Absolutely, Positively Overnight

Via fxtv, fedex reaches its employees 24 hours a day

By David English

Photographs by Murray Riss

News stories about the Oklahoma City bombing. A report on the death of a Chinese leader. A look at the Rolling Stones’ Brazilian tour. A story about a woman saved from drowning. A feature about racing cars used in the Indianapolis 500. Footage of artifacts recovered from the Titanic. This isn’t CNNor the Discovery Channel. Believe it or not, this is corporate video.

Shattering the myth that corporate video is only about earnings reports, benefit plans and job training, the Federal Express Television (FXTV)Network’s daily international broadcast, FedEx Overnight, reports on a surprisingly wide variety of news subjects for FedEx’s 127,400 employees worldwide. Overnight, produced at headquarters in Memphis, is FXTV’s flagship program. The network does about 400 broadcasts a year, of which more than half are Overnight.

Overseeing it all is Cecelia Payne, a seasoned journalist and head of the video communications department. "The show works well because we keep it short and sweet," she says. "It’s designed so employees can quickly get updates on the company." Although Payne has something of a captive audience, her viewers don’t have much time to watch TV. They can watch Overnight as it’s transmitted, or watch a taped version at their convenience. "In this company, you couldn’t pick one minute of a 24-hour day when everyone could watch something," says Wayne Webb, FedEx Overnight’s director. "The company is too big and spread out too far."

Payne’s department and the video productions department, headed by Joe Hopkins, are responsible for FedEx Overnight. The two departments share about 30 full-time employees and generally employ about 15 part-time producers and technical staff. "If you look at it like publishing, my department would be on the editorial side," Payne says. "We’re responsible for developing the content, while Joe’s folks—the editors, schedulers, videographers and engineers—are the ones who meet the technical requirements."

The road to becoming the head of a major corporate communications department is rarely a straight line, but for Payne, each step in her career led her closer to her current position. With an undergraduate degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Memphis and a master’s degree in communications from Purdue University, she worked at television stations for several years. "Then I came to Memphis and got a job at the Press-Scimitar," says Payne. When that newspaper folded, she moved to another Scripps Howard paper, the Commercial Appeal. "It was a sister paper, though they were very competitive,"says Payne, who isn’t one to miss a chance to use a bit of humor. "After several years at the Commercial Appeal, I thought I was going through a midlife crisis. I wasn’t. Now I’m going through a midlife crisis."

When Payne heard about openings in communications at FedEx, she jumped at the chance. "I figured I could write and produce, and also enhance my skills. And I’ve done that," she says. Payne started at the company 13 years ago as a senior communications specialist, working mainly on print projects such as newsletters. She advanced to become the manager of a group of print publications, and of the still-evolving FedEx Overnight. Four years ago, she made a lateral move to become FedEx’s manager of video communications. "I do strictly video now, and I like that," she says.

Not wanting to lose her reporting skills, Payne occasionally files a FedEx Overnight news report. "Any manager at a company needs to stay fresh," she says. "You can’t speak the language if you’re not out there with the troops."

As FedEx has grown, the company has become increasingly reliant on its communications specialists to help carry out corporate strategies. "Business communications has become an integral part of the organization," Payne says. "A lot of that can be attributed to Mr. Smith [Fred Smith, FedEx’s CEO]. He had the vision some years ago to say that it would be one of the ways that would help the company grow from a small airline into a global corporation."

A World View

Although FedEx Overnight’s news pieces vary widely, they all have connections to the company and its employees. "There’s no difference in what I’m doing now from in what I did for 20 years in television news as a reporter," says Joan Droege, FedEx’s senior video-development specialist and co-producer of FedEx Overnight. "The difference is that this is a FedEx-owned television station. Each story has something to do with FedEx, but you still have to keep in mind the news value, communicate the facts, educate to a certain extent, and—for many of our stories, because of the nature of it—motivate employees."

For the Oklahoma City bombing story, the FedEx tie-in was the company’s courier who was blown off her feet by the explosion one block away. Sending a production team to interview the courier, FedEx beat many commercial reporters to the scene. "By having our own planes, we can often get there a lot faster than taking a commercial flight," Payne says.

"We focused on the people in the downtown area and, in particular, on the woman who delivered to the building," Droege says. "Of course, she was very affected by this because [some of the victims] had been her customers for about nine years. We had the human touch. We also covered how Federal Express had to make adjustments in the downtown area for getting deliveries in and out."

FedEx Overnight’s story about death of China’s leader, Deng Xiaoping, in February also had a Federal Express angle. "Since FedEx is also in China, we were wondering how his death might affect the company," Droege says. "We were also wondering how it might affect the transition when mainland China takes over Hong Kong later this year." A FedEx vice president who oversees the China division was in Memphis at the time. "We brought him over very quickly, interviewed him, and got some footage for the next day," says Droege. The production teams frequently travel overseas, so they often take generic shots to help build up a library of background footage.

