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A Producer’s Tale

This time last year, I was a timeshare exchange onsite resort liaison for the largest timeshare exchange company in the world. And then less than two months later… in April 2011, my company of ten years, RCI, told me they were eliminating my position. I was in shock. I was in disbelief. I cried like a baby. RCI offered to relocate me back to headquarters in Indianapolis, but I declined. Something in me told me it was time to part ways with this company of mine… that had been good to me, had great benefits, and that I had grown to love. RCI is the largest timeshare exchange company in the world. RCI does not sell timeshare at the resorts… but we (oops they) help owners exchange their properties to other resorts. So say if you own a timeshare at XYZ but wanted to travel to ABCD and then later to EFGH, then you would go through an exchange company like RCI. RCI founders created this whole exchange industry and culture in 1974.

RCI’s main competitor, II (Interval International), followed suit in 1978. But they are second rate… and their inventory no way measures up to RCI’s. The thing that made it hard for me to walk away from this company year after year, is that when RCI had excess inventory, the employees were able to exchange into it for a great vacation. In 2010, I traveled to a great resort in New Orleans for my birthday… and I think it was around this time last year that I stayed at a resort on the beach in the Outer Banks. But those days are behind me. I still LOVE to travel, and I still plan to travel extensively in this lifetime… just not for basically free. In the meantime, I’ve gone back to my true love. Making a difference in the community… by telling the truth. Over a decade ago, I was a news producer at a CBS affiliate in Tennessee… and now once again… I am a News Producer … this time in the state of Georgia. Just like last time, I produce the morning show, and so my shift starts around midnight… and I leave the station after we’re off the air, around 8 a.m. So much has changed since I last set foot in the newsroom, and still… a lot has remained the same.

The technology is completely different! I’ve had a lot of catching up to do, which is very frustrating. As rewarding as all my travel benefits were with RCI, I truly wish I had never left broadcast journalism. I hate being my age and learning how to edit again, and write again, all at a faster pace, with emphasis on stingers, and skycams, and skyviews, and web postings, and Facebook updates. But I work at a great station, the number one news station in its market, and I work with some very demanding but talented individuals. I admire my co-workers for their knowledge and their grasp of all this new technology in the newsroom and the control room. And I admire them for their journalistic instincts. I feel blessed to be back. This is an opportunity that I had wanted for a very long time in the back of my mind, but didn’t feel qualified to get a chance to get back in. But after RCI and I parted ways, I prayed on it, and I obsessed on it, because I know, there’s nothing in this life left... that I want to do.

So here I am, hoping to make a difference in society again by the contribution I’m making with the stories I’m pulling from the wires, the scripts I’m writing from press releases, stories I decide to drag over from previous shows, breaking news we get from the scanners that we send photogs and reporters out on… live shots…. and news tips from viewers. The only thing is, and this is what frustrates me the most here… is Father Time… which I guess is the same frustration that I faced more than ten years ago, but I just don’t remember. Time plays tricks on me now. It feels as if I’m always running out the clock… getting my show on air… oh we always make it in…come 5 a.m. and I’m sitting in my producer’s chair. But every day I wish I had more time to go over my scripts again… rewrite or re-edit that piece of video or reassign my reads…. do one more mic check for that live shot! But then again… the push on the clock… is what makes each newscast so exciting and thrilling… it’s fast paced… and every day I get my exercise in…. racing down the hall from the newsroom to the control room and through the studio… and boy oh boy… I’m so happy… I’m so blessed… I’m so glad to back here again!

Comments

  1. I Am Who I AmMay 3, 2012 at 11:16 PM

    Awesome! I am so so happy for you! I'm so happy this career excites you and challenges you and pushes you to be your best and better. Miss you much! C

    ReplyDelete

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