Speaker 1: Hello, Strictly Business listeners. This is host Cynthia Littleton. Today
Speaker 1: we're queuing up a Strictly Business rerun of our very
Speaker 1: special extra long episode examining how the pandemic changed television
Speaker 1: production forever. I spoke with ten industry insiders, most of
Speaker 1: them in TV news, and wove their perspectives together into
Speaker 1: a chronicle of how TV stayed on the air during
Speaker 1: those difficult early months of the lockdown. This episode ran
Speaker 1: March twelfth of this year, around the five year anniversary
Speaker 1: of the stay at home orders that rocked our world.
Speaker 1: We're sending this out again today to shamelessly brag that
Speaker 1: this episode has been nominated by the Los Angeles Press
Speaker 1: Club for a national Arts and Entertainment Award. I worked
Speaker 1: really hard on this, so I hope you'll give it
Speaker 1: a listen. Thank you, and we'll be back next week
Speaker 1: with another fresh episode of Strictly Business.
Speaker 2: Our show Prime launched on February tenth of twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: We were making all these plans about how we were
Speaker 2: going to be collaborative. We had a brand new team assembled,
Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden, within a month.
Speaker 3: We weren't ready for a virtual control room we had
Speaker 3: no real infrastructure in place.
Speaker 4: The day I realized it was real is the day
Speaker 4: the Big East Basketball Tournament was canceled.
Speaker 3: It felt like one of those movies where you're like
Speaker 3: one you wake up and you're wandering through the streets
Speaker 3: and a place that's normally bustling is absolutely lifeless.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Strictly Business, Varieties weekly podcast featuring conversations with
Speaker 1: industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm
Speaker 1: Cynthia Lyttleton, co editor in chief of Variety. We don't
Speaker 1: typically do a cold open on this show, but this
Speaker 1: isn't a typical episode of Strictly Business. We depart from
Speaker 1: our standard solo interview format to take a long look
Speaker 1: back five years ago when Covid sank its pointy Corona
Speaker 1: fangs into New York and soon after the rest of
Speaker 1: the country. We didn't know it then, but March twenty
Speaker 1: twenty marked a huge inflection point for the television business.
Speaker 1: Stay at home orders, masks, and antigen tests. It all
Speaker 1: seems so distant and not so distant all at once.
Speaker 1: The story of how Covid helped supercharge the streaming business
Speaker 1: and the streaming wars has been well documented in recent years,
Speaker 1: but another big TV story unfolded during the early months
Speaker 1: of lockdown that hasn't gotten as much attention. Old fashioned
Speaker 1: linear TV rose to the occasion to keep local national
Speaker 1: news outlets on the air. The same was true for
Speaker 1: daytime and late night talk shows and live to tape
Speaker 1: entertainment such as ABC's America's Funniest Home Videos. The first
Speaker 1: few weeks of the pandemic spurred more seated the pants
Speaker 1: innovation to broadcast operations in engineering than had been done
Speaker 1: since the days of Sid Caesar and Milton bur in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen fifties. In our business, the show must
Speaker 1: go on, Ethos Israel. The last thing TV pros wanted
Speaker 1: to do was serve America dead. Air times were hard enough.
Speaker 1: By the end of twenty twenty, the death toll from
Speaker 1: COVID in the US alone had reached a staggering four
Speaker 1: hundred thousand. The social distancing conditions imposed forced producers and
Speaker 1: crew members and technicians to create virtual control rooms on
Speaker 1: the fly. They had to figure out how to recreate
Speaker 1: networks for communications and video collaboration tools in a matter
Speaker 1: of days. They ordered a whole lot of digital video
Speaker 1: equipment from Amazon to assemble home bureaus in a box
Speaker 1: for anchors. Talk shows quickly moved to create virtual studio audiences.
Speaker 1: I've been wanting to tackle the story of the great
Speaker 1: scramble of the early COVID months for several years. I
Speaker 1: had the privilege of being a fly on the wall
Speaker 1: at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in June twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, as Colbert returned to filming shows with live
Speaker 1: audiences at the Ed Sullivan Theater. In those interviews, it
Speaker 1: became apparent how much daring do and experimentation had been
Speaker 1: going on behind the scenes at a time when production
Speaker 1: staff was spread far and wide. I knew there were
Speaker 1: great stories there, but I didn't know how good they
Speaker 1: were until I started interviewing the ten sources that you'll
Speaker 1: hear in this episode. They shared stories that captured this
Speaker 1: fraut period with moments of humor, moments of meltdowns involving
Speaker 1: both tech and tykes, and some true moments of heartbreak.
Speaker 1: And in the end, what changes really mattered, what innovations
Speaker 1: stuck around Beyond the crisis, we examine the lasting legacy
Speaker 1: of pandemic era workarounds. I'm extremely grateful to the sources
Speaker 1: for their time and their candid thoughts on a most
Speaker 1: extraordinary time in their careers. My guests are Lindsey Davis,
Speaker 1: anchor of ABC News Live Prime and World News Tonight Sunday,
Speaker 1: Vin de Bona, executive producer of one of TV's longest
Speaker 1: running series, ABC's America's Funniest Home Videos, Chris Dinan, executive
Speaker 1: producer of ABC News World News Tonight, Tony de Koppel,
Speaker 1: anchor of CBS Mornings, Bill Hemmer, co anchor of America's
Speaker 1: Newsroom on Fox News. Jason Kurtz, executive producer and showrunner
Speaker 1: of The Drew Barrymore Show, Simone Swink, executive producer of
Speaker 1: Good Good Morning America, SHAWNA. Thomas, executive producer of CBS Mornings,
Speaker 1: John Tower, Senior broadcast producer of CBS Mornings, and Scott Wilder,
Speaker 1: Executive Vice President of Production and Operations for Fox News Media.
Speaker 1: Their stories are coming right up after this break, and
Speaker 1: we're back with the story of how TV rose to
Speaker 1: the occasion to stay on the air during the pandemic.
Speaker 1: I started each interview with the question, when did it
Speaker 1: sync in that COVID was going to change the way
Speaker 1: you were here? We'll hear from ABC's Chris Dinan, CBS's
Speaker 1: John Tower, and ABC's 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 3: It didn't quite feel real until the day that somewhere
Speaker 3: up in corporate they had decided to and we were
Speaker 3: over in uh West fifty seventh Street over in the
Speaker 3: CBS Broadcast Center, and there were sort of rumblings that they're,
Speaker 3: you know, they're they're they're talking about something. We know
Speaker 3: that they're they're something's happening. And then at the end
Speaker 3: of the day we had we had gone home after
Speaker 3: the show and I I remember I was on my
Speaker 3: way home and I got a call from a colleague
Speaker 3: saying they're shutting the broadcast center down, and and it
Speaker 3: was it was that abrupt. It was like we were like, okay,
Speaker 3: And so immediately the question was where are we going
Speaker 3: to do the show from? And it wasn't like we're
Speaker 3: going to send everybody home. It was again the pandemic
Speaker 3: was New It was just like and so somewhere it
Speaker 3: was a it was almost like a corporate decision, like
Speaker 3: having the virus around this particular building is not a
Speaker 3: risk that we want to take, and so you have
Speaker 3: to find another building to broadcast from, which you know, now,
Speaker 3: in hindsight, seems ridiculous because you're just moving, You're just
Speaker 3: moving to another risky space.
Speaker 6: But that's what we did.
Speaker 3: And they decided that we're going to go to DC
Speaker 3: because you know, as you just remember, in like New
Speaker 3: York was sort of like a hotbed.
Speaker 2: I remember the night that it really became real for
Speaker 2: us and the NBA canceled a game, and it was
Speaker 2: just a moment unlike anything I've ever I've been reporting
Speaker 2: for about twenty five years, and I have not you know,
Speaker 2: it was just I remember texting even you know, friends
Speaker 2: of mine about it and they were like, wait, no,
Speaker 2: that can't be happening, you know, and then it was
Speaker 2: just a domino effect of you know, people just I
Speaker 2: think the governor of Pennsylvania started telling people don't go
Speaker 2: to work, you know, don't go to school, and it
Speaker 2: just became really real very quickly.
Speaker 7: I think the moment that the company and the show
Speaker 7: started creating protocols for how people would be tested and
Speaker 7: how people would come to work. And when it really
Speaker 7: sank in is that people would have to quarantine. Because
Speaker 7: right around that mid March date, about fifteen of us
Speaker 7: had to quarantine at home and couldn't come to work.
Speaker 7: Right then, everybody else was like, what do you mean
Speaker 7: you can't come to work? And how is this going
Speaker 7: to work? And how are we going to do it?
Speaker 1: CBS is Tony du Koppel remembers taking a fateful call
Speaker 1: at the gym.
Speaker 8: The moment I realized this was going to be different.
Speaker 8: When is when I was at the gym and I
Speaker 8: got a call this two or three weeks later from
Speaker 8: Diana Miller, our former executive producer, and she was like,
Speaker 8: they've found COVID at the Broadcast Center. They're shutting it down.
Speaker 8: We're doing the show from Washington tomorrow. You got to
Speaker 8: get on a train now. I'll limit your contact And
Speaker 8: I was like, what this is? Limit my contact? I mean,
Speaker 8: I'm in a room of one hundred people at a gym.
Speaker 9: We go to DC.
