And now...The Interns!

So, as I may or may not have mentioned before, our show does not have much money. In fact, I’d wager a guess that we’re the cheapest-produced show that’s on in more than a single market.
A quick insight…
People signed up for this show because it was supposed to become sort of a “big deal”. It was designed to be syndicated into many markets, which it has.
So, many persons came from local news, straight out of college, out-of-work actors that were tending bar, etc. Basically, people were counting on this to be their break.
Since some of them came from local news, they’re filled with contemptuous bile about how local news is “amateurish” and “terrible”. Local news has to do things very cheaply. They use one shooter with no field producer or audio. They have simple graphic packages and their production values in general are much lower than national shows. That’s perfectly understandable as they’re local news. We’re a (semi)national show. We’re on over 130 markets and in two top-10 markets. However, we do single-camera, no-field-producer, no-sound guy shoots. We don’t have a field boom mic. I personally own a field boom with a broadcast quality mic…they’re not that expensive, yet the show doesn’t have one.
Thus, you can imagine the self-loathing that fills many of my co-workers souls. They desperately want to feel self-important about the show being big shit. However, we’re not big shit. We’re the little bit of pee that you shake off when you’re finished.
This was much more explanation than I anticipated for the arrival of the interns. Interns, unlike equipment, experienced employees, and other such luxuries are free. Our whole staff is 26 people, counting the part-time floor crew (camera ops., prompter op, floor director). We have 9 interns. Two of them are for my department which consists of me and my boss. So with an employee/intern ratio of 1-to-1, we’re absolutely festooned with interns.
They’re like Tribbles. Everywhere you turn, there’s a gaggle of interns watching somebody work, or trying to figure something out themselves.
And the self-loathing co-workers? Loving every minute of it. They have somebody to tell what to do, and more importantly, there’s somebody around that knows less about television than they do.