Tom Says: “Thank goodness for good old fashioned paper…”
Most of you already know I’m from another era when it comes to things like computers and technology. I’m from the time at least in this industry when you pounded out all your information on the old indestructable Underwood typewriters. You could throw could throw an Underwood across the newsroom, it would bounce twice, slam into a wall and then as yor frustrations subsided, you could pick it up and then continue typing the story you were working. I know this because I’ve actually thrown them many times, and they were virtually indestructable.
Tyler McLean, who is the Executive Producer of “The Afternoon News” is from another era. He knows all aobut computers, I Pods, cell phones and is up to date on the very latest technology. (Almost all the time)
I’m sure that you know that all the work Tyler has done to put hundred of Afternoon News shows together has been done on a computer.
We meet each morning, talk about the things we’d like to talk about on our show, discuss who we might get as guests and then Tyler gets to work putting it all together. We have hundreds of contacts, hundreds of email addresses and phone numbers all stored in “The Afternoon News” computer. Oh by the way, if anybody is in need of a boat anchor, send us an email, we’ve got one for you. It’s “The Afternoon News” computer.
On Monday of last week, upon returning from holidays, Tyler turned on “Old Faithful” only to find something on the screen he’s never seen before. In big bold letters it read: “Hard disk failure imminent.” He checked with our company computer experts and was basically told there was nothing he could do about it. The hard drive is now in the hands of our experts hoping they can extract anything useful from the faulty drive.
But fear not! For some totally unexplained reason, Tyler decided during his tenure as the producer of this show, to save each and every show sheet containing all of the names, emails, phone numbers and contact people that he has used since day one.
So remember, when you were told how the computer was going to replace that old fashioned paper? Don’t believe it a little bit!
For if Tyler hadn’t saved hundreds of pages of information we would have both been in serious trouble.
I’m Tom Young.