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Aggie On Air

KSL-TV Broadcaster Sees the World, But Remembers USU Fondly

Story by Manette Newbold (USU BSJ ’07)
Features Editor | Logan Herald-Journal

Photographs by Jeff Hunter (USU BSJ ’00)
Logan Herald-Journal

JCOM Editor’s Note: This story, which appeared in the August 2009 Cache Magazine, published by the Logan Herald-Journal, is a JCOM tour-de-force: written, photographed and edited by JCOM alumni, about and quoting JCOM people. Reprinted with the HJ’s kind permission.

SALT LAKE CITY—It’s just two minutes before she’s going live. But Amanda Butterfield, sitting at the Channel 5 news desk in a bright-green suit, with lights and cameras aimed at her, is defending her affection for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

“You have a crush on Vladimir Putin?” asks Butterfield's co-anchor, Whit Johnson. “Wow. He’s intense.”

“He’s no-nonsense,” Butterfield shoots back, then pulls a out mirror for a final makeup-check. “He dresses to the nines. He’s sharp. He gets things done.”

“That’s as random as I’ve ever heard,” Johnson replies, shaking his head.

This kind of banter often continues right up until the second before Butterfield goes live on KSL, Salt Lake City’s flagship TV station and NBC affiliate, but she’s so used to it now, it doesn’t make her nervous.

She quickly switches from Putin to a somber expression for the first story of KSL’s 6:30 p.m. newscast, the Michael Jackson memorial service at the Staples Arena in Los Angeles. She and Johnson take turns reading from the teleprompter, and a couple minutes into the show, they’re moving on to the second story of the night: President Obama’s meeting with Putin in Russia.

A 2000 JCOM graduate of Utah State University, Butterfield has been a professional TV journalist for eight years, the last five at Channel 5 in Salt Lake. During her stint at KSL, the former USU soccer starter has had many memorable moments—including meeting her soccer idol, David Beckham, when Real Madrid visited Real Salt Lake in 2006, and a month in China covering the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.

But it wasn’t easy. Butterfield says she had wanted to be a broadcaster ever since she was a child. It was born in her, she says: as a little girl she would watch the news and practice reading news stories into shampoo bottles in the bathroom mirror.

“I've always loved to talk, so it was the perfect career for me because I got to meet people and tell their stories,” Butterfield says. “It’s a perfect fit.”

A native of Bountiful, Butterfield decided to attend USU after graduating from Woods Cross High School. A standout prep soccer player, Butterfield followed in the footsteps of her mother, Teresa, a former Aggiette, and her father, Dell, who played football for the Aggies. It was at Utah State that Amanda Butterfield gained her bearings in the broadcast business, doing her first shows for A-TV, the student-produced news show.

True Aggie at heart

Former USU soccer teammate Carrie Niederhauser says Butterfield was the life of the party on road trips with the team.

Niederhauser, who lives in Smithfield, says she often watches Butterfield on KSL. It was “a little strange” the first time she saw Butterfield on TV, she says, because she was used to calling her old soccer friend “Mandy” — not Amanda.

Soccer was Butterfield’s first love. When she moved to Logan in 1997, she missed the sport until she was able to walk onto the Aggie soccer team during the spring semester. When she talks about her experience of playing a Division I collegiate sport, she quickly recalls three-a-day practices and 6 a.m. weight training.

“It was like a full-time job. It really was,” says Butterfield, who at 6-foot-1 was always the target for headers. “We practiced every day. It was great, though. I got to meet girls from all over the country — mostly in the West — so that was a lot of fun.”

When Butterfield played for USU, the women’s soccer program was only a few years old. Scholarships were tough to come by, and the team was often kicked off its practice field to make way for intramurals. It was rough, she says, but she loved it.

In between playing soccer for the Aggies and attending classes, Butterfield also created newscasts for A-TV twice a week as a part of the USU broadcasting program. Broadcast associate professor Penny Byrne says Butterfield and her fellow students learned to produce, anchor, film and edit the shows.

“She was required to do every bloody thing that’s involved in doing a newscast,” Byrne said.

Butterfield says she attended a couple of Christmas parties for the broadcast students at Byrne’s house, and recalls all of the good food. In fact, Butterfield says she still makes Byrne’s eggnog during the holidays. Byrne says she and Butterfield are still in contact about once a month, and Butterfield is currently supervising a USU intern at KSL.

“Penny and [husband] Dean weren't just your professors. They really cared,” Butterfield said. “I mean, they invited us to their home. I don't think that happens often and so they really watched out for that broadcasting group especially if you were serious about it. They would help me in any way that they could.”

