Big Dreams Usually Mean Lots of Work

Ever been told to “be careful what you wish for”? Many of us have at some point in our lives, but many of us probably never understood its truth until we got what we wished for. We all know that the good comes with the bad, and that when you reach the bottom there is nowhere else to go but up. But when your dream job keeps you at the bottom for what seems like an eternity, it is hard to not to get discouraged. There are probably several professions that have this “lull” before the big promotion comes, but television broadcasting has to be in the top ten worst.

When people dream of being on television, perhaps as an anchor on a nightly newscast, or as a sideline reporter for ESPN, many have no idea what the job entails, or even how to get into the business. Dreamers see the glitz and glamor of having the life-changing story they wrote heard, or having their face recognized by thousands, or millions, of people. What dreamers don’t see is the rough road to making it big.

That road is filled with unexpected twists and turns that try to throw people off track. Most start off working for a station so small they have never heard of the town it’s in, working long hard hours on stories that don’t interest them, and getting paid close to nothing. New hires almost always get the least-desirable shifts, so if your new station has a morning show, you better bet you’re going to be working for it. This means getting to the station sometime around midnight, or before, for a newscast that airs at six o’clock in the morning. Most news does not take place in the middle of the night, so you will probably be working long hours searching desperately for something you can make “newsworthy”.

The long, hard hours are filled with operating a camera, possibly conducting an interview, writing a story, and editing your own footage—otherwise known as “one-man banding it”. You’ll combine all of this into a package that you’re not extremely proud of for the newscast, then go home and sleep and start the process all over again.

All broadcast stations revolve around the “market”, or the number of people the broadcast will be aired to. The lower the market number, the bigger the market is. For example, New York City is market one, Los Angeles is market two, Sacramento is market 20, and Glendive, Montana is market 210 (which is the smallest). Most people in the industry set their goal at being in a top 20 market, some strive for top ten, which is very hard to get in to. However, most start out between 75 and 100.

After you send out tapes of your work to every station you can think of, you hope that you get into a station you want. But if a tiny station in North Dakota is the only one that calls, you will probably be packing your stuff and moving to a town you never knew existed. Most try not to stay at a small station longer than necessary, so once your contract is up (usually two years) you will be sending out tapes again in hope to jump to a bigger market…which means moving again. This will typically be the pattern, until you finally get to a market that you are happy in. It can take ten years to reach a top 20 market, but once you’re in, the jump to top 10 is a little easier, which should be encouraging!