Spent much of yesterday afternoon taping the first of what will be numerous Wyoming Chronicle “donuts” – one of those terms that makes me realize that despite years of working for Wyoming PBS, I’m still befuddled at times by the world and lingo of TV.

A donut in this case is the hosting segment that surrounds the interview at the heart of each Chronicle, opening and closing. We tape interviews in bunches – down in Cheyenne, we did four interviews in two days – and then air them once a week, but we add an introduction (by me) that gives a more immediate spin to the subject.

Our first show, for example, is about the swine flu epidemic, a topic that gets a new spin every day. Laurie Farkas interviewed Wyoming’s Chief Health Office, Brent Sharrard, and now we have to keep the subject current. We do that by commenting in the “donut” on the latest count of infections in the state, and by adding a new website “flu.gov” to the information here on the website that accompanies the show.

So the work doesn’t end with Laurie’s interview – in a way, the work of Jennifer Amend and Tom Fischer, who runs the website, has just begun.

We taped several more hosting segments yesterday, because director Thompson Coles had the studio ready, and we figured if the situation changes, we can re-do that segment. But some of these shows don’t have to air instantly – they’re “everygreen”.
Or so we thought. I decided yesterday to go ahead and tape the “donut” for a show that won’t air until the end of October – Dina Mishev’s interview about the BLM’s wild horse roundup and auction – because it was a ‘soft’ piece not tied to a news event.
Then, moments before I turned off my computer, in comes a press release from the U.S. Department of Interior: Secretary Ken Salazar is proposing a new program for wild horses that would set up horse preserves in the Midwest, because the public isn’t adopting enough horses to keep the western range healthy. Rewrite, rewrite…and tape!

Now we’ll have to hope Salazar doesn’t change his plans before the end of the October, or we’ll be dragging back into the studio to re-do the donut. At that point, I suppose, it would be glazed.