Triangle TV news during pandemic: Makeshift studios, comfy clothes, cutting your own hair
You’d be hard-pressed these days to find anyone whose life hasn’t changed because of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
That includes the faces on our TVs who bring us news and weather every day — faces so familiar to so many people that they seem like old friends.
Like a lot us, anchors, meteorologists and reporters are now working from home, with makeshift studios set up in living rooms, basements and guest bedrooms. Sometimes the WiFi drops out, sometimes a cat walks by. It isn’t always smooth, but the added element of suspense is not unwelcome.
“We’re figuring it out,” ABC11 evening anchor Tisha Powell said in a recent interview. “We have to.”
Here’s a look at how our local TV people are “figuring it out.”
Tisha Powell, ABC11 anchor
ABC11 anchor Tisha Powell is alternating with co-anchor Steve Daniels on weeks working from home. They’ve been doing this for a while now, but she’s not exactly sure how long.
“It’s been about three weeks now, maybe four,” she said. “I lost count. The thing about this pandemic is that you lose track of time, you lose track of what day it is.”
Like others accustomed to working inside a studio, Powell is adjusting to handling all of the small, technical details herself. Her biggest challenges have been lighting, WiFi and audio. She has tried three different places in her house to get the best signal and the best audio. Next week she’ll try the home office, which until recently was full of Christmas decorations.
“I had no idea how much you had to think about,” she said. “You’re in charge of everything. ... When you’re at home, you’re it. And you’re responsible for getting all of these things working.”
She’s not completely without help. Powell’s husband, who works in the medical field, helped her set up everything at home (“I call him my key grip — he’s the one who set up all the lights and got my home studio going,” she said). During our interview, her teenage daughter, a senior at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, assisted with a minor Zoom issue.
Rounding out the household is the couple’s 5-year-old daughter, Powell’s adult godson and a cat named Ella.
Even with such a full house, there haven’t been any on-air mishaps — yet.
“Wherever I am, I usually lock myself in. So if I‘m in the basement, I usually lock the basement and say ‘No one come down here!’” she said.
Before her work for the station starts each day, Powell has home-schooling duties with her youngest.
“I am a certified kindergarten teacher! Maybe not certified, but I’m getting there,” she said. “We worked on writing 2s yesterday. We’re doing handwriting, we’re reading, we’re coloring.”
She’s also taking advantage of the opportunity for a more comfortable work uniform now.
“I’m dressed up from the waist up,” she said. Instead of the dresses she normally wears on-air, she often opts for pants with pockets or belts, which allow her to clip and hook things she needs for the broadcast. And yes, she admits to the occasional pajama pant.
Her work-from-home shoe situation will surprise no one who works with her, she said.
“I have on Uggs, which are my work shoes when I’m not on the set,” Powell said. “When I’m walking around the studio and walking around the newsroom I never have my heels on, I put those on when I go into the studio. Same thing here at home ... no one sees you from the waist down, so why bother?”
Powell does still do her own makeup and hair, just like in the studio. And speaking of hair ...
“I’m going a little gray,” she said. “I probably should have gotten my hair colored when I saw this coming. I have that L’Oreal spray ... I just spray it and keep on going. We’re all dealing with the same thing. It’s not like I’m the only one on television now with overgrown eyebrows and gray hair.”
Powell said she and her family are trying to approach things one day at a time; trying not to dwell on the high school graduation that might not happen, trying to support local businesses so that they are still around when this is over, and trying to stay in touch with family members in other states who aren’t doing as well (her husband’s family lives in a “hot spot” area of Louisiana and he has a cousin there who is on a ventilator).
Powell said she is trying not to look too far ahead, but can’t help but think about what life might be like when this is over.
“I wonder what I’m actually going to go back to when things reopen,” she said. “We went from having maybe four or five places to be to having nothing, no commitments, and — I like it. ... It really makes you think, do I really want to be that busy again?”
Wes Hohenstein, CBS17 meteorologist
When we talked to CBS17 chief meteorologist Wes Hohenstein it was mid-afternoon on Monday, and he was in his car heading to the studio from the home set-up that has been his more usual base for about a month now.
His workplace status is day-to-day, depending on the weather. A recent line of storms that moved through the area prompted this week’s commute.
“I’m allowed to go into the station and do business as normal, but I want to set a good example,” Hohenstein said. “I don’t want to get sick, and I don’t want to get anyone sick. But when the weather is bad we want to be in the studio, which is the primary and best way to do things. When weather is calm and it allows, I stay home.”
Hohenstein said he has everything he needs at home, he just had to tackle a few lighting challenges. His home setup is in the living room/bonus room — the room with the big-screen TV where the family watches movies and his son plays XBox.
“We display my weather graphic on that TV, and that’s what I stand next to do the weather,” he said.
It’s just Hohenstein and his wife and middle-school-age son — plus a dog (Finley) and a cat (Tigger) — at home.