Speaker 8: It's a super weird show because we have no news
Speaker 8: reason to be in DC. We have this crisis reason
Speaker 8: for being in DC. And then I go back to
Speaker 8: the hotel room that night, and in my memory anyway,
Speaker 8: that's the night when I'm watching TV talking to my wife,
Speaker 8: the news breaks at the NBA shutting down the season.
Speaker 8: Tom Hanks and Rita, his wife are coming forward and
Speaker 8: saying we have it, and Cuomo and Trump and every
Speaker 8: other leader you might turn to to.
Speaker 9: Say something stabilizing.
Speaker 8: Suddenly, in my view as just a citizen of the country,
Speaker 8: looking at people and being like, they don't seem like
Speaker 8: they have it under control anymore. This seems scary. We
Speaker 8: don't have a broadcast center, we don't have a sports league,
Speaker 8: we don't have leaders that seem to know what's going on.
Speaker 8: I don't know what happens from here. That's when it
Speaker 8: really landed, like we're going somewhere hard.
Speaker 1: As Covid descended and Drew Barrymore was in pre production
Speaker 1: getting ready to launch her daytime talk show that September.
Speaker 1: Showrunner Jason Kurtz remembers the nervousness of the moment.
Speaker 10: It was my first in person Withdrew in March.
Speaker 11: It was early March. I had come on.
Speaker 10: In feb so it was our first I was at
Speaker 10: our apartment and we were like kind of like talking
Speaker 10: about staffing and structure and getting into the bodies that
Speaker 10: we were going to bring on and all these great people.
Speaker 10: And it literally was the day that things started to
Speaker 10: heat up, and we were both looking at each other
Speaker 10: like wait, and I was like, I got a text
Speaker 10: that the bridges and tunnels are closing. It was like,
Speaker 10: you know in New York, like the rumor started, and
Speaker 10: I was like, that's strange, and we both kind of
Speaker 10: were looking at each other, getting a lot of texts
Speaker 10: from people, and I was like, maybe we should just
Speaker 10: hit pause and figure out, like what's going on in
Speaker 10: the world.
Speaker 11: And then literally like three days later, everything shut down.
Speaker 1: Another question I asked all ten sources was what was
Speaker 1: the first things your teams did to build alternatives to
Speaker 1: your studio and technology setups. Here we'll hear from Fox
Speaker 1: News's Scott Wilder, ABC's Lindsay Davis and Simone Swink and
Speaker 1: then Wilder again.
Speaker 12: So it became clear immediately that we were going to
Speaker 12: need to start broadcasting from locations outside of our building. Really,
Speaker 12: the premise at the time was that we weren't going
Speaker 12: to be able to broadcast from here. At all, like
Speaker 12: we were going to need to be cleared from this building.
Speaker 12: And so that was the moment that it hit me
Speaker 12: that we were going to have this immediate need to
Speaker 12: start broadcasting from someplace else. And does that mean that
Speaker 12: we're going to go find the location where we send
Speaker 12: all of our people or what actually happened where people
Speaker 12: start broadcasting from their homes. So you know, that was
Speaker 12: the immediate order, and right away we went out and
Speaker 12: just started contacting and working with all of our talent
Speaker 12: and going to their own and figuring out what we
Speaker 12: can do at each one of them. There was none,
Speaker 12: no two that were the shame. They were all a
Speaker 12: little bit different.
Speaker 2: My husband, who at that point was working from home
Speaker 2: as well, doubled as then my engineer. So he set
Speaker 2: up a hole and I'd posted a picture of it
Speaker 2: on Instagram at the time. We set up a little
Speaker 2: we made our TV into kind of it over the
Speaker 2: shoulder that had the graphic that said ABC News Live Prime,
Speaker 2: and set up a desk. And at the time my
Speaker 2: son was six and so we were in the basement
Speaker 2: and we did not ever put a lock on that
Speaker 2: door or anything, so he just kept coming down during
Speaker 2: the broadcast like whispering, you know, as if that was
Speaker 2: okay while we're trying to you know, run this teleprompter
Speaker 2: remotely and do the broadcast. So needless to say, we
Speaker 2: only ever did it one time remotely, and the rest
Speaker 2: of the times I just said, look, it's just it
Speaker 2: just makes more sense for me to come in.
Speaker 7: We really sort of hit the deadline, Like on Friday,
Speaker 7: we were still putting the rundown together the usual way,
Speaker 7: and by Monday we you know, you actually can do
Speaker 7: a lot of things from home. It's not ideal. It
Speaker 7: added five steps to every part of the process, but
Speaker 7: it's possible. The one thing I will say is that
Speaker 7: we had a group of people who came in every
Speaker 7: single day for three four years into the control room.
Speaker 7: And without that group of people, you couldn't get the
Speaker 7: rest of the show on. So ninety eight percent of
Speaker 7: the staff could be from home, but that two percent
Speaker 7: kept it on the air every day.
Speaker 13: You know.
Speaker 12: It was like zone defense. We were just trying to
Speaker 12: get people, and we tried to look where people live.
Speaker 12: I have a news photographer who lives in New Jersey
Speaker 12: and an anchor who lives in New Jersey. Marry that
Speaker 12: team up together. I have a new photographer who lives
Speaker 12: on Long Island, or an anchor lives on Long Island.
Speaker 12: That's a team Westchester, Connecticut, and you know, so on
Speaker 12: and so forth, keep going. And that's how we started
Speaker 12: going back to the edict that it looked and sound
Speaker 12: like Fox News for the viewers. You know, the hardest
Speaker 12: part of it. You know, listen, there's no guest, right
Speaker 12: these anchors and contributors were in their home. You're really
Speaker 12: talking about a glorified live shot. It's one camera, you know.
Speaker 12: But now they're anchoring programs. Yeah, you need tell a prompter,
Speaker 12: you need return video. They're taking press conferences all day long.
Speaker 12: They need to interact, and so you know, really we
Speaker 12: just relied very heavily. I'm talking about in the immediate
Speaker 12: days and those you know, I really call it a
Speaker 12: ten day period. I think we set up over forty
Speaker 12: home studios within ten days. And you know, we were
Speaker 12: relying on the anchors home you know, internet connection again.
Speaker 12: You know, there's a story that I know it's been
Speaker 12: told before, but you know, we had an anchor who
Speaker 12: was on TV and their children were playing video games
Speaker 12: and we saw degradation in the video quality immediately. So
Speaker 12: you know, we had a team of like four people
Speaker 12: who were just driving from place to place, repairing, fixing, advising,
Speaker 12: setting up in addition to the people who were running
Speaker 12: those So but again, you know, that all came Honestly,
Speaker 12: it may sound cliche, but it came from the top.
Speaker 12: We had our leadership who never left the building. They
Speaker 12: were here every single day, Suzanne and Jay in particular,
Speaker 12: along with several you know others, But they were in
Speaker 12: the building every single day. Kind of you know, not
Speaker 12: kind of action, steering the ship and giving the guidance
Speaker 12: of how we wanted to, you know, make it through
Speaker 12: this pandemic that nobody had had any experience, no blueprint.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Vin de Bona, the maestro of AFF, had only one
Speaker 1: more show to tape for the twenty nineteen twenty twenty
Speaker 1: TV season when lockdown orders upended TV production. Here he
Speaker 1: explains why he was one and done with the idea
Speaker 1: of doing AFF with Alfonso Rivieriro hosting from his home.
Speaker 14: We realized that if we didn't figure out a way
Speaker 14: to make it work for the show, you know, who
Speaker 14: knows what would have happened with broadcast. So the first
Speaker 14: thing that happened is we did one show called at
Speaker 14: Home with AFV and literally it was at home with Alphonso,
Speaker 14: who was running his own camera, running his own prompter,
Speaker 14: did his own lights. I directed through Zoom, but we
Speaker 14: really directed together.
Speaker 12: And he was.
Speaker 14: The sole person on the show, and we did wraparounds
Speaker 14: in different areas of his house, the kitchen, the living room,
Speaker 14: the pool by his RV. And we put the first
Speaker 14: show together, all on Zoom, all linked together with each
Speaker 14: of our staff members, and then we would look at
Speaker 14: the playback reels that we're going to go into the show.
Speaker 14: We would build them and then view them as a team.
Speaker 14: Everything was teamwork, really teamwork, and.
Speaker 6: It was.
Speaker 14: It was actually fairly easy to get it all together.
Speaker 14: The toughest part wasn't the video. The toughest part was
Speaker 14: making sure audio was great. It's sometimes hard to hear
Speaker 14: the nuances, you know, when you're on Zoom.
Speaker 1: Let's drill down on the ingenuity that Cruz techs and
Speaker 1: engineers demonstrated under pressure. Here we'll hear from John Tower,
Speaker 1: Simone Swink, Vin Dea Bona and Tower again.
Speaker 3: Over the course of fifteen hours, they had to set
Speaker 3: up an entire workable control room and show for the
Speaker 3: next day, and under probably normal conditions. I'm just using
Speaker 3: like an example that would you maybe give a team
Speaker 3: like that a week maybe two to do that, and
Speaker 3: they had.
Speaker 6: Literally the night.
Speaker 7: One thing that the News division did very quickly was
Speaker 7: figure out and build at home sort of kits that
Speaker 7: a team could swoop in and set up and so
Speaker 7: that everybody could broadcast from home, and then as long
Speaker 7: as we could work it out from the control room,
Speaker 7: you could actually have all three main anchors from home
Speaker 7: in a given broadcast. And that being able to do
Speaker 7: that so quickly and realized that we could get on
Speaker 7: the air and just sort of adjust the shots from
Speaker 7: there gave us a lot of flexibility. It also meant
Speaker 7: that we didn't have to substantially change parts of the show.
