Making News Preview: Chapter Two

You live in Maine. Portland, Maine. According to our weather expert today will be partly cloudy with a chance of showers. You turn on the TV one day, wondering what sorts of things have been going on. You see the usual; lobster stuff and lighthouse stuff and the ever-present threat of snow. You see all this and you hear every word pass from the teleprompter to me to the camera to the cables to the satellite dish to the cable company to the wires in your TV.

And then you change the channel, because it’s the same thing everyday. This isn’t Chicago. This isn’t D.C. or L.A. or Houston. Portland’s cobblestone streets don’t have a million people living above them stacked one on top of another. Portland doesn’t have a professional sports team or a subway system. You won’t find anything like Girls Gone Wild in Portland.

You will find me. My name is Apex O’Neil and I’ll be back after the break. I’m the anchorman for Channel 3 Action News. We came second in the last ratings poll. We’re almost number one. I don’t want to sound conceited, but it’s because of me.

My name isn’t really Apex O’Neil.

When I changed my name, it wasn’t to hide, to become someone else so I didn’t have to be the person I once was. It wasn’t to separate this life from the old one. Not at first. It’s just that the name sounded better and showed up on screen brighter and I really wanted to work my way out of the editing room. A new name could help me with that.

It all snowballed from there.

Maine’s initials can make everything so easy. You can do a story about caring for ME. A story about the best of ME. Loving you, loving ME.

You’re just another talking head in a pile of other well-groomed talking heads, channel after channel, and you have to show the audience you’re worth their time. You know you’re the best, but now you have to show them.

The trick is to make the story as important to the viewer as possible. Adding one line can spice up even an innocent story about rising heating oil prices. “This could happen to you.”

I once had a loving daughter and wife, both of whom adored me, and the feeling was mutual. Then I got this new job, sitting behind a news desk, after months of being a crappy correspondent and the next thing you know days and weeks and years go by. Now my wife is my ex-wife. My daughter might as well be my ex-daughter since the only time I see her is when I’m driving to a store to buy her things.

I’m not deaf. I know people talk behind my back because the only music I listen to is The Police, Phil Collins, Wham!, ZZ Top and Blondie. When people tell you that the eighties died along with My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake and Teddy Ruxpin, don’t believe them. When I’m comparing current events to the fall of the Berlin Wall or Black Monday and people roll their eyes and walk away, they are only jealous because I am so smart.

To be a news anchor: You want to major in mass communications and journalism. You want to be well versed in political science, sociology, psychology and anthropology. You need to have the ability to show grace under pressure, all the while showcasing the human experience. It helps to volunteer at the scene of a natural disaster.

Add an eyewitness statement to your news item and some official sounding jargon from any law enforcement professional, or anyone in a uniform or white coat, and you’ve hit it. If you can’t find an authority figure to talk about what happened, create a montage of clips from stories you have covered in the past and make sure your voice-over mentions that this is a growing trend.

Trust me, the video archive will be your best friend.

I remember the day my daughter Julia was born. A soft little white mass wriggling in my arms, looking all around at everything but me, tiny hands clenched in fists. I’d wanted to name her Punky or Tron, but Shelly would have none of it. Not much has changed in fourteen years. Julia’s hands were still clenched in fists. Her eyes still refused to meet mine.

Shelly, my wife, my ex-wife, she might be the same, I didn’t really know. I hadn’t been able to reach her for the past four years due to the fact that I didn’t call her or return any of her emails.

Every season in New England the names change but the story stays the same. The Celts, the Sox, the Pats, the Bruins.

You can add to a boring weather forecast by bringing in a Special Guest Meteorologist once a week. When at all possible, let your co-anchor introduce your next story as something that no concerned citizen would miss. No one wants to admit they aren’t, or might not be, a concerned citizen.

Slow news day? Find something trivial, some near-brush with death and report on that. People, meaning the public, are always looking for the next best thing, or the next thing to scare them. So make sure you say “The accident was luckily avoided, but who knows what mayhem may have ensued had it not been.”

You’re born, you go to school, go to more school, then more school. Then one night you meet a girl at a bar and you’re married. You have a kid and a career. One day you turn around and all that’s left is your career. Turns out your wife took your daughter and ran upstate to Orono.

Before the break at the half-hour mark you’re going to want a feel-good, smiley, happy, warm, cuddly story so that viewers don’t feel as if their lives and their city are being flushed down the same toilet. Even though they are. You do not want them to change the channel. If they are watching you at the break, you have to make certain that when you come back they will still be there.

You have to tease your viewers. It works great for Catholic schoolgirls and strippers, so why not local news?

Through my earpiece I’ll hear something like, “Coming up after the break, a story from Bill Branson. It’s information every caring parent can use. Don’t miss it. Coming to you from the station that brings you more top-of-the-line broadcasting than any other. Channel 3 Action News with Apex O’Neil.”

Then they’ll play a few commercials about upcoming news reports for next week. Then they’ll play spots for whatever lame reality show or cop drama immediately follows us.

My face is symmetrical, so it’s fair to say that I’ll always have a job.