FedEx Overnight also covered the first commercial flight to enter Vietnam in more than 25 years. The flight "brought in medical shipments," says Droege, "and [the plane] was flown by FedEx pilots who had served in Vietnam 25 or 30 years earlier." Overnight highlighted Vietnam again in its profile of Binh Nguyen, a company employee. During the Vietnam war, Nguyen was adopted by an American colonel and returned with him to the United States, where he received his education. He started with FedEx as a courier in 1976. "Now he’s back in his native land as the FedEx country manager," Droege says.

Another overseas story involved a trip to Brazil to cover the Rolling Stones’ Voodoo Lounge tour. FedEx shipped all of the band’s equipment as the tour moved from the United States to Brazil. Other shipments that were the subject of Overnight news pieces include the delivery of race cars to the Indianapolis 500; taking rescue equipment to save a little girl trapped in a well in Oklahoma; and the recovery of artifacts from the Titanic. "These were 300 artifacts that were coming from two different places in France for an exhibit here in Memphis," Droege says of the Titanic news piece.

Overnight has also featured a number of news stories about animals shipped by FedEx, which have included a large walrus; Shamu the whale; several gorillas; and the elephant that starred in the Disney movie Operation Dumbo Drop. "We have an employee who coordinates the shipments for these kinds of things," says Pam McLaughlin, a senior video-development specialist who co-produces FedEx Overnight withDroege. "He talks to people about how the animals are supposed to be packaged or boxed. The animals may have to be asleep or have a trainer with them. The elephant was given something to make her sleep after she was put on board."

Another human-interest story on FedEx Overnight involved John Mozug, a courier who jumped into a freezing Michigan lake to save a woman from drowning after her car plunged into the water. FedEx Overnight was there the next day to interview, follow and capture shots of Mozug being congratulated and cheered by his customers. "These types of things happen so often at Federal Express that we have humanitarian and Golden Falcon awards for employees," McLaughlin says. "We like to say our employees have purple blood," she adds, referring to one of the company’s signature colors.

McLaughlin says that the focus of FedEx Overnight’s news stories has changed over the years. "When we first started, we did a lot more service-oriented pieces—stories oriented to helping employees do their jobs, things that could be replicated across the company, quality-oriented stories. Now that we have so many employees, the human-interest stories have become more important and timely."

Overnight isn’t afraid to cover stories that show the company in a less-than-favorable light. "It’s not just goody-two-shoes stories and company propaganda," Droege says. After a former FedEx pilot attacked some FedEx employees, Overnight was there to talk to the employees and their families. When a FedEx plane caught fire after it landed, the news team rushed to the scene. "We reported what the NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board] said and what happened," she says. "It’s one of those things that you have to cover. It’s part of the news."

The Overnight show receives feedback from its employees via e-mail and a dedicated phone line. "We get a lot more responses from employees who have watched programs such as the Oklahoma City bombing or the courier who saved the woman from drowning, because these are the things that touch your heart," Payne says. "It would be the same way if you saw it on CNN."

Most of the calls are positive. "It’s not like a broadcast outlet, where when people call, they’re calling to complain," Wayne Webb says. "We very rarely get that. If someone isn’t happy with something, they normally won’t say anything. In broadcast, those are really the only times you hear anything. In broadcast, you very seldom hear anyone call to say, ‘That was a great story.’ "

A Well-Oiled Machine

Overnight isn’t the only show transmitted to FedEx employees via satellite, but it is probably the most essential to the daily operation of the company. Few people outside Federal Express ever see FXTV. The various FXTV programs are distributed via KU-band satellite, but scrambled using an encryption technology that lets data be transmitted along with video and audio signals. Every weekday morning, FXTV sends FedEx Overnight to about 1,450 viewing locations, including employee break rooms and company lobbies. An embedded signal automatically activates a videotape recorder at each of the viewing locations, and the program is taped before most employees arrive for work.

"We feed [Overnight] to the satellite at around 6:30 a.m., but we auto-record the thing," says Joe Hopkins. "In other words, as long as there’s tape in the machine, we can deliver video to the tape. We can turn on the VCRs from here in Memphis. We can put it into rewind and then put it into record. We can stop it, rewind it and put it into a loop-play mode."

With 568 aircraft and 38,000 delivery vehicles handling 2.5 million packages daily, Federal Express has a strong interest in letting all of its employees know how the delivery system is functioning. FedEx Overnight includes a graphics-and-voice-over System Report that documents how the company has functioned over each 24-hour period. "It’s a numbers recap of how the operation ran the morning before," Hopkins says. "How many packages entered the system, any weather problems that we’re anticipating, any mechanical problems, any aircraft-related problems, anything that might cause the system not to run the way everyone expects." If a flight to Phoenix is expected, and sorting equipment breaks before the flight is loaded, the employees in Phoenix need to know that the flight will be delayed. By watching FedEx Overnight, they can learn about the delay and adjust their workload.

The System Report can run as short as one minute and 15 seconds, or as long as three minutes, depending on how many delivery problems there have been, says Webb, who has the unusual title of video-directing specialist because at FedEx a director is considered a specific kind of manager.

