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I wish I could tell you the producer shortage in our industry is fixed and we can all move on to other pressing matters, but I cannot. While every broadcast group is trying different tactics to recruit and retain producers, over the past 18 months owning Talent Dynamics I’ve seen the worsening effects the lack of producers, EPs and assistant news directors have on all markets, especially mid-size and smaller.
In 1997, I was a 6 p.m. producer in Pittsburgh. I still had graphic artists, although we were not ordering many same-day animations back then. We had a full control room with a director, TD and audio operator. We had videotape for playback, we had only one non-linear editing suite and we still had editors. The job of a producer was simpler then. They focused on producing, creating the rundown, writing the scripts and providing the context of why stories were important and in a newscast in the first place.
Today, the world of a producer includes all that, plus creating their own graphics, editing their shows, putting automation codes into scripts and transcribing sound bites because in many cases they don’t have associate producers or writers.
We have also added so many more newscasts. The 90-minute news hole is now a two- or three-hour-plus news hole in the early evenings, so we need more producers to cover that ground.
All the while, until recently the pay had not moved as well. Talking just this past summer with a news director, I learned they were