By: Avry Zow
Teaching a class by day and by nightfall, heading to Birmingham to prepare for an audience in the morning. Tachana Johnson is a professor at the University of Montevallo, but also a part of the CBS 42 morning news team.
Her day-to-day in the job is unlike others that work to the evening. To help explain, she describes her schedule similar to a math problem.
“My morning is everyone else’s night. So when I’m up, I’m up at like 10:30-11 o’ clock at night and that’s equivalent of anyone else that would be up at like six o’ clock in the morning,” she said. However, just as any job, the real work only begins when you get there.
“Once I get to work, I work with the producers, as far as putting our morning show together, making sure that we have new stories that’s in there, not running old stories from the night before. Making sure we give our viewers a little bit of a mixture of what’s happening mainly in their community, but also letting people also know what happened around the world and other places overnight,” said Johnson.
Yet, like us, Johnson is watching her work on display when the cameras get rolling.
“Once the show gets on the air I basically just monitor the show,” she said. “If there’s something that needs to be changed, we change it. I make sure that it gets changed, so the same misspelling doesn’t show up on air again or the wrong video doesn’t show up again. So a lot of my job is checks and balances.”
Before CBS 42
Johnson originally worked in Florida, upon moving back to Alabama in 2013, she stationed with ABC 33/40.
However, after working with the station for two and half years, Johnson decided to pursue other stations in the area and eventually found CBS 42.
“When I moved over to CBS 42, it was a better position and more opportunity to grow and more opportunity to be an executive producer, which is what I wanted to become…I learned a lot from 33/40, but I took what I learned and took it over to CBS 42 to help me grow in my career,” said Johnson.
Johnson used her experience to become the executive producer at her current news station. This position not only oversees the producers at the station, but also the potential applicants for that position as well.
“The biggest thing I would say for any producer that is looking to get into this market is, get you some experience,”she said. “It’s okay to work on those lower markets, that’s where you can make those mistakes and that’s where you can kinda fine tune your skills, fine tune to your craft. By the time you get to this market, you can sail through it, if you get that experience at that lower market.”
Experience in the Field
Johnson, in her years in the broadcast field, does note the issue young broadcasters face once securing a job in the field.
“The biggest thing I’ve seen from those who’ve gotten hired is they come in there and they have that enthusiasm, they have that hunger…once they get hired they lose it and it goes away. You can’t let that go away, it has to keep driving you. It will drive your creativity, it will drive your work performance, and it’ll drive your work ethic as well,” said Johnson.
Her experience in the field doesn’t go unnoticed by her students as she gives them insight and advice to best prepare them for the field.
Keyshawn Talley, a junior at the University of Montevallo, talks about the advice that he’s been able to take away in the classroom this semester with Johnson.
“I would have to say learning how to write in a way of putting what’s the most recent news first, so viewers know what’s happening and it’s more relevant to them. Learning how to write for the ear instead of the eyes has been something else that I have loved doing. Even though it’s been challenging after being used to mainly writing for the eye,” said Talley.
Beginning to Now
Johnson gives a reflection on her career up to this point in her life and where it all began for her as a young broadcaster.
“If I had to grade my career I’d give it a “B”. This is something that I’ve always known what I wanted to do,” said Johnson.
“My first inclination of doing anything in journalism, I wanted to be a newspaper reporter but right before I went to college I switched and decided to be a broadcaster because at that time I wanted to be a news anchor. It wasn’t until I went to college and started working with some of the students there and one of the students talked me into being a news producer. So I feel I’ve been blessed, I’ve been able to do a job I’ve always wanted to do and I’ve had over 20 years of experience in doing this job,” she said.
Johnson shares her last bit of advice she would have given to her younger self entering the broadcasting world, that can also be looked on as advice for the next wave of broadcasters.
“Take time to enjoy the little moments in life,” she said.“The things that seemed small back then, now I kinda wish I had to take that time to enjoy that three day weekend. Also, to get those moments to meet someone who has worked in the business for a long time and who is there to give you experience.”
If interested in getting to know more about some of the faculty in both the communication and mass communication programs at the university, visit the university’s website.
Vallo Vision News 