Touring WOWK-TV

As part of becoming more informed about our local community and exploring different employment opportunities, Mountain State Centers for Independent Living staff, consumers and a volunteer had the opportunity to tour the local Huntington-Charleston television station, WOWK 13News 'Channel 13', on June 15, 2005 to learn more about broadcasting journalism and how a news station operates.

WOWK Promotions Coordinator, Jessica Walden, acted as our hostess and tour guide as we traveled through the editing rooms, news room, control rooms, and meterologist center. We even got a peek at the news anchor's make-up rooms. We were able to meet and speak with news anchor Brooke Baldwin and Meterorologist Paul Heggen. We had the opportunity to watch them present the 13News at Noon.

We also met some of the writers and producers for the morning and afternoon news broadcasts. We observed the programmers in the Studio Control room and the Master Control room to tour the area where the news is taped and to sit at the news anchors desk.

We really enjoyed the StormTracker 13 Weather Lab where they do all the weather forecasting for the area. There is a green screen they use for the DOPPLER radar for weather forecasting and the maps are projected onto the green screen. So when you see the news meteorologist doing their forecast they are always standing at a blank green screen, you can only see the maps on the Teleprompters and on the actual television screen.

WOWK uses a program called Parker Vision that controls all the cameras operated in the news area by computer. We saw a demonstration of the teleprompters and how to scroll the news across the screen for the news anchors to read during their broadcast.

We had a great time at WOWK 13News 'Channel 13' and a big thank you to WOWK for the informative tour.