WMAQ-Ch. 5 Chief Meteorologist Brant Miller started delivering weather reports from his north suburban home last week, thanks to his “MacGyver” skills and his son, weather producer Joey Miller.
“If you watched us on Thursday and Friday, we set up a mini-makeshift studio with a monitor in the background and a simple display on the air,” said Joey Miller, who has worked for the NBC station for nearly 10 years. Brant Miller began using a green-screen backdrop at home Monday, which his son said “will be more comforting because it’s similar to what we do on the air in the studio.”
TV stations around the country have been reimagining their news programs to incorporate social distancing amid the worldwide coronavirus outbreak. Brant Miller and other Channel 5 meteorologists began broadcasting from home late last week, while some local journalists have started to do the same. Reporting live from home has its challenges — from finding a quiet space away from kids and dogs to replicating studio lighting and handling technical problems quickly.
– Original Credit: Courtesy of Brant Miller
The Millers say they have been able to work remotely for years, in case severe weather strikes. They can easily access the station’s weather computers, and they are in constant contact with each other and the newsroom. Brant uses the Dejero LivePlus mobile app to broadcast from the suburbs, while Joey works from his downtown condo.
The green screen allows Brant to stand in front of weather graphics and maps, like he does in studio. Last week’s set-up was more rudimentary. The elder Miller described it as a “fireside chat.” He propped up his son’s old TV with an equally antiquated DVD player. “I’ve gotten emails where people go, ‘What’s that old VCR? Oh, man, Brant Miller’s got a Betamax.'”
“And that’s really been the most amazing thing, is the viewer response,” Joey Miller said. “People talking about how refreshing it is to see someone, that calming voice being there, when we’re in what feels like dire times or a weird situation that none of us have really experienced before.”
The Tribune talked to journalists from a variety of Chicago TV stations to see how they are making it work at home.
WBBM-Ch. 2 reporter Vince Gerasole
Gerasole has been covering stories such as the wait for coronavirus tests and the pandemic’s effect on Chicago-area small businesses. He’s well-versed in reporting from the field, but he’s been more creative in recent weeks as he’s worked outside the CBS newsroom.
“I jury-rigged an old (utility pole) with my partner, and we duct taped the microphone to the end of the (utility pole). We use that to try to keep our distance when we conduct interviews,” Gerasole said, adding that the station has now provided crews with metal poles to extend microphones during interviews.
“When it comes to electronics, the good thing is that the systems were already in place. As a reporter, I’ve been able to send video from my iPhone for years now, and on occasion, we’ve had to shoot pieces from our iPhones. Then we have a system that renders the video clips and sends them back to CBS. It’s very efficient, and the quality is just as good as if you were in the station.”
Gerasole has been sharing social media videos that go behind the scenes of his coronavirus reporting. He posted a photo last week of himself reading from his script, also known as tracking, at his Evanston home while wearing a mask that covered his mouth. He said he was using a communal microphone at the time, but he has his own microphone now.
“I used to live in Italy. My roommate (then) is a broadcaster in Italy, and he showed me the pictures of how they are tracking in their studios now. And he had his mask on,” Gerasole said. “When I went to track that first day, we had some masks, and I said, ‘OK, let’s give it a shot,’ because I don’t know a day later if somebody else has to use the same microphone. I wanted to be as careful as possible. But now that I have this other microphone that I can use, that’s not as necessary as I thought it would be. That was sort of a learning process.”
WFLD-Ch. 32 entertainment reporter Jake Hamilton
No one is more excited that Hamilton is working from home than his 4-year-old shepherd mix Daenerys, who has made cameos on his Fox segments.
“I was really trying to keep working from the studio as long as possible. I have several friends who had started working from home and honestly, had reached out and kind of were talking to me about going stir crazy a little bit,” Hamilton said. “I walk to work every day. I enjoy the people that I work with. I’m friends with the people that I work with, and I really liked going in and getting to see them. It just got to the point where it would be irresponsible if I kept going in.”
Hamilton uses a LiveU broadcast app, which he describes as “a more intense version of FaceTime.” He co-hosts the “ReelBlend” podcast, which he said helped ease him into working from his Loop-area apartment last week, though his dining room set-up has its flaws.
“The downside is that my apartment faces east, which means that every time they come to me for a different live shot, the sun is in a different position in the sky, which means the lighting in my apartment is completely different, so I tried to get as far away from the windows as possible,” Hamilton said. “Because I have hardwood floors, I’m learning that that makes my voice echo. Apparently if I had carpet it would make it sound better, but we’re making due with the best we have.”
WGN-Ch. 9 traffic reporter Sarah Jindra
Here’s something Jindra didn’t learn in journalism school: How to incorporate her 3-year-old son’s Hot Wheels into her morning traffic report — as she did on Monday, her first day working from her Lake County home. The toy cars were a suggestion from a Channel 9 viewer.
“I had a (different) viewer write me (Monday) morning, ‘Hey, back up a little bit, you’re too close to the camera!’ So even our viewers are helping us out (as we’re) trying new things, because we’re all in this together, right?” Jindra said.
Jindra said one hiccup she encountered is that she can’t charge her iPhone and use her headphones at the same time, so she considered getting wireless earbuds. She said she uses the Dejero broadcasting app, which she found to be “a little more reliable than Skype,” but it drains her phone’s battery quickly.
“I just put my headphones in my cellphone, and I look straight ahead. I have two lamps, like household lamps, sitting right there for lights,” she said. “I’m in the only closed room on our first floor, where if my kids come down, they won’t be able to rush in. We’re doing what we can.”
WLS-Ch. 7 meteorologist Cheryl Scott
Scott teamed up with her fiance, Dante Deiana, Monday to deliver the weather live from her Chicago living room and outside near the Chicago River.
“On a scale of 1 to 10, how difficult has this day been?” Scott asked Deiana as they prepared for her 10 p.m. shot near the river.
“1,” Deiana said in a video posted to Scott’s Instagram stories.
“No, come on,” Scott said.
“3. Hasn’t been that bad,” Deiana said.
“We ran into a few technical issues,” Scott said.
“Learning errors, but got ’em down,” Deiana said.
Scott told the Tribune she’s able to access the ABC station’s weather tools remotely to build maps, and she uses Dejero and studio lighting for her live shots.
“As long as the doorbell doesn’t go off or there’s not a knock at the door, then everything will be fine,” said Scott, who has an 11-year-old beagle named Lola. “She’ll be in the background at times making a little cameo every now and then.”
