For my informational interview I was lucky to enough to be able to speak with Chantal Bevard, the 6 PM weekday producer for KEZI 9 News. I was very happy to get the opportunity to speak with her because producing for any kind of television is something that I am very interested in and the area that I hope to one day get in a job in. For  a lot of my questions I had a general sense of the answers based on research I had done but wanted to hear directly from someone in the field.

Coming into the interview I had a lot of questions and Chantal was able to answer all of them. My first question was just what exactly are the day to day duties of a producer. I was shown the job of a producer is to pretty much plan, organize and sometimes edit together the show. To make sure that everything is precisely mapped out before hand to ensure a smooth broadcast. The day starts with a morning meeting where ideas are pitched based on what the news is and from there the producers put together show which includes writing and editing. Another question I had was the difference between a producer, director, and a stage manager. I learned the stage manager is a position that is currently being phased out for most shows because with the increase in automated technology there has become less of a need for a stage manager. Today mostly only the larger live broadcasts such as Good Morning America still use a stage manager because of the scale of these types of programs. The difference between producing and directing was in line with I thought previously, the producer is more responsible for the preparation while the director is more responsible for the execution. She explained it as producing being a marathon and directing being a sprint.

Something I was really curious about what would be the best educational route and also how important experience was versus education. I was told that a 4 year degree would allow you a better chance at landing jobs like most fields but that a masters degree is not really necessary after that because from there experience is really more important. She told me how it would be much better to be somewhere gaining experience than it would be to keep working on a graduate degree. It was very clear that gaining experience in any way was extremely important to be able be somewhere learning and networking is really everything.

In addition to being able to ask here questions she also showed me around which was really great, I was able to see the set and the control room. and. Because of the time that I was there I was able to see Sean Cuellar do her 11 AM broadcast so I was able to see the director in action and get a sense of what their job is during the broadcast. Something that surprised me was how quickly everything moves. I was speaking to Chantal while Sean was working on her show and then she got right up from working on it to reading it on the air and then was still writing pieces of the show during commercial breaks.

I was very happy to get a chance to do this for my informational interview and was able to get my questions answered and get a glimpse at what working in this field would be like. I am very thankful to Chantal for her time and for being very informative.