I’ve been in this business for four decades – and have gone through some amazing technological changes in delivering the news on television.   In my day – we were excited about – and embraced – the new technology.  That’s why I find it curious that the current TV news generation seems to be somewhat afraid – or at the very least intimidated – by the new technology and the changes it brings to their lives. 

 This is a truly an exciting time to be in local television news – you have the opportunity to quickly deliver the news to people like never before.  Your reporting can be instant – and you can also quickly get reaction from your customers.   So, I say – embrace the new technology - like we did in the olden days!    Back then – we had a blast with the constant technological advances.   Just thinking about it rekindles some fun memories of  television equipment nearly 40 years ago.   Some of you old-timers will enjoy the journey into the past – you younger folks will most likely just shake your heads.  But please keep reading.

I started in local TV news while I was a radio station news director in Green Bay, and a stringer for WLUK-TV there using the old Bolex  silent film camera with a three-lens turret – no zoom here.  Then I started working for WLUK fulltime, and along came a marvelous new film camera called the CP-16.  It was the first self-contained news film camera with built-in audio controls.  Before that you wore a rig with a shoulder brace that held an audio device and the camera.    With the advent of the CP-16 the old heavy brace was tossed away and this small shoulder camera went everywhere.

We were fortunate at WLUK in those days because we were allowed to use a full 400-foot reel of film for one story.  It gave us ten minutes of film time for interviews and cover shots.   The competition had to shoot their stories in a maximum of 200 feet – a mere five minutes total.   Back in those film days a reporter had to be a master of the “pre-interview.”   You would talk to the subject of your story and ask them some questions without the camera – and then find the right nuggets to be asked again with the camera rolling.   Old folks were always a problem.  When you re-asked them the right question with the camera rolling they would invariably say – “I already answered that. “   Geez!

Now when you returned to the station with your story you had to sit around and wait until the film processor was fired up.  This was usually late in the afternoon because it was expensive to run so most of the film was run at the same time.  In Green Bay, our film processor dude also sold day-old donuts, and made an annual trek to Colorado – bringing back Coors beer (to help pay for his trip) that he would sell to us since it was not available east of the Rockies back in the day.  Some days the dryer on the film processor would break down and film was strung down the hallways to dry.

Once you finally received your developed film you would look in a tiny viewfinder (not much bigger than the screen on a iPod) to select your scenes for the story.  You used a cheap headset to listen to the interviews and then mark with a grease pencil on the film where the soundbite began and ended.  Then came the tricky part – you used a little magnetic tool to erase the sound before and after your interview – hoping you wouldn’t slip and erase an important part of the soundbite.

Now it got even trickier.  You had all your film clips hanging on a rack and it was time to glue them together to form the story.  If you didn’t get new glue each day the splices would not hold and your film would break while it was playing on air.   At WLUK we did A-B rolls with the scenes on the A reel and the interview on the B reel so the person’s soundbite could be covered by a filmed scene.   Once your story was finished – you gave the A and B reels to a person who would put together a “gang reel” for the newscast – hopefully putting all the A-B reels in the right order.   Sometimes though – your A reel would play with another reporter’s B reel.  Now that was a mess!

The next marvel came in 1976 in the form of the TK-76 a revolutionary video camera.  No more film!  No more A-B rolls!  You could actually playack an interview on the spot to be sure you had it!   You could roll on an interview without doing the old “pre-interview” because video tape could be re-used.   The TK-76 quickly made the CP-16 obsolete.

That same year came ENG – we could actually go live from the scene.  At WLUK,  I was charged with coming up with live shots every night to show off this new technology.  I had the honor of doing the first ever live shot in Green Bay television – at a prison farm that was going to be auctioned off the next day.  Not exactly riveting television.    We also did something very curious back then – the live camera was “gen-locked” to the TV station.   Now – I’m not an engineer – but I do know that meant that if we turned off our camera – the TV station would go off the air.  Bizarre!

A few years later when I was news director at WGR-TV (now WGRZ-TV) in Buffalo, we did the first satellite broadcast in the market as our anchor man used an NBC satellite to broadcast live from the Democratic Convention in New York.  We thought that was very cool despite being ripped off by the NYC unions.  This was 1980 – and it cost us $200 every time we wanted an extension cord plugged into a wall receptacle.

Spin forward a few years and now I am news director at KPNX-TV in Phoenix and we get the first satellite truck in the market – and do the first satellite live shot in Arizona.   It was from a resort – again not really exciting television.  But it opened the door on all kinds of live, on the scene coverage that was not available to us before then. 

It also resulted in an interesting event.  During the changing of government leadership in a Mexico border town a news crew from our competition in Phoenix had been kidnapped.  We rolled our sat truck down for the story, while the competition was forced to charter an airplane to get the video back for their noon newscast.  Well, seconds before the noon newscast the news crew from our competition was released – and we had them live on our noon newscast.  Their own TV station had to do a reader on the situation.   The news director called me and asked for a copy of the newscast.  He sent it to his corporate folks and a sat truck was soon on the way to his station to stay competitive.

Well, that’s enough reminicising for this blog.   But I hope you get my message.  We were a bit intimidated by this new technology too – and many reporters back in the day were horrible on – and scared to death – of doing live shots.  But it became part of their new job description.  Your job descripition is in disruption right now – but if you embrace the new technology – you will be more valuable than ever to your newsroom.  Go for it!

Jim

This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2009 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Willi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.