[QuadList] QuadList Digest, Vol 22, Issue 27

[rabruner at aol.com]

When new technologies come through the door, they are frequently not offered to older workers.  Management draws a line between the new "computers' and the old "tape machines" and offers what little orientation and training is given to office girls and interns instead of experienced operational people.  Then when they have have cleared the landscape of the "old school people who couldn't adapt," you get all the blessings of robotic cameras -- lousy camera work, the same shot everyday at the same point in every show, talent trying to rock around to get in the shot, or every shot super loose so that it's not obvious the framing is wrong or that the video is out of focus, almost no motion in the cameras at all because nobody trusts them to be stable when you try to move them live, and the inexperienced people who operate the console often don't have the knowledge to improve the shots anyway.  
    Then when you have the on air look of the station determined by the low rent help over in the office pool you get all the blessings of full station automation, competing spots hard cut video to video, upcut programs, wildly varying audio levels, wrong events on the air like yesterday's promos today, long periods of black when the computer doesn't understand what the log service in Freakistan put into the list and the maintenance guy has to drive in from the suburbs to the 'lights out' master control and on and on.  Yes, it's certainly good we've gotten those expensive old farts out of the way so we can have all these new cheaper ways of doing things. 
Bob Bruner
W9TAJ








From:
Chill315 at aol.com

To:
quadlist at quadvideotapegroup.com

Subject:
Re: [QuadList] OB Film Vs. Studio Video

Date:
Tue, 13 Apr 2010 16:01:17 EDT



Bill
 
I have seen the decline of the unions in TV because of the inability to go with the flow.  There are so many stations that are now basically now only union in name only.  The advent of computer technology was the final nail in the coffin.  I watched as the unions did not recognize the need to adapt.  The UAW did it in the auto industry.  I remember discussing with people at a station that I was working at about new machines to replace the ACR-25.  The capacity would allow complete automation of the work flow.  The reaction by one person was we will strike before they can do that.  
 
Stations can no longer have a full time person at very high wages stand behind a camera for a couple of hours news a day.  Robotics took that and paid for themselves.  Now the server and automation are eliminating tape.  PCs are doing the editing.  And the newsroom systems now do the CG work.  It has to happen with the fragmentation of the viewing market.
 
There will always be the need for the high level engineer at a station..  But the old days of having the pocket protector and the green screwdriver for every operator died long ago.  
 
Chris Hill
WA8IGN





Attached Message


From:
Bill Carpenter <wcarpen107 at yahoo.com>

To:
Quad List <quadlist at quadvideotapegroup.com>

Subject:
Re: [QuadList] OB Film Vs. Studio Video

Date:
Tue, 13 Apr 2010 14:12:21 -0700 (PDT)



Yes, Chris,

I had a good friend who was the C.E. of WHDH in Boston in the late 80's, and we had a long discussions related to after they added robotic cameras for the newscasts, that we should make a animated program which would face the Talent and and run on a dedicated monitor, and provide all the functions of a floor director. 
We had a character planned who would count down and up on his fingers, speed up, slow down, and point to cameras, and we probably would have made some good money if we made the program. It was great fun to plan something fun like that, which was really showing how silly the whole thing had gotten once animation was here.

Bill

PS: another C.E. friend used to by a box of "Greenie's", a month and make a show of passing them out to everyone who worked for him, just so he could barrow one from whoever was closest when he was out of his office!





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