The anchored news portion of FedEx Overnight usually runs from five to seven minutes. "We’re not under the time constraints of a broadcast outlet," Webb says. "A good package can run four to four-and-a-half minutes. You tie in an open and close, anchor intro/outro, and a little reader onto that, and you have a six or six-and-a-half-minute show. Tack a System Report onto that, and you can end up with an eight- or nine-minute show."

The program is repeated as many times as can fit into a half-hour slot, just to ensure that each viewing location gets the entire show. "If we air the program eight times in that half hour or three times in that half hour, it really doesn’t make any difference," Webb says. Because there’s no predetermined length, FedEx Overnight can expand and contract to fit the availablenews. "A lot of our producers come from a broadcast background. That’s not a luxury they’re accustomed to," says Webb.

Packaged Goods

The anchored portion of FedEx Overnight is broadcast Monday through Friday, but it is taped only twice a week. "We normally tape three shows on Monday and two on Thursday—or at least the anchor wraps for the program," Webb says. "Each show normally consists of a previously edited and packaged piece and some short readers, possibly with some graphics support." If a late-breaking story unfolds, the team will bump the previously prepared program and quickly assemble a new mix of stories. "We really don’t redo shows all that often. We only have to come back maybe three or four times a month."

When Overnight premiered in 1988, it was produced live to tape, which required everything and everyone to be ready at the same time. "We had to tie up a director, a graphics operator, an audio operator, one or two studio-camera people and somebody to roll the tapes into the show," Hopkins says. "It was kind of a painful process, because there was always one element that didn’t seem to be quite ready," Webb adds.

Using a nonlinear editing system, the ImMix VideoCube, the program is now produced in segments, allowing the anchor, editor and graphics operator to work independently. (ImMix is now owned by Scitex Digital Video, and the VideoCube no longer exists.) "Many different things are happening at the same time, but they’re not all depending on one another to be ready before we can lay them down on tape," Hopkins says. "Back when we used to do it live to tape, an anchor would come in and maybe have to be here two hours on a bad day."

Federal Express originally went with a live-to-tape format because the company wanted the program to have the feel of a news show. "Early on, our graphics were very simple," Hopkins says. "A typical over-the-shoulder graph might have been a blue box with words in it—just flat text." While the shooting and editing of the news pieces still have the feel of a news show, the graphic look is slicker and more polished. "I dare say it has one of the best graphic looks of any show of its type," Hopkins says.

Because FXTV has its own 24-hour satellite transponder, it can send programs to the viewing sites at any time. Most divisions have some kind of regular programming transmitted via satellite. The company has programs specifically for its couriers, customer-service agents, regional managers and sales professionals, as well as occasional broadcasts from Smith; however, the CEOpurposely limits his exposure on FXTV. "He wants it to be the employees’ network," Hopkins says. "He wants it to be accessible to the employees, and not [have people] turn it on and automatically see Fred Smith." Most of the programs, including those that feature Smith, have a phone-in segment for questions from employees.

Dollars and Delivery

Despite its success, FXTV isn’t a commercial production house, so it can have a tough time justifying the cost of new equipment. "FXTV is a cost center for the company—we don’t charge anybody for our services within the company," Hopkins says. "At capital budget time, we have to stand in line with the people who need airplanes and the people who need computer mainframes—huge projects that are important to the revenue stream of the company. So we tend to get our money in big chunks, with years in between."

Receiving its funding in large amounts rather than piecemeal lets FXTV make sweeping changes all at once and maintain compatibility. "We’ve just finished the second phase of a three-year, three-phase project to take our facility to full [CCIR] 601 digital production. The first year was our first online edit suite. The second year was our second online edit suite. Next year, we begin in June with the biggest part of the project: We’ll be refurbishing the studio control, master control, graphics and audio control, and replacing the equipment with all 601 digital equipment."

Because Overnight’s producers travel all over the world, FXTV is also shopping for portable gear. "We’re getting into DV right now," Hopkins says. "It [now] takes one of our shooters a week and a half to prepare all the paperwork to get the equipment into [some foreign countries]. To convince the customs people that we’re not bringing it in to sell it, we have to pull together an inch-and-a-half-thick document. With the DV cameras, it’s almost a stealth approach. You can put it in your luggage and go right into the country—and nobody cares."

How unusual are FXTV’s resources? Payne says that people from other companies often tell her she’s lucky to have FedEx’s facilities and personnel. "Most companies have a manager and maybe one or two employees working with that person, so they have to farm out their needs," she says. "We have a fully integrated communications network, so we have the resources to take a videographer and go to Oklahoma immediately—and not have to wait until next week."

For Droege, going from commercial broadcasting to FedEx was a real eye-opener, she says. "I’m not sure that there’s a company anywhere in the world that communicates with its employees like Federal Express."

David English is a writer in Greensboro, NorthCarolina. He has written articles for Omni, Computer Shopper, CD-ROMToday and Compute.