With the novel coronavirus spreading day by day, an increasing number of TV newsers are finding themselves broadcasting and producing from home.
Last week, we asked you to share your top working from home tips as part of our new #AskNewsers feature, and several newsers did just that, including a number from CBS News.
CNBC’s Becky Quick also provided us with her thoughts last week about broadcasting Squawk Box from home. Her Squawk Box partner in crime Andrew Ross Sorkin later told us that anchoring the CNBC morning show from his home has been “an education in patience—and the wonders of technology.”
He added: “We set up a studio of sorts in the basement—the first morning we broadcast from it, I came downstairs to find a flood. I sat in my rain boots in a couple inches of water for all three hours of the show! (We called the plumber afterwards.) We brought a separate extra super high-speed broadband line into the house to handle the video load. Otherwise, I found that if my kids were to do just about anything on the internet, it could impact the signal—and now that they are doing school online, having the extra broadband line will be a godsend. Perhaps the biggest challenge every morning is capturing the back-and-forth rat-tat-tat conversation that we can have when we are all sitting at a table together. The value of nonverbal cues in person.”
We also caught up with Sorkin’s CNBC colleague, senior media and entertainment correspondent Julia Boorstin, who said she never thought it would be possible to broadcast from her home, “let alone set up a camera on a tripod and lights—plus a feed connecting me to CNBC HQ—in just an hour.”
Added Boorstin: “As CNBC shut down its Los Angeles bureau so we could all isolate with our families, I rushed home to find a big plastic case that had been FedExed by my colleagues back east. I have two boys [age 6 and age 8] and since they were already hunkered down at home, they were eager to help me set everything up. They’re both obsessed with robots and expert Lego builders, so they could easily guide me how to follow the instructions CNBC sent. [I felt a little silly when my 6-year-old said, ‘MOM, you have the camera sideways!’] When I couldn’t figure out how to attach a light, I Facetimed one of my colleagues back east to identify and find the missing piece—and my boys helped me attach it the right way.”
So, how about that first live shot? “It was a family effort—the kids told me which way to slide to center up in the shot, and adjusted the light so it wasn’t too bright,” said Boorstin. “Now that we’re in Week 2 of lockdown with my kids on ‘spring break’ and my husband also working from home, my family and I have been getting into a routine. The kids have offered to be my ‘cameraman’—but I make sure they’re downstairs whenever I’m set to go live, and I lock the door. I decided to set up my camera in the room furthest away from our kitchen and family room, which seem to be the nexus of noise in our house.”
She added, “My kids have seen the ‘ON AIR’ lights at our CNBC HQ, so they created their own sign with a hand-drawn red stop light and the text ‘Do Not Enter: On-Air. I’ve been instructed to flip it over to a green traffic light that says ‘OK to go say hi’ when I’m off camera.”
Fox News’ Dana Perino just started broadcasting from her home in New Jersey this week. Her advice to those also broadcasting from home (or soon to be): “I think it’s important to try to keep as consistent a schedule while working remotely, and going about your day as if you were still going into the office. I also recommend stepping away from the news for a few moments, if you can. Jasper and I sure do!”