Speaker 7: It was just a few were a viewer. The aesthetic
Speaker 7: changed a little bit because people weren't next to each
Speaker 7: other physically, but they were next to each other in
Speaker 7: boxes at times.
Speaker 14: God Story, our set designer created an idea to build
Speaker 14: these stacks, and by stacks, I mean vertical columns with
Speaker 14: three flat screens in each column, and the total amount
Speaker 14: of Zoom audience members would be ninety six and they'd
Speaker 14: be broken up into these three columns. So Al would
Speaker 14: walk around studio and he'd walk by a column or
Speaker 14: two columns, and the audience saw him live to studio
Speaker 14: by a zoom. And it was quite an undertaking. We
Speaker 14: wound up having four additional technicians in the process. So
Speaker 14: basically what we had was each operator had two computers.
Speaker 14: Each computer had sixteen people that they were culling from
Speaker 14: the zoom audience to control. So the total was each
Speaker 14: person had thirty two people times three, which wound up
Speaker 14: being ninety six. And so the three technicians operating the
Speaker 14: computers would make sure the signal was strong. We sent
Speaker 14: out a three page memorandum to audience members. Audience Plus
Speaker 14: was the company that secured audiences for us, and it
Speaker 14: wasn't just LA, it was all around the country. They
Speaker 14: put out a blast and people would write in saying, yes,
Speaker 14: I'd like to be on the show. Yes, I can
Speaker 14: guarantee you four hours of my time. Don't wear any
Speaker 14: identifying T shirts, no licensed art on the wall, so
Speaker 14: all of that had to be taken care of and
Speaker 14: then these ninety six accumulated audience members. Then it was
Speaker 14: assigned to one producer who would say you up in
Speaker 14: the upper corner, be more attentive, you know, or we're
Speaker 14: going to go to a break if you guys want
Speaker 14: to take a bath, all that stuff through another producer,
Speaker 14: and actually we wound up having al talked to the
Speaker 14: home viewers asking them, you know, how many you want
Speaker 14: to go to raise hands? And it was it was
Speaker 14: kind of fun. So we really had as complete an
Speaker 14: audience situation with laughs and reactions as we had in studio,
Speaker 14: and it was. It was actually a great look and
Speaker 14: and we kind of missed it when we into studio.
Speaker 14: But it was a lot of work, and of course
Speaker 14: the other thing was we had to pretest the crew
Speaker 14: two days before they would show up in studio, and
Speaker 14: we had to pay them for the test, so it
Speaker 14: was a full day to test them, and then on
Speaker 14: studio day we'd have to back up key crew members
Speaker 14: like lighting director, technical director, and probably one cameraman and
Speaker 14: a few other studio people just to make sure on
Speaker 14: that last day when they came in and tested that
Speaker 14: they were fine.
Speaker 3: So eventually we made our way to at Solvent Theater
Speaker 3: and because Stephen Colbert was off and that was sort
Speaker 3: of like our last that was the last space that
Speaker 3: was available to use that they were comfortably using. It
Speaker 3: took very very minimal amount of crew at that point
Speaker 3: they had This was probably a couple of weeks in
Speaker 3: to the actual lockdown, the start of the pandemic, and
Speaker 3: we had started a wrapperhenser around masking, which seems late
Speaker 3: and quick now looking back, but like we'd started wrapprehension
Speaker 3: un masking, and so we were we were a few
Speaker 3: of us. It was like probably four or five of
Speaker 3: us with a director and a t d uh in
Speaker 3: a in a uh insulivent theater control room with our
Speaker 3: anchors remote, all just putting the show on.
Speaker 6: All the producers were remote.
Speaker 3: People had started to like they'd been using uh they
Speaker 3: had developed a system for saving for remote editors, firing
Speaker 3: up remotely dating videos onto you know UH drop boxes
Speaker 3: that again we did we were not using often or
Speaker 3: ever before the pandemic, and so the technologies that we
Speaker 3: sort of still use now where people are you know,
Speaker 3: it actually makes you know, obviously clips and in material
Speaker 3: available in a in a like sort of a much
Speaker 3: more remote way. But all those all those systems were
Speaker 3: being built on the flot by trying to figure out
Speaker 3: how to get you know stories in the air. There
Speaker 3: are a couple of shows where we really really didn't
Speaker 3: have many elements at all. We were just sort of
Speaker 3: like doing the show on a very minimal basis. Uh So,
Speaker 3: when we were in ed Solvent Theater, I remember when
Speaker 3: we first got over there, there was a there's a
Speaker 3: moment when they kicked us out of DC and we're like, so,
Speaker 3: where we're going to go next? And so they had
Speaker 3: come up with a solution with ed Solvent Theator because
Speaker 3: it was really one of the only control rooms left.
Speaker 3: There were questions of whether or that was going to
Speaker 3: be We're going to use a freelance control room, like
Speaker 3: some sort of like hired control room somewhere, and then
Speaker 3: they had decided on ed Solvent Theatre. And the reason
Speaker 3: why they had to signed ED Solvent Theator, I think
Speaker 3: is because they it still had the connectivity of our
Speaker 3: other available control rooms. You could still patch into, like
Speaker 3: you know, whatever they needed to patch into what.
Speaker 1: Stands out in your mind now as a memory. Then
Speaker 1: that reinforced for you the scope of the crisis. The
Speaker 1: answer were intriguing. We'll hear from Chris Dinan followed by
Speaker 1: John Tower.
Speaker 5: We had an internal intelligence briefing 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.
Speaker 13: It seemed like it was a rational explanation of what
Speaker 13: we could expect.
Speaker 5: And then at one point he mentioned a number seven
Speaker 5: hundred thousand, and that number was what he was predicting
Speaker 5: and experts were predicting would be fatalities, would be the
Speaker 5: number of Americans killed. And I remember sitting back and
Speaker 5: really being struck by that number because it was such
Speaker 5: an enormous figure. I mean, that's the number of people
Speaker 5: who died in the US Civil War, the bloodiest conflict
Speaker 5: of the country's history.
Speaker 3: While we were in the very deep, deep parts of
Speaker 3: the early pandemic that ed Sullivan Control room, our my
Speaker 3: Land producer Rachel had set up a very analog board
Speaker 3: with cases and deaths and the cases in Death's Ball.
Speaker 3: She'd update every day when she came in and the
Speaker 3: new cases, and it took on a very it was
Speaker 3: a very present reminder for us of like how dangerous
Speaker 3: this thing was because at some point it was the
Speaker 3: numbers were unfathomable for how many people had died and
Speaker 3: how many people were getting sick, and they were when
Speaker 3: they were really tracking it, when they were really starting
Speaker 3: to track it. But like right in the early days,
Speaker 3: when like we were starting to get numbers, and part
Speaker 3: of our broadcast was singularly focused on, like what's the
Speaker 3: new number, what's the new cases, what's the new death number.
Speaker 3: And so that was just a very real present thing
Speaker 3: on the show. But also like right behind us in
Speaker 3: the wall in the control room, it was just cases
Speaker 3: and death, death number, and so the it was just
Speaker 3: always over our shoulder literally.
Speaker 1: For they came into work in Midtown News, the city
Speaker 1: affectionately known as Zoo York was a ghost town. Chris
Speaker 1: Dinan shares a vivid memory, as does CBS Mornings Shanna
Speaker 1: Thomas and ABC's Lindsey Davis.
Speaker 13: It was unlike anything I'd ever seen.
Speaker 5: Certainly in Manhattan, I maybe saw two dozen people during
Speaker 5: the course of that very very long bike ride, when
Speaker 5: you would normally see hundreds, if not thousands. Fine, and
Speaker 5: it was in every way like a classic sci fi
Speaker 5: movie post apocalypse.
Speaker 13: There was you know a few people that draggled on
Speaker 13: the streets.
Speaker 5: And nothing else, so that really I still remember how
Speaker 5: that felt.
Speaker 6: It was.
Speaker 13: Memorable.
Speaker 6: New York City was a ghost town.
Speaker 3: It was an actual It felt like it felt like
Speaker 3: one of those movies where you're like one you wake
Speaker 3: up and you're wandering through the streets and a place
Speaker 3: that's normally bustling is absolutely lifeless.
Speaker 6: And it was actually exactly like that.
Speaker 2: It was strange, you know, I would feel like I
Speaker 2: was in this move you know, a movie where you
Speaker 2: almost they're like turning the radio channels and you know
Speaker 2: you don't hear anything on it, you know, when those
Speaker 2: like kind of end of days movies, yea, and people
Speaker 2: are just kind of looking for a signal to say,
Speaker 2: you know's anybody out there, because the highways would just
Speaker 2: be empty. I mean there were It was not uncommon
Speaker 2: for me to leave my house and go into Manhattan
Speaker 2: and maybe I'd see five cars that whole trip, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean it was and even once you got into Manhattan,
Speaker 2: it was desolate, you know.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And and we actually had gotten some passes printed out
Speaker 2: I remember uh from the city basically saying that we
Speaker 2: were essential workers in case there was you know, it
Speaker 2: never got to that point where I had to show
Speaker 2: anybody that paperwork. But I think it was so unknown
Speaker 2: that ABC just wanted to prepare for any scenario in
Speaker 2: case you got pulled over or whatever might happen, that
Speaker 2: we could prove that, you know, we had to still
Speaker 2: be on the road and go to work.
