NBC CEO for a Day

At the NBC television station in Chicago, the news director is the equivalent of a CEO.  Although the station is already very successful as one of the major news outlets, there are a few aspects about NBC I would change if I were the news director.  First, the assignment editor leads the news planning meetings where she summarizes all the potential stories for the day she found.  There were some points throughout the summer when there were not a lot of or enough news stories worthy of full-length segments.  To change this, I would have everyone who attends the meetings come in with at least one story idea to contribute to the list of the day’s potential stories.  Also, I would change the main computer program used in the newsroom.  NBC uses an editing and media management program called “Dalet.”  NBC is the only organization in the media industry that uses this program, and most others use Final Cut Pro.  In my experience, I have found various parts of Dalet to not be user-friendly, limiting, and inefficient.  Moreover, as a competitive news outlet, it makes more sense to use industry-standard software.

Finally, although I have gained so much as an intern at NBC and learn something new every day, I would further enhance the internship experience by offering more intern-specific activities, like shadowing people from different departments or mock editing a segment.  Overall, however, I have always known NBC to be one of the leading news outlets, but now I have certainly seen why and how they excel.