Whoa… I was taking Jim and Peggy on a tour of ABC News. We got an up close view of the NAC (or was it NACC?). They do quite a bit there, but in short, they schedule the programming you see on the ABC network. They ensure it all fits in the right time slots. They also are the ones who press the buttons to interrupt your broadcast with breaking news.

After that we made it to the World News Tonight studio. We got some photos behind the desk. Then after some talking with the head engineer, we were invited to come back for the 6pm News rehearsal and stay for the 6:30pm live broadcast. We got to watch and listen to the live feeds out of Philly & Texas while watching and listening to Tom Llamas in the NYC studio.

Fun facts:

– The ABC NYC location manages scheduling and timing of the ABC broadcast content (not local broadcast content but network content – so prime time is their busy time).

– A residential building is being built next door to our offices and will be so tall, it’ll be blocking the satellite dishes. So fiber optic cable was laid out from NYC to Bristol, CT (ESPN) to send the signal there to send up to the satellites.

– When you see the “we interrupt your program with this special report”, that’s being done from NYC.