Speaker 1: How did your colleagues adjust to radically different working conditions.
Speaker 1: Chris Dinan, Jason Kurtz, and Tony D.
Speaker 15: Koppel discuss it was interesting how quickly people adapted. They
Speaker 15: just had ways to work around issues and work around
Speaker 15: problems and make something happen. And I always look back
Speaker 15: at that time as a very innovative time or you know,
Speaker 15: an industry that had never operated like that. Nobody generationally
Speaker 15: had experienced anything like this, so it was completely new.
Speaker 10: At one point, it was like, you know, we found
Speaker 10: out there was definitely not going to be a studio audience,
Speaker 10: so we were like, let's save the money, not build
Speaker 10: half the set since we're not even going to have
Speaker 10: a studio audience, and we can put that money towards technology.
Speaker 10: And we looked into the virtual audience that we we
Speaker 10: call them the vffs, and we were able to build
Speaker 10: this community. So we had that the best we could
Speaker 10: in this new normal, like that audience, energy and interaction.
Speaker 11: Then it was no one's traveling.
Speaker 10: Guests aren't going to be able to come in, So
Speaker 10: how do we now overcome that obstacle? And that's when
Speaker 10: we started looking into green screen technology and virtual studios,
Speaker 10: and luckily we were able to build a green screen
Speaker 10: studio in Los Angeles and basically teleport guests into our
Speaker 10: studio in a seamless way that you wouldn't even know
Speaker 10: a lot of times Spiels didn't even know. And we
Speaker 10: were able to get Drew and Lucy obviously in New York,
Speaker 10: but then Cameron via the La Studio and that became
Speaker 10: our premiere. So what long story short, We were just
Speaker 10: constantly looking to create from ground, from scratch, and that
Speaker 10: really benefited us because we weren't struggling looking backwards, we
Speaker 10: were only looking forwards.
Speaker 8: I tried to convince myself I was like Gates least,
Speaker 8: so I'd interviewed before, and who used to put a
Speaker 8: suit on to walk from the top floor was Brownstone
Speaker 8: down to the basement to go to work as a writer,
Speaker 8: And that was kind of like what I did. I
Speaker 8: got up, I put a suit on, and I walked
Speaker 8: from the living room down one floor to the basement
Speaker 8: and tried to be a professional. But it was a
Speaker 8: very unfinished basement with water bugs let's call them, we
Speaker 8: won't say cockroaches crawling up out of the drain on
Speaker 8: a nightly basis, and you had to throw vanity out
Speaker 8: the window because you're doing your own makeup. The lighting
Speaker 8: is the best it can be. Everything has a kind
Speaker 8: of ghoulish severe quality to it, and you go for it.
Speaker 8: It's amazing how quickly people got comfortable with.
Speaker 9: Not really not crystal clear pictures and not crystal clear sound.
Speaker 10: And that's also when we decided to sort of create
Speaker 10: a hybrid live model, knowing the celebrity interviews were going
Speaker 10: to be hard for us timing wise because we were
Speaker 10: live at nine am in New York. So then we
Speaker 10: started post taping and taping the celebrity interviews when the
Speaker 10: timing worked out better, and we sort of created this
Speaker 10: hybrid model of the top of the show, which was
Speaker 10: Drew's News Live, a live segment after that, and then
Speaker 10: we would drop in a pre recorded edit it celebrity interview,
Speaker 10: and then we would finish the show. Yeah, I think
Speaker 10: it was just being creative within everything that was coming
Speaker 10: at us at once.
Speaker 1: Bill Hammer of Fox News simply could not stay home bound.
Speaker 4: I found it very difficult to replicate the energy from
Speaker 4: a basement at shag Harbord, New York. And I'm a
Speaker 4: people person, absolutely. I think I get energy from others
Speaker 4: and hopefully I give them a little bit too, you know.
Speaker 4: Having said that, we've reported on stories on wars, on
Speaker 4: terror attacks all over the world for twenty thirty years,
Speaker 4: and what you're doing in that scenario is you're out
Speaker 4: and you can hear the audio in your ear, but
Speaker 4: you're basically talking into a round circle on that camera
Speaker 4: for hours, for days, for weeks. But yet I felt
Speaker 4: I was I had the energy to do that, but
Speaker 4: I just I couldn't do it from my house. I tried,
Speaker 4: but it wasn't It wasn't doing it for me. I
Speaker 4: don't know how else to say it. I wanted to
Speaker 4: be closer to the story and working remotely, I felt
Speaker 4: as if it was just taking me further away from
Speaker 4: understanding what was happening day by day. Now, that's not
Speaker 4: to take anything away from my colleagues either here or elsewhere.
Speaker 4: At other networks, they make their own decisions. But for
Speaker 4: me personally, I felt a strong desire to be in
Speaker 4: the building and it helped me with the human connection
Speaker 4: to a story like that, which I think a lot
Speaker 4: of people, frankly were looking for. And I'd say too,
Speaker 4: like our CEO, she did not outsource it. She was
Speaker 4: here as well, Suzanne Scott. I made some fast friends
Speaker 4: with a bar restaurant over here on a street that
Speaker 4: I will not name because I do not want to
Speaker 4: get them in trouble. And there was a period where
Speaker 4: the city reopened for a week or two, do you
Speaker 4: remember that, and everything slamming back down again. But during
Speaker 4: that week or two I made friends with them, and
Speaker 4: they said, you know, Bill, we've got a room upstairs.
Speaker 4: It has no windows, and you're welcome to come anytime.
Speaker 4: And that really became a refuge for me. You know,
Speaker 4: I'm not married, and I'm either going home to an
Speaker 4: apartment or I'm going to what I called my COVID
Speaker 4: speak easy. So on occasion, Cynthia, I would bring a
Speaker 4: colleague or a friend and we would go upstairs in
Speaker 4: this room, and you know, we could eat with them,
Speaker 4: and you know, have a beer, and maybe it's just
Speaker 4: an hour or an hour and a half time, but
Speaker 4: it gave us something to do.
Speaker 1: Let's call this section anchor management. We'll hear from John Tower,
Speaker 1: Simone Swink, and Lindsey Davis.
Speaker 3: Managing anchors remotely is a challenge because they don't see
Speaker 3: or hear each other, right, so in the beginning, like
Speaker 3: they're stepping on each other. They don't understand like the
Speaker 3: Gale talks and then Tony talks, and then Gail stops,
Speaker 3: and then Tony stops and then you know, So getting
Speaker 3: them used to coordinating was something that I was used
Speaker 3: to coming from Rning Joe, where most of our anchors
Speaker 3: were remote saying who's next, who comes next, who does this,
Speaker 3: who does that? And so that was a that was
Speaker 3: a huge learning curve for them because you know, remote show.
Speaker 3: Maybe having one anchor or remote on a remote show
Speaker 3: is something that you like are used to, but like
Speaker 3: having all three anchors who are bouncing scripts, who are
Speaker 3: like trying to interact with each other for every topic,
Speaker 3: like that's a that's a sort of like an knew
Speaker 3: it's left left brain, right brain for them, and so
Speaker 3: getting it was about getting them used to hearing me
Speaker 3: in their ear and like and like them being comfortable
Speaker 3: with me being like, Gaiels talks next, Hey, Gail talks next. Hey,
Speaker 3: Anthony talks next. What do you mean the Anthony talks next?
Speaker 3: I have something to say.
Speaker 7: We almost always had at least one anchor in the studio,
Speaker 7: so even if they so let's say, if Michael was
Speaker 7: in the studio and Robin was in a box and
Speaker 7: George was in a box, there was always a way
Speaker 7: to get the show on the air. And so like you,
Speaker 7: if you're used to being on deadline, you're probably also
Speaker 7: good at improvisation, even when you don't want to be.
Speaker 7: So there was always a way to have a plan,
Speaker 7: and worst case scenario, someone else's shot went down, then
Speaker 7: whoever was in the studio could take the reins and
Speaker 7: take us to the next reporter, or have the conversation
Speaker 7: or do the interview. And there were definitely a few
Speaker 7: times I was trying to think of them, but there
Speaker 7: were definitely a few times that somebody on remote Zoom
Speaker 7: was scheduled to do an interview and something went wrong,
Speaker 7: and so someone else came took over and did the interview.
Speaker 2: So Flavio Juar was my audio tech who also doubled
Speaker 2: as my studio floor director, and it was just the
Speaker 2: two of us every single day. So then they started
Speaker 2: doing two week rotations, so there would be teams basically
Speaker 2: that would be in the office for two weeks and
Speaker 2: then at home for two weeks. Basically just kind of
Speaker 2: trying to figure out the incubation period so that you
Speaker 2: always had a plan B for I if that team
Speaker 2: or multiple people on that team got sick, you had reserves,
Speaker 2: so that essentially everybody wasn't going to get sick at
Speaker 2: the same time. So I was not seeing anyone except
Speaker 2: for Flavio. We were not you know, we would we
Speaker 2: would meet on zoom. A lot was done through email
Speaker 2: and text, but physically, well, I'm sorry. I would see
Speaker 2: also a hair makeup team that they would you know,
Speaker 2: have gloves and masks and everything. But otherwise in the building, yeah,
Speaker 2: it was just it was just the two of us.
