Day 2

As I woke up at 5:30 on Friday, September 3, I knew it was going to be a long day at Fox. I didn’t know it was going to go by so fast, though.

I arrived in Chicago at 8:30 am and I went straight to the Fox News Chicago Bureau. There were two studio shots for the day, so I wanted to make sure I knew how those were done. For every studio shot, or live shot, as they call it, there’s a little card that they put on a marker board to make a rough schedule. Fox Business News (FBN) shots are on green paper and Fox News Channel (FNC) shots are on blue paper.

The card says who the guest(s) is (are), what studio the shot will be in, what control room it will go to in New York, what time the shot will be, and what feed it will go out on to New York.

John Challenger and Jonathan Hoenig were the guests on Friday. Both are regular guests on Fox which made my life easier. They know where to go, where to sit, how the IFB works, pretty much everything.

Pete showed me how to set up all of the live shots in both studios. We also worked on lighting, white balance, focus, and exposure on one of the cameras. The studios have a lot of lighting power. The main studio overlooking the Chicago River has over 6,000 Watts of lighting power. That’s really bright!

Chris and I went to grab Chipotle for lunch - a Friday tradition at Fox. The crazy thing was that we got 8 burritos for free. Chris thinks it was because they had gotten so many orders before, but he’s really not sure. After lunch I went on a secret mission to get cupcakes for Chris’s last day at Fox. Svein drove me to Jewel and I got 24 cupcakes and 48 cookies for $14. They gave me $25 so they seemed happy that I had $11 and change left over. It’s always good to underspend when you’re buying things with others’ money.

After the mini party, I worked on Marilyn’s Rod Blagojevich Verdict package on Final Cut Pro in editing room 3. I finished it up for her as a nice little surprise. Chris had been working on it earlier, but nobody really told me to finish it.

Finally it was time for the Jonathan Hoenig live shot in studio 2 (the same one I set up before for John Challenger). I changed the background image since it was for Cavuto’s show. Then it was time for me to head home. I have this Monday off since it’s Labor Day.

See you on Friday!