Angela Gennette
WGGB-TV Springfield, MA
"Here at news
40, we are not privileged enough to have a lounge for separate departments.
We have a Lunchroom, and we are lucky we got that."
Drew Burchett
Edmonton,Alberta, Canada
"I work at a new
station here in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Management has decided that
they don't want to create a photogs lounge, because when there is time
between shoots, they want us out "cruising" for spot news. Every other
station I've ever worked at has had some sort of lounge except this
one. Makes a man think, doesn't it?"
Ed Senior
Adelphia Cable8 Toms River, NJ
"We do a weekday
news program, "Ocean County Newswatch 8", so we do have shooters.
The funny thing is that we rotate jobs every day, so that we average
one ENG day a week (2 photogs). As for a lounge-no way! We hang out
in the control room, the edit room, the supervisor's office/engineering
room/entrance to the garage or anywhere we can find-we even eat lunch
on the news set! It's a pretty loose situation, but as we have other
duties, not just shooting, we usually are doing some type of production
work. In other words, not much down time. This is especially true
if too many people call out sick-I've gone from ENG to graphics load
to master control, with a bit of editing thrown in for good measure,
all in a single day!"
David Ruff
KOLR-TV Springfield, MO
"The "lounge"
at KOLR-10 is simply an small extension of the Live-Eye garage. No
chairs, no couches, no lockers, no water cooler. Just lots of old
3/4 tapes, mini-microwave storage, and "light kits" on the shelves,
oh yeah, and our 5 cameras. Oh, and the walls are made out of a metal
cage. I wonder how management REALLY feels.... Glad to know this isn't
uncommon!!"
David Renner
WMC-TV Memphis, TN
"The photog lounge
at WMC is simple: WE DON'T HAVE ONE!!! We can usually be found in the
vending machine area(aka "the canteen"), at desks of reporters that
are off that day, or sitting in our vans in the parking lot. Then the
desk gets upset when they can't find us. Do they try us on the 2-way(in
all vans)? NO. Do they try to page us(we all have alpha pagers)? NO.
I'm tellin' ya, it is an imperfect world we live in. But then who wants
to get a REAL JOB? Yecchhh."
Steve Goldstein
WISH-TV Indianapolis, IN
"We don't have
a photolounge. Our edit rooms are a part of the newsroom so if the
photogs want to gab, they either go in a area by the tape feed room
or just kibbitz at one or two of the reporter's desks(assuming they're
not in use). I wish we did have a lounge area. Maybe if we booted
the ENG Supervisor out of his office......."
Robert Dingwall
KOLD-TV Tucson, AR
"Our photog lounge
at KOLD is pretty simple: lockers, a desk, and some chairs that are
older than time. We tried to get a couch that wasn't being used moved
in there. We even cleared an area for it, but we didn't get it. The
coolest part about it is that we can't hear the intercom in there."
Brian Svec
WSIL-TV Carterville, IL
"lounge, ya, whatever,
we don't have one. all we do is hang out with the engineers and smoke.
It's not as bad as you might think because they are always telling
us about cameras and shit. The only problem is that you have to listen
to their stories about the war and hear what they did when they were
"up on this big-ass hill trying to get a signal in from" some fucking
remote camp or village where "they were about to get bombed" and they
saved the day becuse they knew how to turn the right dial."