Speaker 1: It's hard to believe that this story hasn't been turned
Speaker 1: into a sitcom or a Netflix rom com. Tony Dukoppel
Speaker 1: had an unusual situation at his home because he had
Speaker 1: to share his basement studio with his wife. NBC News
Speaker 1: correspondent Katie Tour occasionally hilarity would ensue. I understand that
Speaker 1: your basement doubled as the NBC bureau as well as
Speaker 1: the CBS News bureau. Well was that were there any
Speaker 1: traffic jams for you and Katie at any time?
Speaker 8: Huge now, because not only did it double as, but
Speaker 8: the NBC people came down and, as I recall, un
Speaker 8: ceremoniously moved some of the CBS stuff in order to
Speaker 8: get their pick of corners.
Speaker 9: For their setup so they had a longer camera shot.
Speaker 9: I was more squeezed.
Speaker 8: But on the other hand, the NBC crew, they're the
Speaker 8: ones that took the made the investment of drilling the
Speaker 8: the enhanced Internet cable down directly from where it comes
Speaker 8: into the house into the basement, so they I guess
Speaker 8: they felt they had license. But I do remember there
Speaker 8: was like a call that I was not on, but
Speaker 8: between our crew folks and the NBC crew folks to
Speaker 8: iron out who was disrespecting who on this, and then
Speaker 8: there was like there.
Speaker 9: Were questions of like, well, what happens if they both
Speaker 9: need to.
Speaker 8: Be on air at the same time, And then a
Speaker 8: moment later, we thought, well, if that's the case, something
Speaker 8: even worse than this terribleness we're going through has to happen,
Speaker 8: So let's just pray that doesn't occur.
Speaker 9: And it didn't. It didn't know.
Speaker 8: But sometimes the one thing that would happen, though, is
Speaker 8: I would have to I'd go off air, and then
Speaker 8: I would use the desk behind me as my work
Speaker 8: desk during the day because I'd have the baby upstairs
Speaker 8: and Katie would sometimes beyond, but i'd have a script deadline.
Speaker 8: I was still trying to be productive as I could,
Speaker 8: and the bathroom was across her camera shot, so it'd
Speaker 8: have to sometimes army crawl threw her very serious life
Speaker 8: or death conversation to take care of the more mundane
Speaker 8: acts of daily life. And then I'd be in my
Speaker 8: own head because I'd be thinking about a script, so
Speaker 8: I wouldn't think about whether she's on. So you know,
Speaker 8: if you listen closely, there's probably toilet flushes in the
Speaker 8: background of kat Churit reports during those days, Sorry, honey.
Speaker 1: Fox News is Scott Wilder was not the only one
Speaker 1: to point out the harmonic convergence that helped TV during
Speaker 1: COVID video sharing platforms and cloud based collaboration tools were
Speaker 1: hitting new strides just as the world needed to set
Speaker 1: a virtual meeting or two. Wilder explains it, well.
Speaker 12: Listen, this pandemic happened five years earlier. We would not
Speaker 12: have had a satellite truck to send to each person's home.
Speaker 12: The fact that we were broadcasting largely using bonded cellular
Speaker 12: technology and the Internet that you have in your home
Speaker 12: and I have in my home without adding any services.
Speaker 12: Over time, we did bolster some of the Internet services,
Speaker 12: but five years ago, three years ago, before the pandemic,
Speaker 12: three years prior to the pandemic, we would not have
Speaker 12: been able to do that. And so because of that technology,
Speaker 12: we were talking about how we can do live shots
Speaker 12: and home studios and those things with equipment like live
Speaker 12: view and you know, your Verizon Internet that you have.
Speaker 13: In your home.
Speaker 1: Tech tools were the saviors of businesses across the spectrum
Speaker 1: during lockdown, but inevitably there were snaffoos. Here's a string
Speaker 1: of fun anecdotes from John Tower, Lindsay Davis, Simone Swink,
Speaker 1: and Tony D. Koppel.
Speaker 3: There would be times when our anchor cameras would like
Speaker 3: just disappear right, so, like Gail's connection would go down ooops. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then Tony's auld go down or anthems are going down,
Speaker 3: and you know those are okay. Our attitude about that
Speaker 3: is like, that's okay. We're in a pandemic, like we're
Speaker 3: managed to staying we like. Our personal approach was just
Speaker 3: like say it on the air, say it, don't try
Speaker 3: to like, you know, don't be nervous about it, like
Speaker 3: have fun with it. And there was in whatever respect
Speaker 3: you can. But there were moments when you lose somebody
Speaker 3: and you know, there's a lot of scrambling bonds, scenes,
Speaker 3: a lot of people running around, but for the show,
Speaker 3: you just you know, got picked up Tony script and
Speaker 3: you keep moving.
Speaker 2: There were definitely a few times where the packages were
Speaker 2: not sent or sent incorrectly, or maybe there was no
Speaker 2: sound on them. I mean, because it was just such
Speaker 2: a and I and I felt our team really rose
Speaker 2: to the occasion. I think it was such a baptism
Speaker 2: by fire. Again, many of them, this was their first
Speaker 2: or second job, and they had looked to be looked
Speaker 2: forward to being mentored, and now that opportunity, they were
Speaker 2: just having to figure it out, and many of it
Speaker 2: by trial and error. You know, there were a lot
Speaker 2: of glitches, but I think people at home understood, you know,
Speaker 2: that was my belief anyway, that people knew what we
Speaker 2: were dealing with because they were trying to piece things
Speaker 2: together themselves.
Speaker 7: When Lara Spencer went home, it was something we always
Speaker 7: called the jokingly the Gretitch Bureau, because she and her
Speaker 7: producer and a few other folks all of up in
Speaker 7: Connecticut and she broadcasts from her home for I think
Speaker 7: it was over two years. Did Pop News did Deals
Speaker 7: and Steals. They would just be set up all over
Speaker 7: parts of her house, Like Deals and Steels would be
Speaker 7: out in the yard, Pop News would be inside in
Speaker 7: the kitchen. One of our most memorable episodes or broadcast
Speaker 7: during COVID is we really thought we had it nailed about.
Speaker 7: I think it was a year in her producer would
Speaker 7: drive over to her house because they were essentially their
Speaker 7: own COVID bubble, and she would run the prompter and
Speaker 7: the camera and Lara, as you may know from watching
Speaker 7: our show, loves to adopt dogs, and she had for
Speaker 7: sure she had adopted a rescue that was blind, so
Speaker 7: we had to keep he always had to be kept
Speaker 7: out during the broadcast, and one day Dandy got in
Speaker 7: and been walked into the tripod and live on air,
Speaker 7: you know, the shots like this and suddenly it's like this,
Speaker 7: and Lara, to her credit, just kept broadcasting. And so
Speaker 7: that morning Pop News was just upside down, but it
Speaker 7: also spoke to the reality of what was going on,
Speaker 7: like everybody was learning how to use this technology on
Speaker 7: air and in their lives, and it sort of helped
Speaker 7: having these moments of humor that we just as a
Speaker 7: television show would keep going with. You know, we didn't
Speaker 7: immediately cut it. It was just it was actually quite funny,
Speaker 7: and she's so great live that she just kept going.
Speaker 8: Oh and then I remember like all kinds of SNAPf
Speaker 8: foos happened that would never happen before. Where I'm sitting
Speaker 8: there in a commercial break, reading something on my lap
Speaker 8: which is just out of camera shot, and somebody is
Speaker 8: trying to tell me we're coming back from commercial. But
Speaker 8: instead of Patty or our stage director being right in
Speaker 8: front of me snapping her fingers being like, Tony, you're
Speaker 8: back A ten, I have no IFB it's fallen out,
Speaker 8: so they just come back to me live picture of
Speaker 8: me just looking down. It appears as though I'm sleeping,
Speaker 8: like my chin is on my chest and I'm just
Speaker 8: out cold. So it's just ten seconds of that with
Speaker 8: Jaunty Morning Show music and then it goes back to commercial.
Speaker 9: Every was like, did we just catch that guy sleeping?
Speaker 9: So it was a it was a it was messy.
Speaker 1: You don't want to miss what's coming up next. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back with more tales of TV during COVID
Speaker 1: after this break, and we're back with more about how
Speaker 1: TV stayed on the air during COVID. Did you ever
Speaker 1: have a tech challenge so bad you feared you might
Speaker 1: miss your airtime or not deliver your episode on time?
Speaker 1: Chris Dinan, Jason Kurtz, and SHAWNA. Thomas each paused a
Speaker 1: bit before they answered, I don't.
Speaker 13: Think we ever felt like we weren't going to get
Speaker 13: on TV.
Speaker 5: I think that there were doubts and on certaindays about
Speaker 5: how exactly that would happen. But I mean, this is
Speaker 5: there is you know there really it's it's a zero
Speaker 5: some dame that there is no alternative. We have to
Speaker 5: get on television though not doing that, so I think
Speaker 5: everybody was determined to find the ways to do it,
Speaker 5: as you know, as it wasn't there were moments where
Speaker 5: you were uncertain where something would operate from him, whether
Speaker 5: a piece would roll or whether you know, something like
Speaker 5: that would happen, whether a live shot would pop up appropriately.
Speaker 5: And those were all individual scares, but in general, I
Speaker 5: think that there was a real determination to you know,
Speaker 5: meet the challenge, do the job. And I would say that,
Speaker 5: you know, people really made sacrifices, and they really, you know,
Speaker 5: they chose to get the job done. I mean, David
Speaker 5: could have stayed at home at a home studio if
Speaker 5: he had wanted to. Many people did, and that was
Speaker 5: an obvious choice. But he came every day to the
Speaker 5: set to just send a reassuring message that you know,
Speaker 5: there were people here, people you could trust, people who
Speaker 5: would deliver information that are back based and in context.
Speaker 13: And I think that the audience warmed to that.
Speaker 1: Did you ever think about postponing the launch from September?
Speaker 10: There were conversations, but they were shut down very quickly.
Speaker 10: We all just collectively, you know, executives at CBS, myself, Drue,
Speaker 10: all the wonderful people that work here. It was just
Speaker 10: this collective feeling of we're we're doing this, and we're
Speaker 10: focused and maybe the world needs this bright spot right now.
Speaker 11: And hopefully we can be that.
Speaker 10: And that was sort of just collectively how we all felt.
Speaker 10: It was never really said out loud. It was never
Speaker 10: this big, raw, raw mission. It just was this undertone
Speaker 10: and feeling we all had together that this was we're
Speaker 10: doing this and we'll see everyone in September.
Speaker 16: The thing is, and I know this is a cliche,
Speaker 16: but I also come from a theater background. The show
Speaker 16: must go on no matter I always think about this
Speaker 16: show as no matter what, at seven am Eastern time,
Speaker 16: we're not gonna put black on it, like we're going
Speaker 16: to do something right. So however we have to do that,
Speaker 16: we will make it happen. And I've never worked anywhere
Speaker 16: CBS News or anywhere else where. Everyone does not have
Speaker 16: that work ethic.
Speaker 1: Simon Swink wasn't the only one to marvel in hindsight
Speaker 1: at how much they were able to achieve under COVID conditions.
Speaker 1: Scott Wilder and Jason Kurtz also chime in on this subject.
Speaker 7: But our menu actually didn't change that much. I would say,
Speaker 7: if you took any broadcast from four years ago at
Speaker 7: this moment and right now, it's probably the same number
Speaker 7: of segments. Because what we found is we had enough
Speaker 7: people that really knew how the show worked and could
Speaker 7: figure out, Okay, I'm going to add a few extra steps,
Speaker 7: but the guest isn't coming, So we're going to do
Speaker 7: this on Zoom, or we're going to tape interviews on
Speaker 7: zoom or whatever it might be. We can edit from
Speaker 7: home and we can feed in this way over various servers.
Speaker 7: We came up with enough workarounds very quickly because it's
Speaker 7: a smart creative group that it didn't change our segment number,
Speaker 7: but it did really change our production number, and the
Speaker 7: most noticeable. You know, we've always done a lot of
Speaker 7: live performances on the show, live music performances, and we
Speaker 7: couldn't do those. I mean, we had to kick off
Speaker 7: our summer I think was to kick off our summer
Speaker 7: concert series. We had we had a special crew tested,
Speaker 7: and we filmed Katie Perry in her backyard singing her
Speaker 7: brand new song Daisies. And I would argue it was
Speaker 7: actually in many ways, it was very cool that we
Speaker 7: had been forced to innovate into that because we were
Speaker 7: seeing a very famous pop star bring us a new
Speaker 7: song in a different kind of environment. You know, it
Speaker 7: wasn't the usual slick stage production. So in some cases
Speaker 7: the innovations forced I think some great television.
Speaker 12: Our leaderships, specifically Susann Scott, he's our CEO, was very
Speaker 12: adamant that we needed to look like we were in
Speaker 12: television studios and needed to have a high bar of
Speaker 12: being a professional television facility.
Speaker 6: That facility was.
Speaker 12: Going to be in an anchor's home, it didn't matter.
Speaker 12: It was very important from all leadership that the viewer
Speaker 12: turned on the TV and feel like they're watching Fox News.
Speaker 12: People were starving for information, right, These were scary times,
Speaker 12: and so it just that was one thing that across
Speaker 12: the board, our leadership knew that they did not want
Speaker 12: to change. Nobody wanted to turn the TV on and
Speaker 12: look at you know, somebody's living room or kitchen.
Speaker 10: My memory is that none of that. We just kept
Speaker 10: moving and we just weren't giving up. And it was
Speaker 10: just this really supportive, amazing group from CBS executives to
Speaker 10: Drew to you know, Flower Films, Chris Miller and Amber Truesdale,
Speaker 10: myself and everyone that just worked here. It was just
Speaker 10: this collective and I sound Sacharine and but it really
Speaker 10: just was this beautiful group of people that just had
Speaker 10: one common goal and we were focused and we were
Speaker 10: just not stopping. So that's my memory, and that was
Speaker 10: so nice and helpful, especially during such a dark time
Speaker 10: with everything happening, that it was just this really amazing
Speaker 10: group of people that just got to work together and
Speaker 10: just wanted to stay focused and bring Drew to everyone's
Speaker 10: home and hopefully create like just a fun, bright little
Speaker 10: place to be.
Speaker 1: Of course, all of this work under extreme pressure is
Speaker 1: being done while everyone is also dealing with personal struggles
Speaker 1: and health threats made worse by the pandemic. Jason Kurtz,
Speaker 1: Shawna Thomas, Simone Swink, and Lindsey Davis share hard stories.
Speaker 10: There was a heaviness to what we were all dealing
Speaker 10: with personally, and you know, we all that was another
Speaker 10: you know, silver lining, and it is that our group
Speaker 10: bonded very fast during those times because we were supporting
Speaker 10: each other, not just professionally but personally.
Speaker 16: CBS News, I believe, was one of the first COVID
Speaker 16: clusters in New York City in March of twenty twenty.
Speaker 16: And I know that because while I was not working
Speaker 16: technically for CBS News, I was working for Quibi the
Speaker 16: now incredibly defunt quibi.
Speaker 9: But I was a development.
Speaker 16: Executive that was in charge of sixty and six, which
Speaker 16: was like the sixty Minutes product, and in I think
Speaker 16: about a week before maybe a week and a half
Speaker 16: before they had to shut down the Broadcast Center, we
Speaker 16: had had a launch party there that it near CBS,
Speaker 16: near the broadcast Center, in one of the restaurants that
Speaker 16: I remember being there with Susan Zarenski and Billowens, and
Speaker 16: everyone was like, we're going to do this new thing.
Speaker 16: It's going to be on quibbi. We're making this like
Speaker 16: mini version of sixty minutes with Seth Doane and these
Speaker 16: other reporters and it's going to be fantastic. And I
Speaker 16: remember looking at Zee, who I had known for a
Speaker 16: while just through being in television news for many years,
Speaker 16: and looking at her and we weren't wearing masks and
Speaker 16: being like, am I supposed to hug you?
Speaker 13: Are?
Speaker 16: We hugged? Like what do we do right now? Is
Speaker 16: this real?
Speaker 9: Is this not?
Speaker 16: It goes back to kind of what Tara was saying,
Speaker 16: and she was like, I'm a hugger. And I personally
Speaker 16: believe I got COVID from that party, because almost soon
Speaker 16: after that I was going back and forth between New
Speaker 16: York and d C because I was still partially based
Speaker 16: in DC while working for Quibbi. And it did the
Speaker 16: fears at CBS had started. Things in New York City
Speaker 16: had were just starting to get worse and worse. And
Speaker 16: I basically told my boss, who also used to be
Speaker 16: the executive producer of CBS, this morning, Ryan kdro.
Speaker 14: Ryan looking for Quibbi.
Speaker 16: It's all very incestuous, really, that I was not going
Speaker 16: to come back to New York City. And then a
Speaker 16: couple days after that, I came down with one hundred
Speaker 16: and two fever that did not go away for ten days.
Speaker 7: We had a colleague who was quite sick and in
Speaker 7: the hospital and she didn't she didn't understand why nobody
Speaker 7: would visit her. She didn't have COVID, she had something else,
Speaker 7: and none of us could leave our rooms. And she died.
Speaker 7: And it was like COVID is not only disrupting regular
Speaker 7: day to day work, it's disrupting that all these people
Speaker 7: can't go see a close friend and colleague. And then
Speaker 7: we actually didn't have her funeral for another or couldn't
Speaker 7: attend a memorial for another two years. I was not
Speaker 7: only coming in every day at a certain point, but
Speaker 7: that was like my only contact with the outside world,
Speaker 7: it felt like, was to come to the studio. And
Speaker 7: I had been dealing with a health battle because I
Speaker 7: had found out I had quite severe cancer in the
Speaker 7: middle of it. So to actually be able to come
Speaker 7: to work during all that was a lifesaver because it
Speaker 7: really gave me something to focus on, and everybody was
Speaker 7: so caught up and how are we solving problems that
Speaker 7: no one's looking at the cancer patients. So for me,
Speaker 7: it was this unexpected boon in the midst of all
Speaker 7: this miss, all this misery and you know, separation. So
Speaker 7: I actually loved coming into work.
Speaker 16: There was at least one or two times where we
Speaker 16: got one of the Inchors results while they were on
Speaker 16: TV and during a commercial break, I would come out
Speaker 16: and be like, Hey, why don't you come with me.
