What do you enjoy most about your master control operator career?

What do you enjoy most about being a master control operator? What do you dislike the most? Is it challenging? Are there many opportunities to learn and advance?

What keeps you at your job?

I have been a MCO since the late 1980's. I could list a thousand reasons why any sane individual should avoid this job. For reasons I can't fully understand however, there is nothing I would rather do than be a MCO.
I have worked in very small markets up to top 20 markets. Several things never change. Every single day, my fellow MCOs and I have to search out and locate all of the "little" mistakes, malfunctions, glitches, and errors that can and will cause a television station to loose large amounts of money due to..sitting in black, going off the air, or running the wrong program or commercial spot. 95% of these "mistakes" and "errors" come from people in other departments who are paid far better than we are...but they understand that in TV, the only "responsible" person at days end is the MCO. Being the only person to ever be held accountable for everything and anything is pretty stressful and quite honestly, it bites....but still, knowing all of this either drives a person mad (which I have unfortunately witnessed more than a few times) or it becomes a daily challenge. At the end of every workday, I really don't care that no one knows just what my co-workers and I had to do to keep the wheels on the track. Throw in 4 and a half hours of live news, and the occasional severe weather periods,...and we know before we even get to work that the day will be anything but routine or boring.
In the end, that's really the reason why I love being a MCO. We don't "captain" the ship, we just spend our days steering around all the damn icebergs so the real "captains" all look good.

GuinnessTV in Minneapolis, Minnesota said: I have been a MCO since the late 1980's. I could list a thousand reasons why any sane individual should avoid this job. For reasons I can't fully understand however, there is nothing I would rather do than be a MCO.
I have worked in very small markets up to top 20 markets. Several things never change. Every single day, my fellow MCOs and I have to search out and locate all of the "little" mistakes, malfunctions, glitches, and errors that can and will cause a television station to loose large amounts of money due to..sitting in black, going off the air, or running the wrong program or commercial spot. 95% of these "mistakes" and "errors" come from people in other departments who are paid far better than we are...but they understand that in TV, the only "responsible" person at days end is the MCO. Being the only person to ever be held accountable for everything and anything is pretty stressful and quite honestly, it bites....but still, knowing all of this either drives a person mad (which I have unfortunately witnessed more than a few times) or it becomes a daily challenge. At the end of every workday, I really don't care that no one knows just what my co-workers and I had to do to keep the wheels on the track. Throw in 4 and a half hours of live news, and the occasional severe weather periods,...and we know before we even get to work that the day will be anything but routine or boring.
In the end, that's really the reason why I love being a MCO. We don't "captain" the ship, we just spend our days steering around all the damn icebergs so the real "captains" all look good.

GuinnessTV - You hit the nail on the head about master control. Very well written!