AN ILLUMINATING OVERSIGHT
If you’ve ever met her, you know Marie Osmond is pretty in person. Stunning even. And she is just as beautiful on TV. Marie, a TV veteran of her own prime-time variety series and a daytime talk show, knows how crucial lighting is on a TV set. Good lighting can make a talent “glow” on screen. Bad lighting is the kiss of death. Many years ago, Marie was a guest on The KTLA Morning News in Los Angeles. Coincidentally, we shot our show on the very same stage 
she and her brother had shot all 78-episodes of Donnie & Marie on ABC twenty years earlier. I remember very clearly, when she arrived, before going to makeup, Marie asked me if she could go out on set for a moment during a commercial break. I led the way. Once there, she looked at where she would be sitting for the interview and then examined the lighting grid above her, determining whether or not she had a key light, a fill light, and a rim light (a back light). She was happy when our three-point lighting met her standards.
I came across this compilation of news anchors who went “off prompter” and then went viral. Produced by Grunge, they call it “anchor freak outs” which is a click-bait tease and far from actual fact. With the exception of Bill O’Reilly who’s just a deliberate freak show and a bully along the lines of P.T. Barnum, the behavior of most of these anchors is pretty much on target – it’s how they should occasionally behave on air when it’s real and authentic – like it was for Anderson Cooper. The commentator implies his show was cancelled because of such authentic moments, but nothing could be further from the truth. I guarantee you that viewers loved him for being honest. Search my blog posts for the real reason Anderson’s daytime talk show was cancelled.