Up Here in Toronto ontario it's not that bad yet but stations and networks are hurt bad by the recession, one is in bankruptcy protection now so who knows what will happen.
You are right news is being missed when they go that route, for breaking news you need people listening to scanners to the police, fire, ems, etc provided they haven't gone encrypted yet and finding the news, then chasing it, you need people searching out good events in the community as well and sending people, one person doing all those things cannot do a quality job and the result is not something people care to watch and I know myself for example when I am doing the live operations using wirecast my shooting to disc/tape suffers because I am not able to concentrate as much on making good pictures, I enjoy the tech side of this new live technology but I have also noticed when I am live and shooting at the same time my shooting suffers. A few hairs on the top of my head have also tried to turn grey as well but I turned them back.
I have five scanners in my truck, I also program them (radioreference.com) and that alone is a heck of a lot of work, then listening because you never know when news will happen.
Today's newsroom managers have no clue about how quality work used to be produced, think we can fly and be everywhere in five minutes and do five things all at once.
They do this in news for some reason but not yet at least in the trades, I don't see one person doing the electrical, plumbing and drywalling on ajob site so why in news?
The other problem I am seeing in news is those who have some experience get no credit for it today, everyday might as well be my first day on the job.
It's a very unique business thats for sure.
On another note I have installed Windows 7 professional this weekend with excellent results, uses way less resources than vista and I haven't even tweaked it yet and freed up enough CPU that my Wirecast visibly ran better in a test I did today. All hardware and software just worked perfectly after the install and I am very happy.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz
Mark,
NBC and Fox are both going the way of the "content producer". They are using the little Panasonic camera with memory stick media. An assignment is given and the shooter goes out and collects video including his/her own standup, then goes back to the car and edits on Final Cut, writes the dialog and then cuts that as well using their laptop. Then runs to a Starbucks or McD that has free wifi and uploads the story. The only people who like this idea are the management people. The shooters, reporters, editors and most importantly the audience doesn't seem happy with the new way of doing things. It has also cost a lot of jobs and the unions are all balking at it. Here in Chicago, Local News Service has begun where one shooter goes out and produces a piece without a reporter and then sends it to all the LNS subscribers. Those stations that subscribe ( and not all have) provide one crew per day and there is one assignment editor who parses out the crews. As you can imagine lot's of news is being missed because there is no one shooting the back story or the other behind the scenes video. No reporter means there is no professional to ask questions or put a slant on the story. It is an experiment but has already cost about 50 jobs in those member stations.
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