Prompt: What are some of your duties and responsibilities as an intern? How are interns supervised? Is there an established intern training plan in place?

    

     Above is a glimpse of the desk in the Creative Services office where I spent most of my days during the internship. KTLA has an established internship program that actively recruits from local universities including CSULB. One of the great opportunities of this internship was that during my time there, I met students from other universities interning in different areas such as Scripts and Entertainment. The employees were also very open to interns being present and often went out of their way to introduce themselves. They appreciated the work put in by the interns which made the work environment very friendly.

    

     In the Creative Services department I was supervised by the manager of marketing and branding and his assistant. They introduced me to their colleagues in Creative Services and other departments as well. During my first week at the internship, I was trained in basic tasks that I would be required to perform on a regular basis and given a tour in order to learn the locations of other related departments that I would interact with. One of the first tasks that I was trained to do was purging and cashing promos. This became a daily routine for me that I would perform independently. First, I would be given lists of the numbers of all promos that needed to be purged or entered by Creative Services. I would then go over to master control and other offices to either purge or input the promos in the system. Cashing a promo involves pre-screening each promotion that airs on KTLA for accuracy. I would screen promos for the news, sitcoms like Two and a Half Men, and CW shows like Hellcats.

     Another daily task I had took place first thing in the morning upon my arrival at the station. I was in charge of photographing the morning news anchors and any guests for the KTLA website. This experience allowed me to meet the crew behind the scenes and see just how a morning news show is run. Pictures I took were of live segments being filmed so I had to learn to work around cameras and other equipment. I quickly learned etiquette and techniques for getting better pictures. After the news was finished, I would go back to the office to sort through the day’s pictures and edit and upload the best shots on the website. When uploading the photos, I came up with an entertaining caption for each picture and was given photo credit.

     During the internship, I had the opportunities to perform a variety of work aide from these daily tasks. Some days I would help with anything from checking the accuracy of promo cost spreadsheets and pulling tapes to selecting and imputing promos using industry specific software. The variety of work allowed me to be able to glimpse into several different areas in entertainment and see what I did and did not enjoy working in for the future.