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Attitude is the single most important characteristic you need as a television producer, says Michelle Gillies. Meeting deadlines and meeting requirements are high on her list as well.

"Deadlines are important in any business," she says. "In this case, if you miss the deadline you have a square box sitting in your living room with nothing but black on it. Sponsors don't pay to sponsor dead air."

For this reason, time is one of her biggest sources of stress. "If a show is scheduled for a certain day or time, then it had better be finished by then."

Budgeting, she says, is another biggie. "The absolute best case is to come up under budget, otherwise you end up eating the costs. A lot of time is spent costing out equipment, people and time."

Gillies has spent years building the career she has today. After 20 years as a photographer, she decided to start volunteering at the local cable company and was "bitten by the television bug." She then did a college television program and is now working as an independent television producer.

As a producer, her responsibilities include program proposals, treatments and scripting. A treatment is a third-person, present-tense summary of the proposed show.

"The purpose is to spell out the idea behind the film into a more detailed presentation of the material and your approach to it," says Gillies. Then she has to actually set up the shooting, whether she does it herself or hires someone else to do it.

The next scene has her doing the final edit of the program, or again hiring someone to do it. "In essence, the producer is responsible for all aspects of the show."

Gillies loves being there throughout a whole project. "It is like having a baby -- the conception of the idea, how it grows and develops because of you, and finally giving birth to the final product," she says.

"The worst is having to deal with people's egos."

There is no room for egos at a producer's end of things. "I think one of the most important aspects of my job is client relations," she says.

"My most memorable moment was when I played a finished corporate [video] for the client. It was about deaf [and] blind children. When I finished, the client had tears running down her face," recalls Gillies. "I couldn't believe that something I was responsible for had moved someone so deeply. What a feeling!"

A TV producer has to be able to roll with the punches. Steve McQuade is a TV news producer. Some days he expects one story to lead the newscast -- and then suddenly something happens and he's running with something else. "It's a tremendous rush while you're doing it. You don't think, you just do. You're just doing what has to be done and when it's done you say, 'Wow, that was something else.'"

McQuade has a master's degree in journalism from Boston University in Massachusetts. He was a teacher but lost his job to educational cutbacks. He looked at it as an opportunity to try something he'd always been interested in -- television news.

"As a kid, I was really into TV news, Walter Cronkite and the Huntley Brinkley report. This was an interest of mine and I thought it was something I could do something with," he recalls.

McQuade got into journalism thinking he could change the world. Now he just thinks about getting the job done with as few mistakes as possible. "It's really different but, ultimately, it's a lot of fun," says McQuade.

There's more to television producing than, well, what you see on television.

"It's not half as glamorous as people make it out to be," says Sujata Berry says. She's a television producer for a national current affairs show.

Berry's job is to find people to talk with the show's host, and research and write about a multitude of subjects. Berry has done everything from finding an expert to talk about strange viruses to finding people who have witnessed natural disasters.

"I love the fact you're paid to be informed about everything in the world, and it's useful information. I've used everything from science knowledge to the fact I can speak Indian languages on this job," says Berry.

Born in Bombay, India, Berry moved to North America when she was 15. She became interested in journalism while completing her political science degree. "It was one of the things I most enjoyed while I was getting my undergraduate degree."

Berry gets a charge out of the pace of television. "I love the pace of this business. It's very intense work," Berry explains. "I'm happy when I'm busiest."

She works as part of a team to produce the show. Each morning, the crew holds a story meeting to decide what stories to bring to the show.

"It's a lot of teamwork. No person is an island. Yes, you have the reporter whose face everyone sees, but there's also a producer, researcher and editor. Every story you see, three to 10 people worked on it," Berry explains.

Some days she has to make a hundred calls. "You have to enjoy talking to people."

Berry says a crucial part of a TV producer's job is organization. "We have to decide who we want to talk to, why we want to talk to them, figuring out what we need to bring to a story and finding that person."

Berry says you have to like the work or you won't do it very long.

"Yeah it's a tough business," she admits, "but it's also a lot of fun. I mean, where else are you going to be paid to read the paper every day?"