Behind the Scenes at Bay Area Women

Bay Area Women is a live show, with real people who reveal, in chat-like fashion, the journey of their success. It’s a narrative, as opposed to cold hard facts and is different from all other talk shows because it is a non-profit operation manned by a crew of volunteers.

The crew of Bay Area Women includes co-producer Buddy Saupé, a scriptwriter, three camera people, and more. They each give several hours a week to produce and tape two segments of the weekly cable show. Some of the volunteers are trained television technicians, and others are students of the trade. Nevertheless, for all of the volunteers, time is of the essence— the only opportunity they have to tape Bay Area Women is on Thursday night, when the Foothill College Access studio is reserved for them. They must get it right the first time!

Access is part of the Valley’s community college TV production program that allows students to work on ideas and technology while attending college classes. The Bay Area Women volunteer crew is different— most have been with the show since it's inception in 1997, and each one has a desire to stay with the program as it expands and broadens it's viewing areas.

Producing A TV Show Is Costly

TV and video is very expensive . On the Foothill College campus, the Bay Area Women show is provided with a studio and equipment. All the rest, which includes video supplies, script material, promotional efforts, management of the show's guests’ logistics, and little things like dinner for the entire crew during the show’s production time are funded by the show’s co-producers Bobbi and Buddy.

Getting the show, Bobbi and Buddy’s brain-child, off the ground and keeping it on the air requires a great deal of their time and energy, as well as personal funding. In the early stages, Bobbi had to contract a consultant to seek out women whose experience criteria matched that of the show.

Today, the show is well known in the Bay Area and is sought out by the top PR firms, whose clients want to be a Bay Area Women show guest. Having gained that recognition, Bobbi says she can pick from the cream of the crop and it frees up her time to pursue other facets of the show.

Weekly Taping Doesn’t Leave Time For A Dress Rehearsal

Since no two shows are ever alike, there is a constant need to develop the program format. And without the opportunity for a dress rehearsal there is never any guarantee as to the show’s outcome. Despite the careful up front planning that Bobbi and Buddy do, there is no way to anticipate the unknown. And when things do go wrong, it seems that they go wrong all at once.

One night, a guest wore a beautiful string of pearls. The pearls clicked every time she made a gesture. The clicking nearly drove the soundmen crazy as he frantically checked out the equipment in search of the source. He finally figured it out, but by then the program was well into the second half.

Then There’s the Guest Whose Memory Fails...

There is no way to know how a guest will react once they are on camera. Quite often, her subject matter requires detailed explanation; if she is nervous or hasn’t memorized her material, her eyes just glaze over and she loses her train of thought. Bobbi says the experience is never easy, because it requires Bobbi to do some verbal back-pedaling in search of a clue on what she can do to help her guest get back on track.

What’s her worst experience? Bobbi says it’s when the guests responds with just a "yes" or a "no" answer. "It’s always such a surprise," Bobbi says "because inevitably it will be the guest that arrives on time and seems to have so much to say and all the confidence in the world." Getting her guest to be more expansive is a challenge that Bobbi is able to overcome— and that stems from her earlier experience as a high school biology teacher.

"Being a teacher is the best training ground for TV work," she says, "because you never know what to expect from a student. And whatever it is... you have to be able to recover quickly. It’s much the same on TV— if you get nervous, and your guest senses that you are, then you might as well stop the show, because you’ve literally lost her."

Learning How To Be An Expert

But with each guest, the experience is different. Each covers a different topic and has her own special story to tell. For Bobbi, these differences mean that she must become an informed interviewer. The key to producing a good show lies in her ability to help her guest relax so that she can enjoy the process and speak freely about the topic that she knows a great deal about.

Becoming an expert about a lot of things requires Bobbi to absorb a great deal of information in a very short time. She says it’s like cramming for final exams every single week. Now that Bobbi has interviewed more than seventy guests, she says she has developed a technique on ways to gather and prepare the material. Even reading an entire book— a discipline that Bobbi imposes on herself before interviewing the author— has become somewhat easier!

It’s A One Night Stand For The Crew

For a crew whose TV life begins and ends during the Thursday night taping, preparation is somewhat of a luxury. They all have full time careers and families that take up a great deal of their time.

Inasmuch volunteers don’t get paid, they also don’t have a boss to report to. Bobbi says everyone works on an element of trust and a whole lot of luck. The ideal, of course, is for everyone to arrive at the studio an hour or so before the guests arrive, and check out all of the equipment before the taping. If all goes well, the Bay Area Women show crew can tape two segments and leave the studio by 9 p.m. The worse case is when the tapping goes on forever, because of technical problems— and it’s close to midnight before they all leave.

Fortunately this seldom happens, which is one of the many reasons the Bay Area Women show volunteers have been together since 1997. They really enjoy what they do, and are always amazed as to how inspiring the show’s guests can be.

Top