3: So that's all changed entirely, and.
Speaker 6: I think it broke some of the some of the
Speaker 6: broadcast norms of it always has to be a crew,
Speaker 6: it always has to be on sticks. There's many, many
Speaker 6: ways to do things, and the combination of COVID and
Speaker 6: also the rise of the iPhone, which had already been
Speaker 6: going on for a while. I think viewers are much
Speaker 6: I think viewers just want to see whatever it is,
Speaker 6: and they are much more willing to put up with
Speaker 6: the aesthetics of a shot that before it might have
Speaker 6: been deemed not for broadcast. It sort of infiltrated big
Speaker 6: ways in small ways in terms of that switch over technologically,
Speaker 6: and I think it changed the esthetic for good. I mean,
Speaker 6: we use zoom interviews now and a lot of pieces
Speaker 6: in a way that we would not have five years ago.
Speaker 6: And I think viewers are adjusted to it. They're fine
Speaker 6: with it. I don't think they think, oh, that show
Speaker 6: looks too different or too low budget to watch. It's
Speaker 6: just that's how people talk to each other now of
Speaker 6: the time.
Speaker 7: When the undeniable lasting changes, everybody got used to and
Speaker 7: comfortable with really lower quality camera and sound that people
Speaker 7: are setting up themselves. It was now acceptable to be like, yeah,
Speaker 7: I'll be on your show, but I'm going to stay
Speaker 7: in Newton, Massachusetts. Or yeah I'll be on your show,
Speaker 7: but I'm at my third house in Wyoming for the
Speaker 7: next week.
Speaker 10: Is that okay? Of course it is.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And that's just the reality of it. So that
Speaker 7: was both That's a double edged sword, because the good
Speaker 7: thing is you could do things more cheaply, but the
Speaker 7: bad thing is they realized they could do things more cheaply,
Speaker 7: and that always means jobs in our business.
Speaker 4: One big change that Vin de Bona and the AFV
Speaker 4: team made to the format of the show out of
Speaker 4: expediency has since been baked in for good.
Speaker 11: You know, up until that point, we brought audience members
Speaker 11: in winners of not winners, but participants in the contest
Speaker 11: in with their families.
Speaker 13: Right right, I've noticed that, yeah, right, And obviously we
Speaker 13: couldn't do that, so we sent for each show, we
Speaker 13: sent ring cameras and.
Speaker 11: Ring lights, with cameras and instructions and once again before
Speaker 11: tape date, we would make sure that the signal from
Speaker 11: their router was strong enough so that when we had
Speaker 11: the families come on, they wouldn't freeze, which they did sometimes.
Speaker 11: And so but basically we were sending out cause three
Speaker 11: shows a day, we were sending out, you know, nine
Speaker 11: sets of cameras, and then they had to return them,
Speaker 11: and then we had to send them on to the
Speaker 11: next group of families. So all that was keeping track
Speaker 11: of not the easiest thing in the world, just good coordination.
Speaker 11: But what we found was because the potent winners, we
Speaker 11: set up a system where they came in on flat
Speaker 11: screens three separate flat screens, and Al would walk to
Speaker 11: screen one and chat with them, and go to screen
Speaker 11: two and chat. The chats were much better than they
Speaker 11: had ever been in studio, really so uh and and
Speaker 11: interestingly enough, I talked to one of the producers on
Speaker 11: American Idol and they had the same situation with their
Speaker 11: home audiences and home participants, where there were much more
Speaker 11: at ease. Al had more fun with them. So we've
Speaker 11: kept it and it's not part of the show, and
Speaker 11: and and it's always what's really funny is the kids
Speaker 11: are much more at ease. And so you know, you'll
Speaker 11: see al' sactor when we had a little girl uh
Speaker 11: last week, and she's going like this throughout the whole thing.
Speaker 11: She was so excited, and it makes for a great show.
Speaker 4: The television business was tested and tried during COVID. The
Speaker 4: industry showed up with creativity and ingenuity. The shows did
Speaker 4: stay on. Here we'll have Simone Swink, Vin de Bona,
Speaker 4: and Lindsey Davis reflect on jobs well done, at least
Speaker 4: for me.
Speaker 6: I think empathy at work is really important, and I
Speaker 6: don't think sometimes we talk about it enough. I think
Speaker 6: a lot of people are dealing with a lot of things,
Speaker 6: and certainly we're during COVID and you have to get
Speaker 6: the best show on the air. It's a very competitive environment.
Speaker 6: But I do think leading with empathy, working with empathy,
Speaker 6: and trying to assume or at least lead with the
Speaker 6: idea that everybody is trying to do their best work
Speaker 6: or figure out how to get them there. And that's
Speaker 6: not always going to work. But if you start from
Speaker 6: an empathetic but firm place, I think you're going to
Speaker 6: end up in a better place as a broadcast. I
Speaker 6: also think I think COVID was a time of immense
Speaker 6: struggle for so many people. I think so many people
Speaker 6: had just so much. They were dealing with family, personal struggles,
Speaker 6: the idea of just being in lockdown. It was such
Speaker 6: a disruption to the system in general. And I think
Speaker 6: that that meant that empathy and patience in so many
Speaker 6: ways emerged as key leadership characteristics in a way that
Speaker 6: I don't think they were held up that way prior
Speaker 6: to COVID.
Speaker 11: The poignant piece of that is that we kept people
Speaker 11: working and it was a very very difficult time, but
Speaker 11: we had work and hopefully we kept America laughing, and
Speaker 11: you know, that's our job.
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's made us all more innovative. We're
Speaker 1: able to see what's possible, for better or for worse.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that there is a sense that
Speaker 1: if anything happens, we don't all have to be physically
Speaker 1: in the building. There are workarounds, you know. So it's
Speaker 1: it's just a way of rather than looking at everything
Speaker 1: as a problem, just looking at Okay, there are solutions,
Speaker 1: and we've seen these solutions happen, and you know, people
Speaker 1: needed to be clever. And I think that that has
Speaker 1: really been a big statement for and this is not
Speaker 1: just you know, for our team, but for the television
Speaker 1: industry as a whole, just that the news is will
Speaker 1: remain undeterred regardless of the scenario. And you know, hopefully
Speaker 1: we do not have to enduse something like that again.
Speaker 1: But I think we've learned a lot about what we're
Speaker 1: capable of. Sometimes you don't know until you've really been
Speaker 1: put to the test, and you know, we certainly were
Speaker 1: and I think you know, we given the circumstances, I
Speaker 1: think we all collectively really did a good job of
Speaker 1: keeping people informed, which really is you know, our number
Speaker 1: one mission.
Speaker 4: Well, that's our show my deepest thanks to all who
Speaker 4: contributed to this passion project of mine that includes Strictly
Speaker 4: Businesses amazing editor Aaron Grenewald. So thank you for listening.
Speaker 4: Be sure to leave us a review at Apple Podcasts
Speaker 4: or Amazon Music. We love to hear from listeners. Please
Speaker 4: go to Variety dot com and sign up for the
Speaker 4: free weekly Strictly Business newsletter, and don't forget to tune
Speaker 4: in next week for another episode of Strictly Business.
Speaker 9: I think after whatever it was, ten eleven, twelve days,
Speaker 9: my family was ready for me to come back to me.
Speaker 10: We miss you.
Speaker 9: They were ready for go, you know, they were ready
Speaker 9: for me to go back to work. There were odd times,
Speaker 9: you know you people were doing schoolwork and and and working.
Speaker 10: Out of the houses.
Speaker 9: And how no matter how big your house is, and
Speaker 9: they don't have a big house. But no matter how
Speaker 9: big your house is, it's not big enough. H