Speaker 16: Let's uh, let's go outside for a second. And I
Speaker 16: think at least maybe once, I think I pulled Nate
Speaker 16: like he was in a segment in one part of
Speaker 16: the show and then suddenly not there anymore because I
Speaker 16: pulled them and you put a mask on him, you
Speaker 16: put in a car and you're like you gotta go home,
Speaker 16: go home, We need you to leave immediately, and then
Speaker 16: retest everybody in the studio. And it seems funny now,
Speaker 16: but then you're like, what are we going to tell
Speaker 16: the audience this is his own personal medical business. What
Speaker 16: do we do they're gonna notice? And then I think
Speaker 16: that one time we had to do two more segments,
Speaker 16: didn't say anything until the end of the show and
Speaker 16: said a little bit of something and then got off
Speaker 16: the air to start to figure out how we were
Speaker 16: going to do tomorrow. But there was it. It was
Speaker 16: constantly being thrown some kind of weird curveball about how
Speaker 16: are we going to make this work because this virus
Speaker 16: is still going around and I still have to figure
Speaker 16: out how to do the show and protect people.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, early on it was April. My mom then got
Speaker 2: COVID and this is before the you know, vaccine, and
Speaker 2: it was like older people and people of color, you know,
Speaker 2: black people, my mom's a black woman, were dying, you know, regularly.
Speaker 2: So that was really hard for me reporting on this
Speaker 2: and to try to, you know, remove myself from the
Speaker 2: emotion of when we were talking about the disproportionate, you know,
Speaker 2: the elderly and people of color who were dying, and
Speaker 2: that was a really uh just the first anything in
Speaker 2: that way was so personal, and it made it more
Speaker 2: urgent for me, you know, to almost inform people because
Speaker 2: I wanted to know as a real kind of you know,
Speaker 2: I don't want to say victim, but just the feeling,
Speaker 2: the impact personally, you know, on the home front really
Speaker 2: was was significant.
Speaker 1: News pros were driven by the knowledge that their work
Speaker 1: 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 brewers a
Speaker 5: night and were the number one show all and broadcast came,
Speaker 5: which is a remarkable accomplishment. If you told me that
Speaker 5: any newscast would have that cided number and be in
Speaker 5: that position, I don't know that thought that was possible.
Speaker 13: But people turn in great numbers because.
Speaker 5: They knew that they would get reliable and sense of
Speaker 5: information that they could trust.
Speaker 13: And I thought that was It's always been reassuring.
Speaker 6: To know that.
Speaker 7: You just reminded me of one thing that I forgot
Speaker 7: that was a very big deal during the pandemic, which
Speaker 7: is that we kept doing deals and steals and Tory
Speaker 7: Johnson and the show got something like one hundred and
Speaker 7: fifty letters. She showed me a lot of them. The
Speaker 7: number of small business owners in this country that wrote
Speaker 7: to Gma and Tory and said, you saved our business
Speaker 7: during the pandemic. This was the only way that anyone
Speaker 7: could learn what we were doing. And so that meant
Speaker 7: that if they were in deals and steals, and then
Speaker 7: Tory told their story and the viewers got a deal,
Speaker 7: so somebody bought a twelve dollars dishcloth. We literally had
Speaker 7: people writing to us saying we were able to keep
Speaker 7: everybody on payroll, could close payroll. People were able to
Speaker 7: get the healthcare that they needed in order to help
Speaker 7: the members of their family who had COVID. I mean,
Speaker 7: the ripple effect just on its own from deals and
Speaker 7: steals during that time was amazing.
Speaker 1: There were heroic efforts made by TV's frontline workers. Here's
Speaker 1: Scott Wilder, Chris Dinan and Bill Hammer.
Speaker 12: We asked our news photographers to kind of be the
Speaker 12: front line of the people who were doing that with
Speaker 12: our anchors and reporters and contributors, because they're the people
Speaker 12: who are used to really being at the front lines
Speaker 12: of adversity and dangerous situations and hospital situations, and so
Speaker 12: they I like to think that they put a lot
Speaker 12: of people at ease and they were comfortable continuing to work.
Speaker 12: You know, I have to go back and give a
Speaker 12: 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 a reporter field producers who were actually out in
Speaker 5: the field, you know, in close proximity to this terrible pandemic,
Speaker 5: doing their jobs as best they could and doing spectacular
Speaker 5: work and bringing home the stories of you the terrible
Speaker 5: suffering that was going on, which I did think over
Speaker 5: time also took a toll on the people who were
Speaker 5: covering it and the producers who were here who day
Speaker 5: in and day out would see very heart wrenching videos
Speaker 5: and people suffering and in the last throws of their
Speaker 5: lives as they hard to deal with you know, the unthinkable.
Speaker 5: So it took an emotional toll 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 4: But I would defer to my colleagues who also you know,
Speaker 4: you didn't see a lot of them on camera because
Speaker 4: they weren't behind the scenes, but so many of them
Speaker 4: that they weren't just writing from different states, you know,
Speaker 4: and producing for different states. They were in the building.
Speaker 4: And I mentioned Suzanne, and.
Speaker 11: That is really important.
Speaker 4: That means a.
Speaker 13: Lot when your leader is here.
Speaker 4: And yeah, I also think it means a lot of
Speaker 4: viewers when they know that you're still there for them
Speaker 4: every day, so you're.
Speaker 11: Doing what you can.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 1: After more than a year of quarantines and PPE, the
Speaker 1: pandemic slowly began to loosen its grip. Their return to
Speaker 1: normal news gathering and production conditions was a process unto itself.
Speaker 1: Here we hear from Scott Wilder, Jason Kurtz, Vin de Bona,
Speaker 1: and John Tower.
Speaker 12: The majority of our staff cannot wait to get back,
Speaker 12: and it was can I please have my spare bedroom back?
Speaker 12: And I please have the space in my living room back.
Speaker 12: I really, you know, I just can't stand my kids
Speaker 12: are tripping over this equipment. So yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 12: those same teams who went and set them up, you know,
Speaker 12: would would take them back. So we have a plethora
Speaker 12: of sixty five monitors in this building somewhere.
Speaker 10: It wasn't until after the fact that Drew and I realized,
Speaker 10: like we never had the benefit of a studio audience
Speaker 10: giving direct feedback. Like we didn't even think that way
Speaker 10: until season two when we had a studio audience and
Speaker 10: we're like, oh, wow, they're laughing. It's not you know, like,
Speaker 10: oh my god, like they're emoting like we It was
Speaker 10: funny because we just didn't have it, so we didn't
Speaker 10: think about it. And then when we had it in
Speaker 10: season two, we're like, wow, we missed out on like
Speaker 10: real time feedback, and so that was interesting realizing that.
Speaker 10: But then we brought them back and we brought in
Speaker 10: the studio audience in season two and that sort of
Speaker 10: obviously changed the energy of the room and brought so
Speaker 10: much life to the show. Showed that side of Drew,
Speaker 10: that personal connection that she can get from you know,
Speaker 10: any individual.
Speaker 11: And just her love of the audience.
Speaker 14: Actually, we had to figure out how to reblock the show.
Speaker 14: What we did was, and that's a really good question.
Speaker 14: You know, we had a huge group of audience members
Speaker 14: in bleachers and that was sort of the camera left
Speaker 14: area of the studio, and we decided not to use
Speaker 14: the bleachers anymore. We were still trying to figure out
Speaker 14: if CODD, if COVID could kick back, you know, and
Speaker 14: so limiting the audience. We wound up using coffee tables,
Speaker 14: high school tables, high top tables and scattered around the
Speaker 14: studio and it was more of a kind of a
Speaker 14: community look than a bleacher look. And so we've kept
Speaker 14: that and it works quite well.
Speaker 3: I'm not a cranky, like get everybody back to the
Speaker 3: office kind of person. I'm not, but I do think
Speaker 3: that there's something lost when people aren't like actually physically
Speaker 3: present with each other, and so like that affects the
Speaker 3: news too, and that affects it the way we like
Speaker 3: tell stories interact, and you know, afects how the anchors are.
Speaker 3: You know, the show's much better together than when they're
Speaker 3: like remote. You still put a show on, but it's
Speaker 3: there's just there's something there. So I think figuring that
Speaker 3: out and get and you know, getting back to a
Speaker 3: world where we are truly together again. If that is
Speaker 3: even a possibility, I think that would that would contribute
Speaker 3: to sort of a better product.
Speaker 1: Now that we have the benefit of hindsight, what have
Speaker 1: been the lasting impact of changes implemented during COVID times
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty. Once I did my fourth or fifth
Speaker 1: media hit via zoom, I knew that local stations and
Speaker 1: networks would rarely, if ever again send a full crew
Speaker 1: to our offices for a routine news interview. Here we
Speaker 1: get perspective from Simone Swink, Scott Wilder, Chris Dinan, and
Speaker 1: Bill Hammer.
Speaker 7: It shook up people's idea of what was possible, and
Speaker 7: I think that's always good. This industry is always changing,
Speaker 7: and that was at least a positive thing to come
Speaker 7: out of it. I also think, at least for me,
Speaker 7: I think empathy at work is really important, and I
Speaker 7: don't think sometimes we talk about it enough. I think
Speaker 7: a lot of people are dealing with a lot of things,
Speaker 7: and certainly we're during COVID and you have to get
Speaker 7: the best show on the air. It's a very competitive environment.
