After nearly 18 years in Portland, academia called and we moved to Fresno, Calif. My husband, who is also a director (again, story for another post!) started working at KGPE CBS47. Much like the stations I where I worked in Florida, KGPE shares studio space with KSEE-24, the NBC affiliate. They also both feature palm trees!
Just before the pandemic hit, I was able to tour the facilities.
An interesting thing about the KSEE/KGPE duopoly is that one of the stations actually UNautomated (de-automated?) when they merged. Usually, it's the other way around. So the Nexstar stations in Fresno run fairly old-school in their productions setups: Director, audio op, graphics op, camera ops in the studio, and a prompter op. It's much the same way that we teach production at Fresno State.
A quick note about automation: To run automation well, the director needs to know how to run, and quickly fix, all of the equipment they are controlling. Therefore, even if one never stands behind a studio camera again, the skills needed to quickly fix a robotic camera shot are the same as the ones needed to fix one manually in the studio. Same with audio. Graphics. You get the idea.
Back to the story. Here is a brief look at the KSEE-24/KGPE CBS-47 studios!
CBS47 in Fresno. Click the photo for more pictures.
KSEE-24 in Fresno. Click the photo for more pictures.
As you can see, the two on-air studios look very different.
The control rooms have identical equipment, however. This is in contrast to my days at WZVN/WBBH where I could do back-to-back newscasts with two completely different sets of equipment. (NOTE: They have since given the control rooms identical equipment.)
KSEE-24 control room. Click the photo for more pictures (you know the drill!).
Thank you to KSEE & KGPE for letting me hang out during the Noon show to see you do what you do!
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