Going for the Glamour : Wartime TV Coverage Draws Many to Newscast Auditions

“5, 4, 3 ...”

The disembodied voice of the director in the control room filled the tiny studio as the floor manager standing next to the television camera counted down with her fingers.

But the young man sitting behind the brightly lit anchor desk for the first time displayed no signs of nervousness as he peered intently at the TelePrompTer waiting for his cue.

“2, 1 . .. “

“A national crackdown on child labor has little effect on Orange County . . . And charges are filed in the death of an Orange County Marine . . . I’m Will Ferrell, and we’ll have these stories and more on this week’s edition of Around and About Orange County.”

The Rancho Santiago College press release had emphasized “no previous experience is necessary” in announcing the auditions for news, sports and entertainment anchors and field reporters for the colleges’ weekly 30-minute cable television newscast.

And so 27 men and women--nearly double the usual turnout--showed up recently to audition for on-air spots on the 7-year-old “Around and About Orange County.” The award-winning show--the county’s only weekly cable newscast produced by college students--airs on cable systems in 10 central Orange County cities.

“I felt fine for the most part,” reported Ferrell, 23, who has a bachelor’s degree in sports information from USC and wants to gain on-camera experience for his resume. “Unless you’ve done it a million times, you’re still going to be a little nervous.”

It may not be CBS News, but even Dan Rather had to start somewhere.

With Americans glued to their television sets watching the unprecedented amount of war coverage, it seemed an appropriate time to hold auditions for what could be part of the next generation of TV news anchors and reporters.

Terry Bales, chairman of the college’s telecommunications department, says it’s too early to tell whether CNN’s Peter Arnett and other high-profile television reporters covering Operation Desert Storm will do for broadcast classes what Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein did for journalism school enrollments in the wake of Watergate two decades ago.

“I think it will have some impact eventually just because it’s so focused on that area,” said Bales, who serves as the newscast’s adviser. “For so many people, it looks like a glamorous, exciting job right now.”

Added Bales, a veteran UPI reporter who taught print journalism in the ‘70s: “It goes in cycles. About 1974 everybody wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein until I reminded them in class that Woodward and Bernstein had seven file cabinets of documents they had gathered. In other words, it’s a boring, research-oriented job.”

Bales said that, to a certain extent, television news has always appeared glamorous to students.

“But I always tell them to think Fresno. Fresno or some other smaller market is the reality.”

The Dan Rather and Connie Chung wanna-bes lined up in the hallway outside Studio A in the college’s Centennial Education Center on Edinger Avenue waiting to take their turns reading the opening “teaser” and two brief news stories.

That meant about 60 seconds in front of the unblinking camera eye (less, depending on reading speed, which appeared to increase at a rate commensurate to nervousness).

Michael Mergen of Newport Beach insisted that he wasn’t nervous at the prospect of doing a “cold reading” under hot studio lights.

“It’s not a problem for me, or I wouldn’t be here,” said Mergen, 32, who wants to start a new career after eight years in the hotel business.

And Rusty Wilson of Westminster at least appeared to be calm and cool.

“I find myself being as nervous as I ever have,” admitted Wilson, 42, who recently worked as “the news guy” on a rock ‘n’ roll radio station in Hawaii and now produces instructional guitar videos. “I just feel myself tensing up, getting uptight, dry mouth. . . . I’ve always hated auditions of all kinds. It’s a miserable experience.”

“Around and About Orange County,” which has the potential of reaching close to 100,000 homes in central Orange County, has proved to be a valuable training ground, providing practical experience in all phases of producing a news broadcast.

The only criteria to work on the newscast are to be enrolled in the Principles of Broadcast News class and to be available for several hours on Tuesdays (for planning the week’s broadcast) and on Thursdays (the show airs live or on tape on cable Channel 26 in Santa Ana Thursdays at 1:30 p.m.; it airs at other times on the other cable stations).

