The Assignment Editor 2.0: More Collaboration, Newer Tools
Assignment editors, stalwarts of the TV newsroom, are evolving into a more digitally centric, collaborative and decentralized force, and their time-honed skills of scrutiny and being the newsroom’s trusted gatekeepers are more important than ever. Above, the assignment desk at KNTV-KSTS San Francisco. (Photo by Gonzo Rojas)
The new programming partnership between the two station groups is open to anything as long as it has a digital dimension. “I don’t like to box shows into a genre,” says Scripps’ Cater Lee. “What it does have to have — first and foremost — is a multiplatform strategy. Anyone who doesn’t think about programming that way is very short-sighted.”
Cater Lee, the broadcast group’s senior director of TV program development for the Scripps broadcast division from 2011 to 2014, is returning. Scripps SVP of Broadcasting Brian Lawlor says: “She has a tremendous instinct for what makes a successful show; has the connections to get the right people in the right spots; and has broad experience in taking a show from its early development concepts all the way to national syndication.”
