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Former Fostorian Josh Mann Believes ‘it's news to me'
March 8, 2000

PIX#1 TV news Mann Former Fostorian Josh Mann has been working as the technical director for WNWO NBC-24 in Toledo since last August. The 1995 FHS graduate hopes to work for ESPN someday.

"Did you see the news last night about...?"

Television news; it's fodder for many conversations. Across kitchen tables, at work, over a beer, we chew over the day's events.

But we rarely consider the people behind the scenes who enable the newscasters to deliver the news. Former Fostorian Josh Mann is one of those people.

Josh is a technical director for Channel 24, WNWO, the NBC television affiliate in Toledo. His parents are Fostorians Dick and Vickie Mann. He's a 1995 Fostoria High School graduate.

Josh positions himself behind his "input board," where he commands the technology that displays what viewers see.

"When you watch the news and see a shot of John Clark (24's anchor)," said Josh, "he'll go to a tape of the story. That's me. I roll the tape. I put in any ‘supers,' graphics, such as ‘Mayor Carty Finkbeiner.'

"I add any other graphics, what we call ‘over the shoulders', the graphic you se over someone's shoulder pertaining to the story.

"It's pretty fast. A lot happens really quickly. I always say I can't remember the first thirty seconds of the show. It's just a blur. It really goes that fast. Any camera change or any time we go to a tape or any type of effect, that's what I set up."

Josh has been working toward this since FHS.

"I took four years of television production in high school. I learned a lot. People always joked that if they didn't see me walking down the halls with a camera they thought something was wrong with me."

After high school, Josh enrolled at Bowling Green State University in telecommunications.

He spent all his free time at the student-run TV station, BG-24 News, working on their evening newscast.

"I did everything there just to get a feel for all the different jobs. Bowling Green has one of the top five broadcast journalism programs in the nation."

He switched briefly to Owens Community College and then took a job with TV-47 in Findlay.

"That's where I really learned to direct a newscast-directing, running audio, changing tapes. During commercial breaks, I'd run out and change camera shots. That's where I learned about faster paced news."

In August 1997, he heard about an opening a WOHL, Lima's Fox affiliate.

"They didn't have a live newscast so most of what I did involved master control which was running commercials, producing commercials, promo production. They had some taped sports and news magazine shows and after a couple months I was put in charge of producing the sports magazine show.

"They covered high school football and basketball games so I ran the camera and designed the graphics. I spent two years doing that and that really gave me the attitude that I have now which is to put the best product I can on the air."

"But," Josh continued, "I was itching to get back into a fast news environment. I don't like going in knowing what I'm going to do. I like going in thinking, ‘What's going to happen today?"

Josh likes it fine when that uncertainty prevails right up to news time.

"I like to sit down two minutes before the newscast and not have anything ready because everything we had set before has been thrown out the window because something happened. I like sitting on the edge of my seat."

In the summer of 1999, Josh saw an ad. WNWO was looking for a technical director and he shot off a resume. He's been there since mid August.

"I went from a 10 input board to a 25 input board and everything is a lot faster. I walked in on Wednesday and they said, ‘You have to know how to do this by yourself on Friday. So it was kind of challenging, but I feel I'm a pretty quick learner."

Ch. 24 has over 50 employees in news, production and engineering departments, responsible for the 90 minute morning program, the 5:30-6:30 slot in the evening and the late news at 11.

Josh goes in at 3 p.m. and works both the 5:30 and 22 p.m. news shows. He became interested in television work at 14.

"I realized my freshman year that my profession as a major league baseball player wasn't going to fly. I've always watched sports. I'd always watched the sports commentators. That was my first goal - to be on-air. Once I got to college I fell in love with doing the behind the scenes stuff. I did a lot of videography at Bowling Green."

He was named BG-24 photojournalist of the year as a freshman. He was once supposed to shoot the opening day of the Falcon baseball season, a game which was snowed out."

Undeterred, Josh and his partner tromped through a foot of snow at the ball diamond and did a humorous "where are the players?" piece.

That kind of willingness to go "get the story" has found Josh covering the Brickyard 400, the Indianapolis 500 time trials and Ted Nugent.

Toledo is the 69th largest TB news market in the US, but Josh has his sights set higher.

"My goal is to work for ESPN someday. I'd like to work in the remote truck. One night I might be doing a hockey game in Chicago and the next night I might be doing a basketball game in Detroit and the next night a baseball game in Cleveland."

As Josh said, he's enthusiastic about getting the news on the air. He likes the pace and the excitement.

There are a lot of similarly minded people hard at work each night to make sure everything is ready to go when we hit the remote and settle in to "catch the news."