And there haven’t been any on-air goofs so far, except the dog and cat walking around (they’ve both made TV appearances, he said). But Hohenstein is really glad his family is there.
“Last week right before they came to me for weather, I lost my IFB (interruptible fold-back earpiece) and had to call the station and hand the phone to my wife, who was giving me cues from the producer.”
Hohenstein gets more of a full-body shot while doing the weather at home, so he’s not able to rock a dress-shirt-tucked-into-sweatpants look. But he does admit to a shortcut: “I usually don’t put on shoes,” he said. “I still have on dress slacks and a nice shirt, still a little bit of makeup, but I’m mostly in socks. That’s kinda nice.”
He has also had to make concessions with his hair. He usually gets it cut twice a month (so that it never looks like he gets a haircut, he said), but that is out now.
“I was getting shaggy so my wife cut it for me last month,” he said. “We had to FaceTime with my normal stylist to help with a little situation, but it did pretty well. It’s time again, so I’m not sure what we’re gonna do.”
Overall, Hohenstein likes working from home, though he does miss listening to Audible books on his commute and the camaraderie with coworkers.
“I live 30 minutes from the station so I like that I can walk downstairs for my dinner break instead of driving home, and I like being able to crawl into bed 30 minutes earlier. And I like being able to take a break to play catch with my son or talk with my wife.”
What he doesn’t like about being home more is the reason for it.
“Everyone dreams about working from home because it sounds great, but I didn’t want this to be the reason,” he said. “I don’t love the fact of this new way of life and how it is. I’m definitely looking forward to it returning to normal.”
Renee Chou, WRAL anchor
Chou is a little later to the work-from-home game, having just started her remote morning anchoring for WRAL last week. Her co-anchor, Jeff Hogan, will continue to anchor from the studio for now.
A WRAL engineer brought over a transmitter, cables, cords and a lighting setup to get things started, Chou said. They hung a backdrop on the wall of her guest bedroom — her new studio — that’s the station logo printed on vinyl.
She uses an iPad on a tripod for a prompter, her own laptop for her off-air monitor to see what’s on TV, a work laptop and a Surface tablet for scripts. Chou has to turn on lights, tune in for live shots, get audio checks and mic checks and check the batteries in the microphone.
“I never thought I would be doing this from home, ever — that this is even possible,” she said. “But technology and the pandemic have changed how we live and work. ... There are things that are done by our whole morning crew that I never had to worry about in the studio, that now I’m doing at home as a one-woman operation.”
Even with the extra details to worry over, there are certainly things Chou loves about working from home.
“Can’t beat the commute!” she said. “It’s fantastic. I just walk down the stairs.”
Having her husband and five-year-old daughter there with her is nice, too, and so far there haven’t been any interruptions while she has been on-air.
“A third of my work day, my husband and daughter are still sleeping, since we start so early in the morning,” Chou said. “When it gets to mid-morning (my daughter) will wanna pop in here every now and then, so I’ll hear a little knock. … I’ve told her when the door is closed that means mommy’s on the air, mommy’s working, I might not be able to talk to you right now.”
Her daughter has a strong pull to the lights and cameras.
“She’s very intrigued by the setup here,” Chou said. “She would love to be on camera. In fact she said, ‘Mommy, if you ever get sick I’ll be happy to fill in.’”
Chou has also had time to appreciate the fact that life has slowed down a little lately. It’s one plus in a world full of minuses right now.
“I think if there’s any lesson in this, or what we can get out of this, is that we can appreciate our time with our loved ones, and being in the moment and be in the present and not be pulled into so many directions,” she said. “And I think that can be a good thing.”
Brittany Bell, ABC11 meteorologist
ABC11 meteorologist Brittany Bell starts her day around 8 a.m., taking out her two dogs — a black lab named Stormy and a mischievous beagle named Summer — before getting in a quick workout in the makeshift gym she and her husband have created in a guest bedroom.
Working from home means more time for things like that, now that she can skip the commute to WTVD’s downtown Raleigh studio each day and instead just head downstairs to start her shift. She designs weather graphics, works on forecasts and writes blog posts for much of the day, and goes on air for weather segments in the afternoons.
Working from home was an adjustment, Bell said, because she likes a structured schedule. But she doesn’t mind it.
“I’m an introvert, so I like being at home. I do miss talking to Chris (Hohmann), Don (Schwenneker) and Steve (Stuart). I talk to Chris every day to discuss the forecast, but I miss talking to people.”
Bell misses being able to eat her lunch in downtown Raleigh’s City Plaza, or popping outside for a walk around the block. And she has been surprised to find that she also misses going to the gym.
“My gym is small and I know the people there, and I miss seeing them and saying ‘Hi’ to them. There are a lot of older people at my gym, and I’m thinking about them more. I hope they’re OK.”
Her husband, Terran Kirksey, a meteorologist for WFMY in Greensboro, is also working from home now, but he works an earlier shift so they don’t get in each other’s way too much during the day, only overlapping a couple of days in the morning.
