When TelePrompTers attack

I don’t think I completely believe the Palin broken TelePrompTer (and yes, that’s the proper way to write it) story, but I can see how it could happen. During the summer of 1999, I ran the TelePrompTer during the Saturday night news broadcasts of a Dallas/Fort Worth UHF station and, let me tell you, you really have to pay attention. When I ran it, I had a screen in from of me which showed the TelePrompTer text which was also being shown to the news anchors, I controlled a small spring loaded dial which controlled the scroll speed of the text backwards or forwards, and about 15 feet behind me was the news anchor reading the news off the TelePrompTer. If I ever had made a mistake and scrolled to far forward or back, I couldn’t tell where I was and which way I needed to scroll which complicated the problem. Fortunately, to help, I was wearing a headset so the director could give me cues. Of course the people in the control room were also cracking jokes so I was trying not to laugh. And let me tell you, just like Anchorman, the anchors read it right off there and when I made a mistake that first night, the anchor was stuck. Oddly enough, you know who was the best at working without a TelePrompTer? The Weather and Sports reporters.