I started my internship in September and I can't believe that it's almost over. After spending four months at the creative services office of Live! With Regis and Kelly, I can say I've gotten a lot out of this experience. Getting into it, not knowing much about what they do, I wasn't disappointed by anything. I got to work with amazing people and make great friends and good connections for the future.

A day at Live! can be hectic or slow depending on what is going on in the world, in the office, and on the show. After the September 11th attacks, the show was hectic. Guests were canceling on us frequently and some were agreeing to do the show last minute. I learned that in this business you have to roll with the punches.

As a member of the creative services department or as we call it "promos," I served as a liaison between the Live! producers and DAW Productions, the company that produces the on-air promos for the show. I often had to play diplomat and smooth things over.

The on-air promos are the thirty, twenty, fifteen, ten, and four-second spots that run on television for the show. They tell the audience who the upcoming guests are for the show. We find out whom the bookers have gotten for the show, by getting a guest update, which we fax over to DAW. We let them know who is coming on and get the promotional material they need to produce the promos. We get the contact information for the guest that is coming on and call them up. We get EPKs (electronic press kits) for movies, which consist of clips from the film the guest is coming on to promote as well as extra material, like interviews with the actors in the film. EPKs also often include a synopsis of the movie, a list of the cast and crew, and information on the characters of the movie. For a musical guest we get copies of the CD they are promoting as well as a copy of their latest video on _ or beta tape. If someone is promoting a television show we will ask for clips of the show. This is the gist of our function at WABC.

We obtain these clips and give them to DAW to produce the promos. Once they are done with the clips we usually will have to get them back and give them to the producer of the segment. He/she will often use these clips for the segment. Also, the production coordinator needs them in order to do bumpers during the show. It is our job to keep track of who has the clips and who needs them. We also need to pay attention to who used what clips because someone often has to sign off on licensing agreements for the company who is letting us use the clips.

One of our other jobs is to screen the shows. Every Live! show has a host chat segment as the first segment of the show. Kelly and Regis sit and exchange friendly banter and chat about their lives. We have to screen it after it airs and pick out sound bytes that could be used for promos. We also do some in-studio promos with Regis and Kelly. Sometimes if there is a big guest coming up or a special occasion DAW will have them do special promotions. They are usually written by a producer at DAW and sometimes one of the interns, including me, will get to run the teleprompter for them. It can be a little stressful because Regis gets very impatient but fortunately everyone in the control room is really nice about it and tries to calm the nerves of the person getting yelled at.

A typical day for us at Live! starts at 8:30 a.m. We have to be in early to watch the promos feed out to the affiliates from the control room at 8:48 a.m. like clockwork. Following that, we pick up the feed from the feed room and drop it off to Rubin, who adds on the WABC-TV graphics to the promos. After that, we usually go upstairs to watch the host chat. Then, one of us will go to do a guest update which means we go down to the production office and look at the board with all the guests posted up. We need to find out if there have been any changes, cancellations or add-ins. Once we update it in the computer, we fax it over to DAW. If there is a new person added and there was contact information, we call the contact number and ask for whatever materials we need in order to promote that guest. We have to make sure the spelling of the guest's name is right and how to pronounce it correctly. We also check the guest database to see if the person has been on the show before. If he/she has we pull his/her last appearance from the tape library and cue it to the walkout. Sometimes we will have no contact information so we have to go on a scavenger hunt of sorts and we have to look up online, in the phone book, wherever we can find a contact number for that person and get information on clip releases.

Once the day's show is over we go down to the library again and grab our copy of the show to screen the host chat for funny sound bytes. One of us then takes that tape, the last appearance, and anything else that needs to go, down to DAW which is seven blocks away. The rest of the day is usually spent making phone calls for clips and picking up clips from DAW to give to the Live! producers. Sometimes we help out DAW with other shows that they work on. We sometimes will run errands for Iyanla. It's not always the most exciting job in the world but it can be challenging to keep both DAW and the producers of Live! happy.

I'd have to say that one of the best parts of this internship was the people I was lucky enough to work with. Working in the entertainment field can be rough. You can come across plenty of egos and plenty of people who want to push you around simply because you are an intern and he/she is a producer. Sometimes you have to grin and bear it but I, luckily, rarely had to run personal errands for anyone. I never had to make coffee and I wasn't banished to the copy machine room for the day. Despite some aggravations we had to deal with on the job between trying to please the producers and DAW, when I was back in the office with the other interns and my supervisor, anything that upset me that day was ok.

My supervisor was just commenting the other day on how it is so rare to find people in television that you really connect with and that we are so lucky that all our personalities meshed really well. Our supervisor made us feel completely at ease as I think we did for her too. She started there around the end of September so she was essentially the new person. But she didn't come in there like a total pushover or like someone who had to prove that she had power over us. We all became friends, which made for a really pleasant working environment. We could crack jokes and have a good time as long as our work got done and we handled everything that needed to be, in a professional manner.

Essentially, my friendship with my supervisor and the other interns made this internship a really pleasant experience for me. There were things that I didn't always love about being there but it had nothing to do with them. Sometimes there would be a producer or someone we worked with that would ask us for something and if we couldn't have that to them immediately, because of circumstances beyond our control, they seemed disgusted with us. Sometimes things wouldn't work out for them for some reason and because our department was the closest, the blame would get passed to us. One thing I learned to despise as a result of working there is a blame-passer. I've noticed that there are a lot of them working there. I'm not sure if that's just there or everywhere in this industry. I guess it's probably everywhere in the world. Sometimes we would be give misinformation or not enough information and as a result something would go wrong and we would get blamed. Maybe it's easier because we are "kids" or it's just easier than taking the responsibility. Luckily, our supervisor never made us feel that way. We all always stuck up for each other.

One really good thing about this is that I made some connections for possible future jobs. After we graduate, if I am looking for a job I can always call up one of the other interns and see if they have gotten a job anywhere and if they know of a position open there. Also, my supervisor's friend does a lot in the film industry and she said that he could probably get me a job at least as a PA on the next feature he works on. She said that she would think of me if she hears of any positions opening and that she enjoyed working with me. She could also be a really good reference for me if I ever needed her to be.

All in all, my experiences at Live! were very positive. At first I thought I would want to work in production there, but I don't regret ending up in promotions. I learned some valuable lessons there and I made some good connections for possible jobs. I think most importantly I made some really good friends.

"LIVE! WITH REGIS"