Butterfield is proud to say she is a True Aggie and enjoys coming back to Cache Valley whenever she can. She says she’ll come talk to journalism students at USU anytime she’s asked, and if she comes with her family, they are always sure to stop at Cox Honeyland and the USU campus for bread at The Hub and Aggie Ice Cream.

“I love going up there for the day,” she said. “Driving through that canyon in the fall — I love it. I just love Cache Valley. I'm glad I'm not in school anymore, but I love going back and visiting.”

Beginnings in broadcast

If Butterfield could offer any aspiring newscaster advice, it would be that it’s not what it looks like from the living room.

“It is not as glamorous right off the bat as you think,” she says. “You are not going to make money. You are not going to be a celebrity. You’re going to have to move away from home. And it’s scary.”

After Butterfield graduated from USU in 2000 at age 21, she landed a TV job in Bend, Ore., on a Wednesday and moved that Friday. She was going to be a weather anchor at KTVZ, even though she didn’t know anything about weather and says she could have qualified for food stamps with the wages she was going to make. But it was also going to be an adventure.

“I was 21 years old, and I didn’t know anyone,” she says. “In fact, my brother and sister were on their honeymoon on a cruise and when they came home, I was gone. It was hard at first, but that’s what I loved about it.”

Her parents say they always knew Butterfield wanted to a job in TV news, and now that’s she’s made it, they don’t see how anything else could ever hold her back.

“As a parent, I thought, How do I break her heart and tell her that the chances are slim and none? It’s like wanting to be an actress or a singer,” says Teresa Butterfield. “When she was that young and saying it, I thought she would change her mind. As she got older, I found determination has no bounds. And now nothing she says would surprise me at all.”

Her father, Dell, remembers driving 11 hours to Oregon with her the weekend before she started her job in Bend. They stayed in a hotel and when he left her on Monday, she still didn’t have a place to live. Butterfield had only taken what would fit in her white, two-door Acura and said she would make it work.

“It was very hard to leave her, but she showed me that if she was willing to go through that, then that was how bad she wanted this,” he said.

The first job didn’t come without mishaps—the first night, Butterfield was introduced on the air as “Amanda Butterworth.” She was terrified, had a sick stomach and still had three minutes of live air to fill without a teleprompter.

But for nine months, Butterfield worked as the weather anchor and co-anchor for the 11 a.m. show, and eventually anchored all of the evening newscasts and produced the midday show, as well.

“I did everything. Well, everything but sports,” she says. “I'd go out a one-man band; shoot my own stuff and come back and edit it. I was the weather anchor, reporter and then the anchor.

“That's how you work for small markets. You do everything. It was invaluable. I owe so much of where I am to that first job because it was baptism by fire, you know, doing weather for three minutes without a teleprompter in every show. It really taught me to be comfortable in front of the camera.”

She also had her share of embarrassing moments that went live into viewers' living rooms. She says when she gets nervous she laughs, and that happened while reading a story about a famous killer whale that had died in Oregon.

“Killer whales are big in Oregon. They are very important,” she said. “And for some reason, it was the funniest thing I had every read. And so there I am shaking, in tears because I was laughing so hard, reading about this killer whale that had passed away. And people thought I was crying ... so it was OK. They didn’t know I was really laughing hysterically.”

Butterfield says she’s also tripped on cables and said things she didn’t mean to on the air, but she doesn’t really get embarrassed anymore. She worked in Bend for about 18 months then moved west to a larger station in Eugene.

“I loved it,” she says. “I love Oregon.”

Now in a major metro market, Butterfield started as the weekend anchor, and after six months became the evening anchor again with two newscasts in the evening and reporting responsibilities during the day.

Coming home

Butterfield says she always had her sights set on coming back to Utah and, more specifically, working at KSL, Salt Lake’s largest operation. Her family lives in Bountiful and she saw Utah as a great place to have roots and a career.

Every year for four years she would send resume tapes to stations in Salt Lake City, and then when she came home for Christmas, she would contact the news directors and ask if they would meet with her.

“Many times the news directors would not meet with me, but I did not let them forget me,” Butterfield says. “I always sent tapes and left messages.”

It was in February 2005 that she got a random call from KSL saying they had an opening, and Butterfield says that changed her life. She quickly packed her bags and moved back to the Wasatch Front to work with all the anchors and reporters she grew up watching on TV.

