CAITLIN WHITE
Assistant Living Editor
The CCB is known to most students as just another acronymed building that lies at the top of a never ending flight of stairs, but to many student journalists, this building has an entirely different meaning. For senior Jonathan Tamayo, the CCB is practically home. As executive producer of Pepperdine’s student run television programs, which includes not just the news, but also his own project Man Waves (a slightly toned down version of “The Man Show”).
The life of a journalist isn’t necessarily a glamorous one. It’s a lot of behind the scenes work that few ever know about, or even see. But for student journalists, the pay-off lies not just in the thrill of producing something that informs an audience, but also their fellow students and peers. On a campus as small as Pepperdine’s, it is easy to get caught up in “the bubble” and forget about the outside world. But being informed about current events has never been more important with elections looming and natural disasters in our own backyard.
Tamayo shares a little about Pepperdine’s program, why it appeals to him and why students should be watching.
When did you first become interested in television production?
I came into Pepperdine as a journalism major, because I really liked writing and all that stuff, but I also liked TV. So I took some of the television classes, and liked it so much that I switched to broadcast news. When I came back from being overseas in Florence, I just kind of jumped into it. I was pretty good at it, and I really liked it, so I just went from there.
What exactly are the duties of an executive producer?
I work as both a producer and an anchor. On Tuesday I’m a news anchor and on Thursday I’m the executive producer, so a typical day would technically start at 2 p.m., as anchor, but when I’m producer, I actually begin looking for stories that we can use the night before, and early Thursday morning.
We record a bunch of different CNN scenes, and then go looking through those all morning for things we can possibly cover. I use Goggle news, the Malibu Times and Web sites from local areas, too. All the content for every show is the producer’s decision, so it’s up to me and I really try to do local stuff. I see what is going on around here and what issues there are, so our reporters can go out and cover that.
How is the news show organized? Who helps with that?
There are three blocks. The first is A block, which is all the hard news and local stories. B block is second and it is the weather and politics. Third is C block which is sports and entertainment. We find stories for all those segments and we will have reporters coming in at 2 p.m. that day to actually go out in the field and get whatever they need, get video, do interviews, that kind of stuff. The writers will also come in around 2 p.m. to start writing the stories and make sure all the scripts are done correctly. After we have all the scripts in, I do all the copy edits and write teases for what is coming up in the show, just like they would have on any news show. Around 4 p.m., the A block should be done. We know what shots we have and everything that will run before the first commercial. Everyone should be ready by 4:40 p.m. because we have rehearsal and then we go live at 5 p.m.
What about your other show “Man Waves”?
Man Waves started out as a section of Strong Currents, which is sort of a talk show style show geared toward women. This year Michael French and I turned it into its own show. We do it every other week. It is a lot like the Man Show, we do packages on different things specifically for guys, like how to grill the perfect burger, burrito contests, and different things guys can do for fun like rock climbing, kayaking and things like that. We like to take stories about guys and discuss them, sort of banter them, and just joke around the whole time, but with some serious content and substance mixed in with the jokes. We basically get to do whatever we want. We have this system called Man Points. For instance, if a man opens a door for a women, he gets five man points, and if he forgot to, he would get them taken away. To include a feminine aspect, we also have a section called Women Weighn In, just as they included the original Man Waves in their show.
Why should students take the time to watch your shows?
Honestly, we really do good stuff in here. A lot of people don’t know that we’re here and that is because we really don’t do a lot of advertising. Of course we tell freshman about the program at the beginning of the year, but we don’t start doing stuff for a couple of weeks, so people forget. We really do have really good shows, and our stories are really good quality. We did a story on a Calabasas smoking ban in apartments, and Theresa Deo Los Sanchez, a producer for Fox who works with us, said the work we did for that story was better than some of what is on Fox.
Newswaves airs Tuesdays and Thursdays live at 5 p.m., and it is replayed at 7 p.m. on channel 26. Tamayo’s Man Waves shows Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 8:30 p.m. and replays at 11:00 p.m. also on channel 26.
11-08-2007