Who is the Master?

This week, I was introduced to something very scary: the master control room. It even sounds scary, right? The master control room houses a huge block of machinery that controls every aspect of what is being played on a television network. Surely they didn't want me to do something in there. Wrong. Leon told me to go in and add some commercials to the shows that were already scheduled to play later that day. I just stood there and looked at him, then the machine, then back at Leon. He started to laugh and told me that he was only kidding. What a relief! There was no way I was going to touch that machine and risk ruining everything that had already been programmed. That would have been a tragedy!
After going over the different sections of the machine, I sat down with Leon to see exactly how to add stuff to the program line-up. It actually turned out to be pretty simple. All you have to do is find the item you are looking for in one column and drag and drop it into the center column. Sounds easy enough. The tricky part comes in when you have to time everything to flow smoothly. Just one second can throw you completely off schedule. In this world of media, timing is everything.
Unfortunately, with my hectic schedule, timing is everything for me as well. And as usual, just as we were getting started, it was time for me to leave. I didn't get a chance to actually put something in the line-up, but I was promised that next time it needed to be done, I could help out. This was a major step in learning something new this week, because going over Final Cut Pro was getting kind of boring. (Don't tell that to Leon, though.) So it turns out the master control room isn't scary at all. I guess you can say I am learning to "master" it.