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Austin TV stations to share news video
Austin’s local TV stations are jumping into pool coverage. It’s a sign of the sagging economy in general and the state of TV news and journalism in particular.
Early this week, news seeped out of KXAN that the NBC station would soon begin sharing video of standard events such as news conferences with Fox-owned KTBC. By the middle of the week, all five local stations, including News 8 Austin, were on board for pool coverage.
An invitation has been extended to Univision’s KAKW, but the station hasn’t officially signed on yet.
The group, including Univision, will meet next Wednesday to finalize the plan and iron out details.
“We all have limited resources, so it comes down to choice. Do you cover this or that?” said Frank Volpicella, news director of KVUE. “This arrangement allows us to cover more and to cover enterprise journalism, stories that are unique for our viewers. It’s not a big cost savings for us. The big value is we’ll be able to get more video.”
In the early going, the partnership will apply to daytime weekdays only. News directors and assignment editors will agree on an event to be covered and shared, and a photographer from one station will be sent to cover it. The pool shots will then be distributed to all the stations, and each newscast would write and air its own stories. Occasionally stations might send their own reporters to the event covered by the pool photographer.
Sharing news video is not unheard of in Austin. Stations have pooled coverage of trials from time to time. Other TV markets around the country have been doing it for years, as have network news divisions. Pool coverage of political conventions, speeches and press conferences is standard operating procedure these days.
But this is the first time all of our competing local news operations have joined hands in an official capacity.
“We’re all competitive, but there was a deep sense of camaraderie and respect that we all have,” Volpicella said. “We all are faced with choices, and there are lot of news conferences in this town, especially during the legislature, that happen at the same time or within a half-hour of each other. We can’t be everywhere at once.”
Not everyone champions this idea. Jim McNabb, former Austin TV news reporter, producer and manager, believes pool coverage can be a slippery slope leading to further homogenization of the news.
“If all the local media are reporting from the same stuff, I believe that the consumer/user/viewer of broadcast journalism may be losing something of great value,” McNabb said in his NewsMcNabb blog. “I do have faith in some of the journalists in this market who will ensure that the important work of (getting) information to the audience is being done. Some, however, may be lazy. Some stations may simply take the rote sound bites of the day to fill the news hole.”
“Idol” does the right thing
Nick Mitchell, the weird dude with the nerdy alter- ego, got what he deserved on last night’s “American Idol” results show. He got bumped.
Voted through the the Top 12 were Allison Iraheta, 16; Kris Allen, 23; and Adam Lambert, 26.
Mitchell, you may recall, is the strange guy with the alter-ego Norman Gentle. We didn’t like him one bit. He made our skin crawl, and he took up valuable space on the show.
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By Concerned Viewer
March 2, 2009 9:24 AM | Link to this
The Revolution WIL NOT BE TELEVISED!