Students who don’t want to be “on-air talent” can work behind the scenes as camera operators, editors, writers, researchers and a variety of other positions. (The college boasts $250,000 worth of sophisticated television equipment, including computerized editing machines, computer graphics and an electronic TelePrompTer.)

For reporters, the newscast has provided opportunities to interview dignitaries and celebrities ranging from Orange County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley to Dodgers Manager Tommy Lasorda, and from comedian Jay Leno to President Bush.

Typically, 20 news and feature stories are aired during the 30-minute broadcast. The final show last semester included reports on an anti-war demonstration in Fountain Valley, overcrowded housing in Santa Ana, Orange County toll roads, and The Times Orange County Holiday Parade in Santa Ana, in addition to sports and entertainment.

Although it’s a weekly newscast, Bales said the students try to make it as timely as possible. When a shoot-out in a nearby neighborhood occurred one morning, for example, “we went out that day and had it on the show two or three hours later just like the big time.”

Nearly 50 former staff members have moved on to full-time jobs in front of and behind the cameras at “Entertainment Tonight,” ESPN, Prime Ticket, Channel 9 News and SportsChannel (Janniene Keahl, co-host of “Sports Confidential”).

Notes Bales: “It’s easier for a beginner to get a job in a real small marketplace because they’re more willing to take a chance on you.”

Former sports anchor John Overall is typical of the “on-air” staff members who have moved on.

The one-time restaurant manager-bartender-waiter spent two years with the newscast before landing a job as weekend sports anchor and weekday sports news cameraman at the CBS affiliate in Roswell, N.M. Three months later, he was hired as sports anchor at an Anchorage, Alaska, TV station where he won an Alaska Broadcaster’s Assn. award for best sportscast.

Since July, he has been a sports anchor and reporter for the Orange County NewsChannel, a 24-hour Santa Ana-based cable news station.

“I think one of the biggest things about ‘Around and About Orange County’ is the actual hands-on experience . . . and it gives you the opportunity to make a resume tape,” said Overall, 31, who also credits the college’s journalism department: “They kind of go hand in hand.”

In the process of teaching the fundamentals of broadcasting, Bales provides insight into the television news business by showing a collection of TV news bloopers that illustrate that even the pros make mistakes.

He calls it “The Tapes of Wrath.”

They see, for example, former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein’s stab at TV news where, Bales said, “he’s sweating buckets presumably just before going on the air and they’re toweling him off with toilet paper rolls.” The incident, said Bales, inspired a similar scene in the movie “Broadcast News.”

Despite the bright lights in Studio A, nobody needed toweling off during the auditions. And while a few appeared to be better suited behind the camera, many showed promise.

(“I identified three females and three males we wouldn’t be afraid to put on right away (as anchors), and probably 10 more we can work with and maybe just have field reporting first,” Bales later said.)

For those who need to work on their delivery and on-camera demeanor, the college offers an “On Camera Appearance” class. As Bales said while watching yet another audition on the bank of TV monitors in the control room, “You get some real nuggets first; others, you have to dig a little deeper.”

Meanwhile, out in the hallway, 47-year-old Sandy MacDonald of Huntington Beach waited her turn to audition.

Actually, MacDonald had heard about the auditions and urged her daughter to attend. But her daughter decided to sleep in late, and, MacDonald said, “I came down to check it out.”

After sitting through the orientation and watching a tape of a newscast, she figured she might as well audition.

“Who knows? It may open up some new avenues,” she said with a laugh before going in to do her reading.

Despite admitting earlier that he was nervous, Rusty Wilson breezed through the audition, his deep voice sounding both natural and authoritative as he read off the TelePrompTer. He even managed to ad-lib a line (“I’m Rusty Wilson, and we’ll have these stories and Andy Rooney on this week’s edition of . . . “)

But Wilson, who has done some acting in commercials, said he’s not interested in starting a new career in TV broadcasting.

“I’ve got a career in selling videos. I just want more experience in front of the camera,” he said, as a beaming Sandy MacDonald, her audition over, walked by:

“I just wanted to say it was an interesting and fun experience--and I’m enrolling!”