RCS students in the after school Star Helpers Program were treated to a behind-the-scenes look at the fast-paced world of television news reporting during a tour of Capital News 9 in Albany on May 20, the last meeting of the school year. Star Helpers is an intergenerational program that brings middle- and high-school students to the Van Allen Senior Apartments in Glenmont two to three times monthly to interact with senior citizens, do crafts and activities with them and attend field trips together.

Capital News 9 Associate Producer Bakeisha McCall explained to the students and seniors that television news reporting is much more complicated than simply standing in front of a camera reading from a teleprompter. Once a station finds a newsworthy story to report, a great deal of behind-the-scenes fact-checking, writing and editing must be done under a tight deadline to prepare the story for a broadcast.

Chief meteorologist Mike Bono showed the students and seniors the stage that he uses daily to report the weather and explained how he gathers information for his forecasts. He gave each student the opportunity to stand in front of the green screen and watch themselves on the television monitor as they practiced their own weather forecasts. He showed them how to cover their bodies with a green cape so that they would “disappear” on the TV screen. In another room, several of the students also had the opportunity to sit at a desk and read aloud a script about local politics from a teleprompter screen that they controlled with a foot pedal.

Chief Meteorologist Mike Bono shows two STARS students how to do a weather forecast.

McCall encouraged the students interested in the field of communications to “always look at different ways to get into communication.” She had always dreamed of working for a television station and loves to write, yet in addition to working at Capital News 9 she also has her own radio station on FM Channel 88.3. She reached for her dream by attending Hudson Valley Community College in Troy and then transferring to the College of Saint Rose in Albany to finish her degree in communications. She took a low-paying part-time job at Fox News 23 in Albany to get her “foot in the door” and then moved to Capital News 9 a few years ago. Her original plan had been to become a news anchor who delivers the news on TV, but as a person who loves to change her hairstyle, she changed her mind when she learned that a news anchor needs to keep the same basic hairstyle because the public gets used to it and does not like too much change.

McCall loves what she is doing at Capital News 9 and her radio station and urged the students to follow their own passion and do what they love to lead to a career that will fulfill them.

STARS student Latavyah Forte with Associate Producer Bakeisha McCall