Today I took a trip down memory lane thanks to a post by Hokie Sports on Twitter: Virginia Tech Sports Today debut set for Sunday
Many, many moons ago, I was the video editor for Virginia Tech Sports Today. The producer, Darren Triplett and I would sit in the editing room in front of the old school AVID on Saturday nights for hours – sometimes up to one hour before the show had to be fed via satellite to other stations.
The show was new and was my baby for a couple of years. It was hard work and a learning experience.
See, this was back in the day of Beta SP and hours of rendering time. I mean, hit “render” on the computer and take a nap – it was THAT bad. During football season, we would be up all hours to meet the deadline. I really hated late night away games. The video guys would fly back with the video and give it to Darren and we had next to no time to get everything up and running. I forgot when the satellite feed was scheduled, but the show aired at 10 am on Sundays. I think one day we got video at 2 am.
It was a miserable experience for an editor and I don’t miss those days now. But I loved it at the time. Darren made the editing fun. We would joke around, sing Brass Monkey and just have an all around good time while working. And to me, that is what makes or breaks it for a media job. Working in media is HARD. You get no credit and get paid squat when you start. You crawl and claw your way to the top and see many people just jump off and go a total different route in life (how many PIOs for cities and towns were media people at one time). But if you have some great experiences on the way, it becomes totally worth it.