By , ,
Published May 20, 2015
Dear Viewers,
I hope the show seemed "orderly" to you. It was a bit of a surprise to us. It was so much of a surprise that during each commercial break, I had to ask my producer in NY, what are we doing next? The show got turned around because we were having technical problems with a guest.
The first segment proceeded as planned, but when we got to the segment in which we expected to have Nick Berg's friend from Altoona, Pa, things got "re-arranged" and, of course, this is never our desire. Sometimes the re-arrangement makes no sense to us from an editorial point of view. Plus, who wants to be turned upside down mid-show? There is a reason for planning.
The segment with Berg's friend was supposed to be some news, followed by the interview with the friend. Moments (seconds?) before the interview I was told that we had technical problems and did not have the friend on camera and that instead we would first do Ambassador Marc Ginsberg.
I had to mentally switch gears. This includes not only re-arranging my questions -- but also the introductions - not unlike patting one's head and rubbing's one's stomach at the same time. This is a bigger problem for my NY producer who has to tell me about the problem, figure out a solution, and re-write the introductions and do all of this while we are on the air. And one other thing: she has only seconds to do this.
In the "out-of-order" segment following Ambassador Ginsberg, we still had not resolved the technical problem with Berg's friend so we had to resort to placing him on the phone (phoner) instead of on camera. (Incidentally, when I was at CNN, a "phoner" was called a "beeper" ....don't ask me why.)
In the end, all went well -- I don't think the "surprise" and the re-arranging seemed odd (my husband who watched from home noticed nothing unusual.) It just always feels unsettling to those of us working on the show who have to suddenly change things -- and not by choice, but by necessity. We did not "drop the ball" (the change worked out well and was not obvious) but one of these days we are not going to be lucky and "surprises" we face on the show are going to blow up in our face and be very obvious to you.
You might wonder what we do after the show. The following pictures fall under the category of "do these people have too much time on their hands?"
You may recall that a few weeks ago we had Ted Nugent on our show (Click here to watch the interview). When he popped up on camera the night of the interview, he was wearing a hat. I teased him about his hat and wearing it on tv. He promised to get me one.
Yesterday, I walked into my office to find a huge box. Check out these pictures taken after the show last night. I assume you will recognize the person in the first photo. As for the other photos, these are some of the people who work on our show. (Here is some trivia about James in picture 6: he worked with me on my first show at my former network which seems like four lifetimes ago...he just recently came over to Fox.)
Photo Essay: Behind the Scenes After the Show
Greta
Do you have something you'd like to say to Greta? Please write to her at ontherecord@foxnews.com!
Watch On the Record with Greta Van Susteren weeknights at 10 p.m. ET
https://www.foxnews.com/story/a-night-of-surprises