TEAMWORK

No names, no packdrill. At one of my many television employers we had an A team and a B team. We struggled to put together complete A teams, usually a reporter, sometimes a director, always a cameraperson and a sound person (most of the time). It was impossible to get an entire A team together. Fate always intervened, not that it mattered. As long as at least one person had a brain cell the end result was always broadcastable, although it might not have reached the higher standard of a full A team. But, just as the full A team never happened, this was also the case with the full B team. Then one morning I looked down the list of stories and the list of the people crewing them and gasped out loud. WE HAD A FULL B TEAM. For the first time in living memory. True to form, they did not disappoint. It was the first occasion that a crew had come back with nothing broadcastable. In later years I witnessed far more dramatic versions of the B team - unbroadcastable stories shot in the Far East and the United States. But the first B team was the best - it creased us up for days.