Believe it or not, oftentimes election nights are not as busy or as hectic as one would imagine.
Basically, there is a plan. Being an election night, the plan more than likely will change --many times --and you just have to roll with the results and the politicians' leads.
But having an initial plan in place helps immensely.
Next, for an assignment editor, all of my personnel are working election stories, therefore unable to cover anything else whether it be breaking news to heart-warming events on the docket.
That's not to say if something really breaks, I won't regroup and try to get a crew on it.
So you ask, what does an assignment editor do on election night?
Well my friends, don't fool yourselves. There's still a myriad on my 'to do list.'
The email continues streaming in....the phones never stop....and once the polls close, it's dishing out results to our callers.
I still must monitor the scanners, just in case.
And if there is a lull, it allows me to do extra planning ahead, setting up future stories.
You can never have too many people on election night. I'm still in 'assignment editor' mode which is being nosy, eavesdropping on conversations to make sure the flow of information continues, to whomever it needs to go to, and I can jump in if I hear that someone needs some sort of assistance, whether it be looking up video, running something out to the studio for a cut-in, or whatever is necessary.
Being a 'glorified telephone operator' is essential on election night. With so many crews in the field, it's imperative to make sure the crews calling in get to their destinations --a live person at the end of the phone, not a voice mail. They may be calling in to say someone is making a concession speech during a live cut-in and we need to make sure they get to their point person ASAP so we can take the live shot, hopefully before anyone else.
This election night we were everywhere--we had multiple crews in Columbus, Akron, local headquarters for the big races in Cleveland, the Board of Elections, and our main players such as Kim Wheeler and Tom Beres kept their pulse on their main beats for the latest results.
We had folks working on wkyc.com as well as other social media platforms. The flip cams were smokin' we were using them so often. We would post facebook vignettes on what was happening in the control room during the cut-ins, various camps were posting behind-the-scenes from their locations, and we even shared our pizza break before everything revved up.
As the results started really coming in, literally minute by minute, I found that I was most needed to continuously update Twitter. My fingers got a good workout as I did constantly update Twitter with the Ohio race results, Cleveland race results as well as upcoming alerts from our crews in the field.
What a blast! Quite exciting because results were popping literally every 30 seconds. This went on for hours.
Actually a natural high trying to beat the local and statewide competition with the results. If I must say so, did a pretty darn good job keeping in step and on top for Twitter followers.
It would not be a successful election night without being exhausted at the finish....and it would not be an authentic election night without a delicious strawberry cheesecake from PR Guru, Mike Rogers! Thank you Michael! It was gone within minutes!
