First Day - February 7

I'm so excited!!! I just got an internship with the Jerry Springer Show and the Steve Wilkos Show with NBC!!!!!!! I'm a production intern, which means that a lot of my responsibilities coincide with the production team for those two shows. I've watched the Jerry Springer show since I was young - but i've never heard of the Steve Wilkos Show. I found out that Steve used to be Jerry's number one security guard, and he now has his own shows about more serious topics. My job is broken up into two parts (and two separate shifts): one travel show day, and one studio day. The travel show day consists of taking care of the guests that fly in to do the shows, as well as running basic errands and random office work. Guests are people that appear on the show - they're not paid actors, they are REAL people, with interesting personalities, and we give them an all expense paid trip to CT with food, hotel, cigarettes, airfare, and entertainment completely paid for by yours truly, NBC. On Studio days, the shows are being taped and I need to care for the guests at the studio. I put their things away, I put the guests in wardrobe, clean the greenrooms, and run any other errand that needs to get done.

Today (feb 7) was the first day of my internship. My supervisor Kateri told me to come in for orientation for about an hour, but after giving me a tour of the studio where I'll be working, a tour of the office building I'll work in for travel days, and some shortcuts to navigate around Stamford, CT, she asked me if I could stay the rest of the day. So, I did. I got started right away, and my first task was to go pick up some guests at the Holiday Inn and walk them to PF Changs. Apparently usually they call cabs for us to take, but I had to walk, so they sent another intern with me who had worked there for longer to show me the way. We got to the restaurant with the guests for the jerry springer show, and dropped them off at a table. I learned that just because its work doesn't mean it's a good idea to put my phone on silent! I realized that my whole job relied on being available to run any errand for my team, and they can only reach me on my cell phone. I had a few missed calls from them because I didn't hear my cell phone!! Whoops. I had to run back to the office to run other small errands, and made my way to the studio. I walked onto the set where the audience sits and sat with one of the producers of the show as the guests went over their lines. It was pretty awesome! Working in television is pretty cool. For the rest of the day, I hung out with another group of people from Ohio at the pool hall called Rack N Roll. It's EXTREMELY interesting to see lifestyle differences between my self and people from other parts of the country.

Overall, I'm extremely excited to continue with this internship!!! NBC tends to hire interns as Producer Assistants (PA's) because our job descriptions are pretty similar... except they get paid to do it and they can boss us interns around.

I have my first studio day for the Steve Wikos Show on Tuesday, i'm nervous...!