Field producer: FDA hearing on acetaminophen

I’ve been on several all-day field shoots while working for NBC News – this was my first, and to date, one of my most important.  The job was an FDA hearing about acetaminophen – the pharmaceutical terminology for what is known to consumers as the brand-name pain reliever Tylenol – and the story involved the FDA looking to address the problem of acetaminophen overdose leading to liver failure.  Washington correspondent Tom Costello would file the story for Nightly News that evening, as the lead story.

I was sent to the campus of University of Maryland University College, the FDA’s choice of venue, accompanied by a camera crew and a satellite truck operator.  My cameraman was cabled to lines, and broadcast via satellite back to the bureau.  He shot the all-day conference live while the bureau recorded the hours of footage to tape for Tom Costello and his producer to monitor and sift for good soundbites.  When the 9-hour hearing was over, an FDA press conference was called in another room, and I had to oversee the re-cabling and reconfiguration of camera and live lines to this alternate location.

There was also a Newschannel crew and correspondent there for a few hours.  Correspondent Tracie Potts was there to get some sound of the hearing, and get an interview subject for her own piece for Newschannel, which would be disseminated to the nation’s NBC affiliates.  While my cameraman was tethered to shooting the hearings, Tracie and I commissioned the services of her camera crew to interview and shoot set-up of a young woman who would become the central character in Tom’s piece.  The young woman, a pharmacist, lost her sister to liver failure due to an acetaminophen overdose, and her story was so compelling, both Tracie and Tom agreed to use selections from her interview.  I also oversaw several live shots that Tracie did with her cameraman for MSNBC, which required another live path from our sat truck, and while we had their cameraman plugged into lines, I was able to snag a couple more interview subjects for Tom’s spot, including a good opposite viewpoint from the Executive Director of an over-the-counter (OTC) drug trade group, which made it into Tom’s spot.

By day’s end, I had been responsible for nearly all of the elements in Tom Costello’s spot.  The only elements that I did not oversee were an interview with a drug expert, shot from the bureau’s studio, and a tape of drug b-roll, shot at a local pharmacy near the bureau.  It was a tremendous amount of work, but the result was incredibly rewarding – the lead spot in Nightly News, which wouldn’t have been possible without my contributions: