THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, April 11, 1996 TAG: 9604110038
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LARRY BONKO, TELEVISION COLUMNIST
LENGTH: Long : 125 lines
TOM RANDLES makes it look easy. So does Terry Zahn. And Don Roberts.
Is anchoring a live local newscast really so simple? A snap? A piece of cake? A walk in the park, as it appears to be when Randles of WTKR, Zahn of WVEC and Roberts of WAVY do it?
While it isn't brain surgery, the TV anchor's job is harder than it appears because there is so much going on in the studio while the anchorman or anchorwoman reads the news. It's a challenge to appear calm and poised in a sea of distractions.
Roberts, who has been an anchor on WAVY's early-morning and noon newscasts since 1989, compares his job to walking the high wire.
``Without a net,'' he said.
He's a one-pillow guy.
Before Roberts settles into his chair in the Channel 10 studios in Portsmouth to begin the Monday through Friday wake-up newscast at 5 a.m., he reaches under the desk for one red pillow to sit on. I hear tell it's the same pillow that weather reporter Don Slater uses during the 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts.
Just how difficult is it to anchor the local news live, with or without a pillow to sit on?
Roberts showed me.
He sat me down in his one-pillow chair on WAVY's news set with the studio lights on full blast, three cameras running, TelePrompTer rolling, color monitors cranked up and people in back of the cameras giving hand signals. What do three fingers in the air mean?
Sitting there, I was overwhelmed by it all.
Adding to the hustle and bustle: WAVY does its newscasts from a newsroom where phones ring, reporters chase deadlines, photographers and editors do their work.
Roberts has to deal with organized chaos as he reads the news, listens through an earpiece for film cues from producer Elizabeth Rowlands, heeds the countdowns (``three, two, one'') to commercials, engages in small talk with his partners on the newscast.
And makes sure that he pronounces ``Poquoson'' and ``Gloucester'' like a native. Whew!
While all of that is going on, Roberts also has to think about how he looks on camera. Is his tie straight?
Roberts said it took him about two years to get comfortable - to make a hard job look relatively effortless. His former partner, Carol Hoffman, who recently left WAVY when she couldn't get together with her bosses on a new contract, took to anchoring the news as readily as anyone he has seen in the business.
``She was a natural,'' said Roberts.
Hoffman told me she cheated on her wardrobe. She dressed great from the waist up as she sat at the anchor desk. But under the desk, she often wore shorts, sweats, sneakers, flip-flops.
``Whatever I grabbed when I rolled out of bed,'' she said.
They roll out of bed early at WAVY. Roberts is up at 3:15 a.m. for the commute from his home in Newport News. Jon Cash, who reports the weather, fortifies himself on the dawn patrol by munching on a Pop Tart and banana when he's not on camera.
Zahn, in his 22nd year as anchor including stops in Florida, Iowa and Hawaii before Virginia, said his first two weeks on the air were ``terrifying.'' Most difficult, said Zahn, is to concentrate and keep focused in a studio that's as busy as a bus station.
Anchors should avoid what Zahn calls TelePrompTer stare - reading the news from a TelePrompTer as if under a hypnotic spell a la Dan Rather. ``You want to occasionally break eye contact with the viewer,'' he said.
You want to pretend you're still doing it the old-fashioned Walter Cronkite way - consulting the script before you. Stealing glances.
Also important at the anchor desk said Zahn, is teamwork, making it appear as if co-anchors are always in sync, including moments when that is not so. He and co-anchor Barbara Ciara are so good at this subliminal togetherness - they marked their second year as a team at WVEC last week - ``that when mixups occur, nobody notices,'' said Zahn.
``Learning the pace and rhythm of your partner is one of the fine points of anchoring,'' said Zahn. He and Ciara were colleagues at WAVY and now at WVEC. At the WVEC studios in Norfolk, the camera to the left of the anchor desk is Zahn's, the camera to the right is Ciara's. When they are on screen at the desk together, the ``home'' camera takes their picture.
As for the anchor desk itself, at WAVY the furniture is bargain-basement, nothing much but slabs of plywood that have been nailed together and painted. You could probably buy the materials at HQ for $65 or so.
On the top of the desk are three windows through which the anchors peek at monitors, which is what non-TV folk call television sets. These monitors, and another on the studio floor just below the anchor's eye level, show commercials being cued up, reporters out in the field, the anchor person's picture as it is broadcast - the studio output.
There is much to do in a 30-minute newscast and many things to be aware of, including how quickly the time goes by. TV newscasts are measured not in minutes but in seconds.
It's a three-ring circus in that studio even when everything is going right. When things don't go right, Roberts and the others feel like the big top is collapsing on them.
Let's say the TelePrompTer breaks down suddenly - crashes - with the anchor's script on it. What then? Improvise. Be cool.
Read from the pages of the script before you - the desk copy. Consulting scripts is how the anchors delivered the news before somebody decided that reading from a TelePrompTer, set at a level just below the camera lens, is the best way to do this job.
What happens when the producer in the control room tells the anchor through the anchor's earpiece that a story has been killed to make way for breaking news? Or if a sudden weather update is coming up, unscripted?
Again, the anchor improvises.
``And tries to do it smoothly,'' said Roberts. The anchor tries not to kick words around. That is, like, so totally unprofessional.
In this market, anchors earn six figures. Not all. But some.
They get paid the big bucks to bring viewers to their station and to make anchoring the news look as easy as buttering toast. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by VICKI CRONIS, The Virginian-Pilot
Don Roberts, morning anchorman on WAVY...
Roberts cuts up ... with Christy Carlo
FILE PHOTO
Tom Randles co-anchors nightly newscasts on WTKR, Channel 3.
FILE PHOTO
Terry Zahn, in his 22nd year of anchoring, does the news at WVEC,
Channel 13.
by CNB