She does her makeup and gets dressed for on-air around 3:30 p.m. each day. Sometimes her wardrobe is a dress and other times it’s just a nice top. But before 3:30? “All day I’m in my robe,” she laughs.
When Bell does her “hits” — when she goes on-air for weather segments — she said Stormy is almost always nearby, but both dogs are quiet. They aren’t barkers. The “worst” thing that has happened while broadcasting from home, she said, is that once her husband and the dogs were walking around in the background.
After work, when the makeup comes off, Bell and her husband may take the dogs for a walk, sit on their deck for a while and eat dinner together.
They miss going to restaurants. They like Bittersweet (especially the Thursday “Bubbles and Cake” champagne and cupcake special) and Plates on the weekend.
“We love to eat out in downtown Raleigh,” she said. “More of my worries have been about local restaurants. I hope the restaurants are going to be around when this is all over, and that they will have jobs. That’s my big worry.”
Michael Hyland, CBS17 reporter
Michael Hyland has been covering state government for CBS 17 for a little over four years — a beat vitally important during a pandemic, but one made more difficult by social distancing rules.
“It’s been a huge adjustment for sure,” Hyland said. “I’m used to going over to the General Assembly and you can walk up to just about anybody and ask them what’s going on. You can’t do that right now.”
The legislature is a ghost town, with committee meetings happening online, but many state leaders are making themselves available to talk over Zoom or FaceTime now, Hyland said. When we spoke on Tuesday, he had just covered the ReOpenNC protest downtown, and the day before, he had a 20-minute interview with Sen. Phil Berger from Berger’s home in Eden.
Hyland hasn’t had to create any kind of home studio, but he and photographer Michael Barnard have had to figure out a new way to work, with the CBS 17 newsroom essentially shut down for reporters and photographers.
At first, the two would do their reporting and then go back to Hyland’s house to work, “because literally there was nowhere else to go,” Hyland said.
But they decided it probably wasn’t smart for either of them to be inside the other person’s house right now. So lately they have been working in the lobby of the legislative building, where they can still enter as credentialed media, and which has good WiFi. And there are so few people there, distancing is easy.
Because Hyland hasn’t done many in-person interviews in the past month, “my actual human interaction on any given day has mostly been with this one photographer who I’ve been working with.” When he had to cover the protest downtown, it caused his wife some concern.
“I wore a mask during all of that today,” Hyland said.
Kat Campbell, WRAL meteorologist
WRAL meteorologist Kat Campbell has taken working from home to a new level. In addition to a new array of monitors, lighting stands and cables invading her home, Campbell has added a green screen.
“I love a good technical challenge, that’s just who I am as a person,” Campbell said. “I’m kind of a technology geek.”
Campbell had experience with mobile green screen setup from her time as a student at N.C. State University, where they’d take a giant green cloth to the science museum to show school kids how the technology works.
When her bosses at WRAL asked for ideas for how to work during the pandemic, Campbell was pretty sure she could make it happen for live TV. She did a test run, getting all of the materials from the station and bringing it home to set up.
“It definitely took some tweaking,” she said.
“They wanted to have a couple of healthy people staying at home they knew would be able to stay healthy, especially in severe weather season. Most of our severe weather happens in April and May, so we really needed to have a backup plan.
“Once we did the test run and they liked it, we kept with it — and I haven’t been back at the station in a over a month now.”
Campbell said she loves being around people, but she’s OK with staying home. Having her Yorkie, Jazzy, by her side has been a big upside, Campbell said.
Like everyone else, Campbell’s life stuck at home means no trips to the hairdresser, but she said that hasn’t been too bad.
“I did trim my split ends, and I think i did an OK job,” she said. “And I use a root cover-up powder … it’s basically just like makeup that you put over your roots.
“I feel comfortable with scissors in terms of trimming the ends of my hair because I do have experience doing my dog’s hair.”
Chris Williams, Spectrum News reporter
As a multimedia journalist, Spectrum News reporter Chris Williams is accustomed to being a one-man-band most of the time.
He’s always out in the field and has always had the technology to report from wherever the story dictates. He shoots, he edits, he writes. Working from home? Working from the field? It’s all the same for him.
But these days, Williams must also think about following CDC guidance on social distancing, wearing masks when appropriate and using a boom mic (on a pole) for interviews.
Williams’ beat is generally Durham and Orange counties, but since the pandemic, he goes where needed. His focus, he said, is telling “impactful, positive stories and showing how communities are coming together and people are coming together to help each other.”
The day we spoke, Williams was about to file a story on people who are trying gardening, so that they can grow their own fruits and vegetables during the pandemic.
“I spent the day speaking with a woman who is trying gardening for the first time,” Williams said. “She’s growing food not only for herself but for others, to help them with their food insecurity, and I think that just really speaks to how great humanity is in a time of a crisis.”
This story was originally published April 23, 2020 at 12:06 PM with the headline "Triangle TV news during pandemic: Makeshift studios, comfy clothes, cutting your own hair."