There are a few things I have learned from being in the news business. Never apologize. Never say you’re sorry. Never say thank you. Never, ever. Unless a camera is on you.

Here I am, powder fresh from the makeup room and I’m saying, “The National Council on Health announced that the cholesterol in eggs is bad for you. Especially the egg yolk. Something about too many high-density lipids.” Things like that made my head spin.

I would say that I got paid to know this stuff, but that’s not exactly true. It would be more accurate to say that I got paid to look stuff up and then read stuff from a screen. You’d think that in a city with 320 miles of streets bigger things would happen more often.

It’s the way the world works. When I talk, everyone listens.

“There was a City Council meeting today to discuss the current issues facing Maine voters. A large group of local voters have turned out in support of the Yes on 5 campaign.” Practicing in my dressing room mirror, I was trying to get the emphasis correct by raising an eyebrow at varying times.

I was on the steps of City Hall earlier that day and had asked a few people what the ballot question was in reference to, and what sort of actions they were prepared to take in order to gain more support. No one knew. We ended up getting a shot of the crowd walking in circles, chanting and everyone’s eyes were shining in the camera’s glow. A ring of deer caught in the headlights but still able to move.

“That’s crap,” my boss said. My boss was Mr. Sebring, and since Mr. Sebring was the only person authorized to dish out creative control of anything, I listened to him.

“Not one person knew anything? I thought it was about parking zones. They didn’t tell you anything, O’Neil?” Mr. Sebring rubbed his thick knuckles back and forth over the top of his head, covering and uncovering the birthmark on the center of his blank dome. It was shaped like a famous mouse’s head and there was a pool at the station about whether or not it was really a tattoo gone wrong.

His face was a field of canyon creases. The skin around his eyes rippled like foil and when the light hit right, half of his face would be covered in lines of shadow.

“Sorry sir, what?” I turned and showed him my what could I do look.

“Never mind. This is how it’s going to go tonight. We’ve got a minute-twenty of a motel fire via remote broadcast followed by forty-five seconds of Humane Society dogs barking. You go on at the eleven minute mark with twenty seconds of what’s coming up later, then a minute and a half of Karen’s cancer survivors, then another break, and then we’re cutting to Karen’s coverage of the Potting Soil Festival.” Mr. Sebring looked down the hall, following the trail of Priscilla, the new girl in makeup.

“Another cancer survivor story?” I threw my hands in the air. “That’s the second one this month.”

“Well, our audience research report shows that’s what people want. The last cancer broadcast brought up our audience share to even with Channel 11. People want to be scared and hopeful at the same time. It gives them a sense of drama. Besides the fact that Karen’s rating went up two points during that period, and still has yet to decline, while your rating is down three points from last month.”

“How am I supposed to raise my rating with stories about cats and dogs?”

“That’s something you’ll have to take up with the news director, whoever it is this week. There have been so many that I’m losing track. I’ve got some people putting together a concept analysis report. Hopefully that will raise our market share and bring the news division of this network toward some respectable numbers.”

“What’s our key demographic?” I could feel my right eye twitching, so this conversation would have to end before I lost it completely.

“Don’t worry about that. Worry about your Q level and how to raise your audience share. You need something big. If your rating doesn’t improve in the next three months, we’re going to have to sit down and have a serious discussion. If your rating starts to drop, we’ll be having that chat sooner. Do you follow me?”

“When you put it that way.”

“Good. I’ve got to go. Sharp tie.”

Shuffling away, jacket flared out like a cape, hands on his hips, he looked like the impossible superhero. As Mr. Sebring turned around the same corner Priscilla had, I wondered why I wasn’t offered the Potting Soil Festival story. Was I not the anchor at the news desk? If there was a big story like that, I wanted to go.

I was shafted on the Kite Festival. They gave that one to Karen too.

Was my hair too shiny? I kept it cut short, but not too short. It had a slight gray highlight, but not too slight and not too gray. It was a little more than a hint but not enough to be called salt-and-pepper. I walked a fine line. I’d have to check the tapes at home to know for sure.

If things had worked out the way my ex-wife had wanted, I would be sitting in a cubicle somewhere, calculating figures and adding the sums of two columns like a good little boy.

To look my best, I relied on Priscilla to make me newsworthy. She took the shine from my face and gave me enough powder to cover the stubble that started to grow two hours after I shaved. Priscilla plucked my eyebrows and straightened my tie and made certain that all of her mistakes ended up on the little paper bib around my neck instead of on my crisp, white, professionally pressed shirt.

Priscilla was new. Sometimes it takes a few weeks for someone to be broken in properly. We’d had seven makeup people in the past year. Some men. Some women. Some professionals. Some were just hoping they one day would be. All of them quit because they realized that the mistakes they make reflect poorly upon themselves, the station, and most importantly – me.

You have to teach these people that life is not a highway. There are rules and regulations and corrective measures and weights and balances connected to the way that makeup brush hit my face. This was not a playground, this was a business, and my image was the only factor that mattered.

Granted, a feature on dirt or kites wasn’t going to win an Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence, but at least it was something. Until people got their act together, I was going to be the Susan Lucci of Portland.