Speaker 7: But I do think leading with empathy working with empathy
Speaker 7: and trying to assume or at least lead with the
Speaker 7: idea that everybody is trying to do their best work
Speaker 7: or figure out how to get them there. And that's
Speaker 7: not always going to work. But if you start from
Speaker 7: an empathetic but firm place, I think you're going to
Speaker 7: end up in a better place as a broadcast. And
Speaker 7: I also think I think COVID was a time of
Speaker 7: immense struggle for so many people. I think so many
Speaker 7: people had just so much they were dealing with family,
Speaker 7: personal struggles, the idea of just being in lockdown. It
Speaker 7: was such a disruption to the system in general. And
Speaker 7: I think that that meant that empathy and patience in
Speaker 7: so many ways emerged as key leadership characteristics in a
Speaker 7: way that I don't think they were held up that
Speaker 7: way prior to COVID.
Speaker 12: I think that we're prepared to respond to breaking news
Speaker 12: in a way that we never were because in certain
Speaker 12: instances where we've decided to keep or install or lean
Speaker 12: on something we've already done, we still have the ability
Speaker 12: to do that right. So that to me is the
Speaker 12: lasting impact that we can go You know, something could
Speaker 12: happen at three am, and I can call somebody and
Speaker 12: have them on TV within you know, fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: As opposed to dispatch the van.
Speaker 13: Getting them into this building.
Speaker 12: Yeah, the art of learning where and when to do that,
Speaker 12: 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
Speaker 5: clearly one of the most dramatic examples of that.
Speaker 13: So I think, you know, it's changed the culture.
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 13: 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 4: You know, this is the birth of the live mobile van.
Speaker 4: You have anchors now who are doing entire entire shows
Speaker 4: from a van, like on the side of a street
Speaker 4: somewhere and you don't know where it is.
Speaker 13: So that's another change.
Speaker 4: I think it's enabled us, from a news gathering perspective,
Speaker 4: to reach guests who would normally not be available to
Speaker 4: us because I don't know, you name it, they're X
Speaker 4: amount of miles or hours away from studio, and now
Speaker 4: we could send them the equipment where we could broadcast
Speaker 4: their face and their.
Speaker 13: Image and their audio.
Speaker 4: So that's all changed entirely.
Speaker 7: And I think it broke some of the some of
Speaker 7: the broadcast norms of it always has to be a crew,
Speaker 7: it always has to be bun sticks. There's many, many
Speaker 7: ways to do things, and the combination of COVID and
Speaker 7: also the rise of the iPhone, which had already been
Speaker 7: going on for a while. I think viewers are much
Speaker 7: I think viewers just want to see whatever it is,
Speaker 7: and they are much more willing to put up with
Speaker 7: the aesthetics of a shot that before it might have
Speaker 7: been deemed not for broadcast. It sort of infiltrated big
Speaker 7: ways in small ways in terms of that switch over technologically,
Speaker 7: and I think it changed the esthetic for good. I mean,
Speaker 7: we use zoom interviews now and a lot of pieces
Speaker 7: in a way that we would not have five years ago.
Speaker 7: And I think viewers are adjusted to it. They're fine
Speaker 7: with it. I don't think they think, oh, that show
Speaker 7: looks too different or too low budget to watch. It's
Speaker 7: just that's how people talk to each other now.
Speaker 8: A lot of the time, when the undeniable lasting changes,
Speaker 8: everybody got used to and comfortable with really lower quality
Speaker 8: camera and sound that people are setting up themselves. It
Speaker 8: was now acceptable to be like, yeah, I'll be on
Speaker 8: your show, but I'm going to stay in Newton, Massachusetts.
Speaker 8: Or I'll be on your show, but I'm at my
Speaker 8: third house in Wyoming for the next week.
Speaker 9: Is that okay? Of course it is.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And that's just the reality of it. So that
Speaker 8: was both that's a double edged sword, because the good
Speaker 8: thing is you can do things more cheaply, but the
Speaker 8: bad thing is they realize they can do things more cheaply,
Speaker 8: and that always means jobs in our business.
Speaker 1: One big change that Vin de Bona and the AFB
Speaker 1: team made to the format of the show out of
Speaker 1: expediency has since been baked in for good.
Speaker 14: You know, up until that point, we brought audience members
Speaker 14: in winners, not winners, but participants in the contest in
Speaker 14: with their families.
Speaker 11: Right, I've noticed that.
Speaker 14: Yeah, and obviously we couldn't do that, so we sent
Speaker 14: for each show, we sent ring cameras and ring lights
Speaker 14: with cameras and instructions, and once again before tape date,
Speaker 14: we would make sure that the signal from their router
Speaker 14: was strong enough so that when we had the families
Speaker 14: come on, they wouldn't freeze, which they did sometimes and
Speaker 14: so but basically we were sending out cause three shows
Speaker 14: a day, we were sending out, you know, nine sets
Speaker 14: of cameras, and then they had to return them, and
Speaker 14: then we had to send them on to the next
Speaker 14: group of families. So all that was keeping track of
Speaker 14: not the easiest thing in the world, just good coordination.
Speaker 17: But what we found was because the the potential winners,
Speaker 17: we set up a system where they came in on
Speaker 17: flat screens, three separate flat screens, and Al would walk to.
Speaker 14: Screen one and chat with them, and go to screen
Speaker 14: two and chat. The chats were much better than they
Speaker 14: had ever been in studio, really so uh and and
Speaker 14: interestingly enough, I talked to one of the producers on
Speaker 14: American Idol and they had the same situation with their
Speaker 14: home audiences and home participants, where there were much more
Speaker 14: at ease. Al had more fun with them, so we've
Speaker 14: kept it and it's not part of the show, and
Speaker 14: and and it's always what's really funny is the kids
Speaker 14: are much more at ease and so you know, you'll
Speaker 14: see al'saketor when we had a little girl, uh last weekend,
Speaker 14: She's like this throughout the whole thing. She was so excited,
Speaker 14: and it makes for a great show.
Speaker 1: The television business was tested and tried during COVID. The
Speaker 1: industry showed up with creativity and ingenuity. The shows did
Speaker 1: stay on. Here we'll have Simone Swink, Vin de Bona,
Speaker 1: and Lindsay Davis reflect on jobs well done, at least
Speaker 1: for me.
Speaker 7: I think empathy at work is really important, and I
Speaker 7: don't think sometimes we talk about it enough. I think
Speaker 7: a lot of people are dealing with a lot of things,
Speaker 7: and certainly we're during COVID and you have to get
Speaker 7: the best show on the air. It's a very competitive environment.
Speaker 7: But I do think leading with empathy, working with empathy
Speaker 7: and trying to assume or at least lead with the
Speaker 7: idea that everybody is trying to do their best work
Speaker 7: or figure out how to get them there. And that's
Speaker 7: not always going to work. But if you start from
Speaker 7: an empathetic but firm place, I think you're going to
Speaker 7: end up in a better place aodcast, And I also
Speaker 7: think I think COVID was a time of immense struggle
Speaker 7: for so many people. I think so many people had
Speaker 7: just so much. They were dealing with family, personal struggles,
Speaker 7: the idea of just being in lockdown. It was such
Speaker 7: a disruption to the system in general. And I think
Speaker 7: that that meant that empathy and patience in so many
Speaker 7: ways emerged as key leadership characteristics in a way that
Speaker 7: I don't think they were held up that way prior
Speaker 7: to COVID.
Speaker 14: The poignant piece of that is that we kept people
Speaker 14: working and it was a very very difficult time, but
Speaker 14: we had work and hopefully we kept America laughing, and
Speaker 14: you know that's our job.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's made us all more innovative. We're
Speaker 2: able to see what's possible, for better or for worse.
Speaker 2: You know. I think that there is a sense that
Speaker 2: if anything happens, we don't all have to be physically
Speaker 2: in the building. There are workarounds, you know. So it's
Speaker 2: it's just a way of rather than looking at everything
Speaker 2: as a problem, just looking at Okay, there are solutions,
Speaker 2: and we've seen these solutions happen, and you know, people
Speaker 2: needed to be clever. And I think that that has
Speaker 2: really been a big statement for and this is not
Speaker 2: just you know, for our team, but for the television
Speaker 2: industry as a whole, just that the news is will
Speaker 2: remain undeterred regardless of the scenario. And you know, hopefully
Speaker 2: we do not have to enduse something like that again.
Speaker 2: But I think we've learned a lot about what we're
Speaker 2: capable of. Sometimes you don't know until you've really been
Speaker 2: put to the test, and you know, we certainly were tested,
Speaker 2: and I think, you know, we given the circumstances, I
Speaker 2: think we all collectively really did a good job of
Speaker 2: keeping people informed, which really is you know, our number
Speaker 2: one mission.
Speaker 1: Well, that's our show. My deepest thanks to all who
Speaker 1: contributed to this passion project of mine that includes Strictly
Speaker 1: Businesses amazing editor Aaron Grenewald, So thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: Be sure to leave us a review at Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or Amazon Music. We love to hear from listeners. Please
Speaker 1: go to Variety dot com and sign up for the
Speaker 1: free weekly Strictly Business newsletter, and don't forget to tune
Speaker 1: in next week for another episode of Strictly Business.
Speaker 12: I think after whatever it was, ten eleven, twelve days,
Speaker 12: my family was ready for me to come back to me.
Speaker 13: We miss you.
Speaker 12: They were ready were ready for me to go back
Speaker 12: to work. Therese were hard times, you know you. People
Speaker 12: were doing schoolwork and and and working out of the houses.
Speaker 12: And how no matter how big your house is, and
Speaker 12: they don't have a big house.
Speaker 6: But no matter how big
Speaker 12: Your house is, it's not big enough.