Experience Design for Live Media: Good Morning America and Show Design

By Sara Jakubowicz

The interview with Good Morning America Stage Manager Eddie Luisi can be found here. Behind-the-scenes footage of the GMA site visit can be found here.

Hearing an alarm startle you awake with its rhythmic beeps at 3:30 in the morning, jumping out of bed and heading to work for a 4:30am start time is quite different from the typical circadian rhythms and sleep cycles of college students. However, this is the daily life of a worker on a morning TV show set. At Good Morning America, one of the show’s anchors mentioned to me that they go to sleep at 8pm every night to wake up at 3am. That’s just show biz. 

Previously working for Good Morning America as a Camera Operator, fellow ECT student Shem Alleyne brought Salome Yoryoliami and myself onto the set to experience life behind the camera and show production. This behind-the-scenes experience entailed not only a spectatorship of the show’s run, but also a summative interview with the Stage Manager- Eddie Luisi.

Stepping foot at an inconspicuous back entrance at 4:30am, I, along with Shem and Salome, were greeted by security and a congenial, bubbly, energetic face- Eddie Luisi. From the mere presence of Eddie, I felt my grogginess revitalize into a more vibrant, human state. Leading into a backstage tour, Eddie showed us the various sets as well as the green room (break rooms with food and refreshments), the office areas, and dressing room areas. 

After the tour, I was able to explore the space on my own, and converse with people about their job and experiences on set. The show’s anchors were reciting lines, scripts in hand, to producers. The meteorologists were piecing together B-rolls and graphics in Adobe Premiere Pro for that morning’s weather report- something which they told me became part of their job descriptions rather recently. 

As new technologies update and increase capability, the roles that workers take on seem to change. Flexibility and adaptability are an integral part of any role, but particularly ones in media. This is reminiscent of other conversations I’ve had with people who’ve worked on Nickelodeon's production of the Super Bowl as they were using Motion Capture for live production so that the football players’ motions were reflected in the form of Nickelodeon characters. Learning new technologies to enhance experience designs and being able to apply this knowledge at whim is incredibly valuable.

A live show requires precision. The first take is what airs to the audience.

Before the 7am showtime, the directors and stage managers hosted a full crew meeting with a full script breakdown and runthrough- noting the markers for where cameras and the talent and show guests should be at different points. While the camera operators were practicing their shots, they allowed us to try our hand at the cameras, moving them around and curating the camera angles. Meanwhile, in a backroom, the director was telling everyone which camera perspective to show onscreen and any necessary adjustments. 

Though this was a high stress environment, Eddie managed to keep his calm, with everyone else following suit. Before the show started and during the show’s run, when the show went live on its B stage, Eddie was talking to the crew members as well as the talent- warming them up before it was their turn on screen. 

Following the talent was their entourage- social media people, movie marketing coordinator, and manager, among others. Shifting this way and that in order to sell their product- whether that be themselves, their movie, their book, etc.- to an audience of consumers with busy lives and lower levels of attention. A book I’ve read recently- Stolen Focus by Johann Hari- speaks to this change in society and the potential reasons for attention reduction and addiction to devices and applications. How too many things are vying for our attention, making it hard to focus on one item at a time. 

In terms of news and media, the category Good Morning America’s show falls under, Hari mentions how news used to take time to travel, causing us to pause and absorb information.  But now, we can consume the news at the touch of a button, leading to an inability to properly process many sources of information at once and concentrate on one topic. 

When I asked Eddie in the post-interview about what societal needs the Good Morning America show addresses, he relayed how it boils down to getting information- news, politics, events, entertainment, etc.- to people in an effective, engaging way. However, this societal shift to rapid consumption and attention span reduction translates into the way in which media is designed for its consumers. Designing for a group of people produces (or aims to produce) higher show ratings, which can increase the advertisers buying commercial spots and lead to greater show revenue. Digital platforms have changed live media’s financial models to feed into consumerism. GMA itself now sells products through its segments, modifying its initial purpose as a news show. 

In my post-interview with Eddie, he discussed the implications of attention span loss for how the show is run:

“I’ve been [at Good Morning America for] 35 years… we would do a good 5, 6 minute block on [one segment]… Now if you look at the rundown, it’s almost like a new show. We have maybe 10, 11 stories. It’s bang-bang-bang-bang-bang. Supposedly with digital media and social media, people’s attention spans are short. It’s a minute, minute-30 [seconds], so they have all these quick, little [segments].”

Upon my asking about who the show’s intended audience is, the Stage Manager stated that it used to incorporate all of America more- including Middle America as they would do more human interest stories there. But now, the targeted audience is America’s coastal cities, reducing the content and stories coming out of Middle America. Because of the shift in the audience and the personas of viewers, the show has adapted its content accordingly. Designing segments to be brief to fit the needs and characteristics of its target audience, a populace that is getting ready for work and getting their kids ready for school among other things. One of the show’s guests was telling me about the press tour for their movie- flying from city to city, from show to show, and shooting other films in the between. Though this is a more extreme example, it is a rather apt metaphor for the preoccupations of our minds and the splitting of attention that society demands of all its constituents.

Aiming for human-centered design, we have to reconsider whether the products we make and the interventions we design are attending to the societal distractions and decrease in attention span. A better question might be whether the product we are designing addresses the needs of the target audience in such a way that encapsulates their selective attention. That overcomes any cognitive antecedents- a task on their mind or even an earworm. How might we design learning products that induce people’s focus and optimize their ability to learn? How might we curate a learning experience that is forward-thinking and challenges our learners- inducing flow states where time is subjective in the process of learning? This is a topic of particular interest for the CREATE Lab as we are trying to study how design affects learning outcomes in virtual reality. 

‘How might we’ questions begin the design process once we, as user experience specialists, identify who our audience is and what their needs are. Asking ourselves these questions throughout the design phase and later stages of user research is integral. We must not lose sight of the group of people we are designing for in order to build a successful product and/or intervention. 

A lesson to be learned from the experience design of Good Morning America is the way in which they adapt and cater their content to their audience. As the audience and their needs change, we must accommodate and iterate accordingly through our designs. Continuously researching and reassessing whether our design properly addresses the problem we’ve identified is what defines the future of our product. A product should be living and ever-evolving according to its users. A formidable user experience doesn’t have an end-state to its iterations. The work we do to improve someone’s learning experience is never done, no matter the form of media this experience takes place.