“The first time you walk in the newsroom and you see Dick Nourse and Carole Mikita and Ed Yeates and Keith McCord, you are speechless,” she says. “I remember vividly my first day here, Carole came up to me said, ‘Welcome, I'm Carole. If there is anything you need let me know.’ And I was like, ‘Wow.’”

Butterfield worked as the morning show reporter on the 3 a.m. to 1 p.m. shift for 18 months and then became the weekend anchor with McCord, who she now considers one of her closest friends at the station.

She now works from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and is expected to report a package every day by 3 p.m. Because she co-anchors at 4 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., she says she gets a lot of help with her stories from assistant producers. She says she still loves to write and after making phone calls and going out on location, always writes her own stories.

Her first newscast each night is co-anchored with Jed Boal who says Butterfield is not only a colleague, but a friend: "She is hard-working, consistent and is always fine-tuning her work," he says. Being a reporter and anchor is not the kind of job where there is leeway to have a bad day, Boal explains, adding that Butterfield is always upbeat and positive. The two of them have been working as co-anchors for a little more than two years, and he says she is the same on and off the camera.

“She's just a wonderful person to work with, and it's important to me, and I think it's important to her, too, that we can have that kind of rapport,” he says.

At 3 p.m., before Butterfield co-anchors with Boal, she gets ready and reads her script. She says the first question people always ask her is if she does her own hair and makeup. The answer is yes, however, about four times a year KSL brings in consultants to give the anchors tips.

“They are always telling me to keep my hair shorter. They kind of tell us what looks good,” she says. “I’ve been doing this eight years now, so I think I have this figured out, but you know, bright colors are always the best. Solid colors and not too long of hair.”

A career of adventure

Butterfield never expected her career in broadcasting to be 9-to-5. She says she’s worked every Christmas for eight years. She’s also been on every shift, worked weekends, nights and graveyards. Even now she's scheduled 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. with one night shift a week.

“You work holidays, you work everything but if you love it, it's OK. And I love it, so I'm happy to do it,” she says.

So far the highlight of Butterfield’s career was presenting the 2008 Summer Olympic Games for KSL in Beijing. She was in China for about a month and was able to meet U.S. gymnast Nastia Liukin, the women’s soccer team, the men’s soccer team and gold-medal beach volleyball players Misty May and Kerri Walsh.

“It was unreal,” she says. “I met some of the best athletes in the world. Unbelievable. And then just to be in China alone. What an amazing country. The Olympics were huge and a lot of fun.”

Like all tourists, she visited the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, and since she was sent to report the atmosphere of the Olympics, she spent quite a bit of time mingling with people in markets and traveling.

“I got to go to all the markets and eat the crazy food and go see all the sites so that was a great gig,” she says.

She ate snake, eel, scorpion and starfish, and eventually the Chinese diet made her so sick she could only consume Snickers, cookies and Sprite.

Butterfield’s mother says she probably saw every story Amanda presented in China and says she enjoyed watching her enthusiasm for anything and anyone new.

“That was an amazing experience for her,” Teresa says. “I loved watching her willingness to participate in eating odd food or seeing something new. She is very willing to participate in all of that. She wants to come and experience everything wherever she is.”

Byrne says Butterfield gave her a CD of the coverage she did in China and that she uses it in her USU broadcast classes. And while there most of the CD has good coverage of the Olympics, Byrne says Butterfield also graciously gave her a blooper CD. In one story, after Butterfield had been working all day, she suggested that people at the market in China ate gymnasts, Byrne recalls with a laugh.

While the Olympics might be a pinnacle of Butterfield’s career so far, she’s hoping there will be more stories to top that assignment. She loves to travel and recently returned from a trip to France, Italy and Turkey. In September, she will going to Spain with a couple of friends, and Australia is planned for December.
“I'm always looking for a trip,” she says. “Turkey was dynamite. Thailand and Cambodia were fantastic. China was amazing. I just love traveling. Anytime I can travel for work is great, but it would be pretty hard to top China.”

Off air

At 7 p.m., Butterfield has just finished her last newscast of the day. She going home, and the first thing she’ll do is take off her makeup and throw her hair in a ponytail. When not at work, Butterfield prefers to be “comfortable”—she says she’s almost unrecognizable to those who watch her show every day.

And while she’d be perfectly content to stay at KSL for a long time, she says she’ll “never say never” when it comes to taking a national news job. But the offer would have to be a really sweet deal.

“It was always my goal to get back here and at KSL,” Butterfield says. “My family’s here. It’s a great market. We have great news out of here. I’m very, very happy with my position here. It’s like a little piece of Zion. It’s very much a team effort to put on the best show we possibly can.”

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