"Olive oil, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and believe it or not - honey!"

I went over to local NBC affiliate, NBC-4, today to get a brief tour from Katie Roberts, former intern and current employee of the station.
She works for Liz Crenshaw, the featured subject from a couple of posts back.

That is one stylish office/bureau, let me tell you. Really well-organized with a stylish stream-lined and high-tech design, - just a really nice set up.

(- "And what's in these rooms!?" I asked, pointing to the 4 neon lit doorways lining the bureau wall.
- "Oh, those are closets.")

After Katie showed took me around to the control room and various other studios (Meet the Press is actually filmed in that same building), and showed me the corner where she sits with Liz and her producer working on consumer reports, I sat in for the NBC-4 at 4:00 live broadcast with Pat Lawson Muse and Jim Handly. I've never watched anything like that before, and it was SO interesting to see how a local live broadcast looks when not on the TV screen.

It was really quite strange, because for as fast-paced and sound&graphic packed as local news is, the studio is extremely quiet and calm. All the jumping around is just digital maneuvering and switching between different rooms and video clips, so the studio in which the anchors actually sit stays really quiet. There's almost no talking, except the bits of chit-chat during commercial breaks (astoundingly serious conversations on topics like why Bristol Palin has made it this far on Dancing with the Stars, and how best to prepare butternut squash [see title]).

Oddly enough, over the course of the hour, these off-camera conversations started to make their way into air-time, filling up the live broadcast with the casual chit-chat for which local news is so often mocked. With the hard news out of the way, things very noticeably began to lighten up.

Really fun to watch, though. And the anchors were both so nice! Right when I sat down they each waved to me and said 'hi' from across the room - just seconds before going live. Jim even thought that I was an intern (some day - let's cross our fingers).