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Author
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Topic: Shops Where VJs Have Worked
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Marty McFly
Open Line Veteran
Member # 1449
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posted January 11, 2007 05:47 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Desert Rat:
If it's not all about money can anyone here give me another reason..besides financial concerns..why the stations that have done away with their news departments..did so.
Who's to say that there were other reasons (not financial) why the newsrooms were chopped?
Running a newsroom is VERY EXPENSIVE.
Go ask your news director if you can see the MONTHLY BUDGET for your news department. You would be floored.
First, there's the salaries of every news employee. Depending on your shop, that will include sports & weather so you may be looking at the minimum 25 employees (small shop). Figure out the math on what you think everyone makes and see what you think is being paid every month just in salaries.
Don't forget to add in what the station pays in that yummy Social Security, unemployment and benefits.
Whew!
Sat trucks and microwave vans aren't cheap.
Neither are the ENG cameras that photographers use.
All those VTR's in the edit bays weren't donated to the station.
Let's not forget those expensive studio cameras (there's 3), the set that cost 85k and the 25+ production folks who also work at the station who make it possible to put a newscast on the air.
The surface hasn't even been scratched yet.
It is VERY EXPENSIVE to run a newsroom and put on a newscast. Who's to say there are other reasons, besides financial, why a station would choose not to do news?
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'No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: "But what would you replace it with?" When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with?' – Thomas Sowell
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Spike
Open Line Veteran
Member # 3434
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posted January 11, 2007 06:22 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Desert Rat:
If it's not all about money can anyone here give me another reason..besides financial concerns..why the stations that have done away with their news departments..did so.
The assumption in your question is wrong. Just because some stations made a financial decision to drop news does not mean money is the only motivating factor in all business decisions. You picked a situation that IS motivated by money and tried to apply it to all other situations. It's like saying that since date rapes sometimes happen, all men want to rape the women they date.
Some people, managers even, actually have pride in their product. Where one station might decide that the return from producing news isn't worth the cost and effort (the profit motive), another in the same financial condition might decide that the connection to the community maintained by continuing the news is worth it.
I happen to know of one very successful television station, still family owned, that went full HD before any other station simply because the owner wanted the pride of being the first in the country to do it. From a purely profit-oriented viewpoint, that was a stupid move. But his company is doing just fine, and he's much more satisfied with it than he would have been had he said, "Oh, since it's all about the money, and HD is only going to cost us loads of money without much of a return for several years until HD sets costs less than $10K and more than 500 people in town have them, I'll just pass."
That's an example of where the profit motive wasn't the only factor. In fact, it was outweighed by other factors, and yet the company didn't go out of business as Marty would have predicted.
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Always watch television in a bright room with a dark heart.
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Spike
Open Line Veteran
Member # 3434
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posted January 11, 2007 06:28 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Rosenblum:
Whaddya mean no response? I said, you got me!
So, let me get this straight. You're admitting you lied to these people to get them to hire you?
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Always watch television in a bright room with a dark heart.
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Rosenblum
Member
Member # 12682
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posted January 11, 2007 06:31 PM
whatever you want to believe. what's the difference with you? You're like a Muslim fanatic. Any intelligent conversation is absolutely pointless. have a great time.
Posts: 472 | From: New York | Registered: Dec 2006
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Spike
Open Line Veteran
Member # 3434
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posted January 11, 2007 06:52 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Rosenblum:
Any intelligent conversation is absolutely pointless.
You keep saying this, but I don't actually see any intelligent conversation coming from you. All I see are sales pitches that fall apart under logical scrutiny. Yet you say that serious and reasonable objections to what you're doing aren't intelligent?
In other words, "If you don't agree with Rosenblum, you're stupid. Na na na na."
The reason you're not answering isn't that we're stupid. The reason that you're not answering is that us dumb ol' camera people and reporters turned out to be smarter than you thought, and you simply don't have answers to the questions posed.
That must be embarrassing for you.
By the way, you weren't calling me stupid a year and a half ago when you were picking my brain for ideas and saying I had a bright future as a consultant. Oh, that's right. I'm only stupid if you can't convert me over to your way of thinking.
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Always watch television in a bright room with a dark heart.
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Rosenblum
Member
Member # 12682
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posted January 11, 2007 07:52 PM
we all make mistakes.
Posts: 472 | From: New York | Registered: Dec 2006
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Spike
Open Line Veteran
Member # 3434
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posted January 11, 2007 08:00 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Rosenblum:
we all make mistakes.
Excellent. I think we've made a real breakthrough today. Now that you understand that your VJ system is a mistake, can we count on you to go away and leave our craft alone?
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Always watch television in a bright room with a dark heart.
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writer2
Open Line Veteran
Member # 5966
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posted January 12, 2007 06:00 AM
Spike, I loved the part where he said you were like a Muslim fanatic (terrorist?) Must have been taking a page from our President's campaign playbook.
[ January 12, 2007, 06:03 AM: Message edited by: writer2 ]
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Panic early and beat the rush.
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Rosenblum
Member
Member # 12682
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posted January 12, 2007 06:32 AM
If I were taking a page from the President's playbook I would go on a bender and say I had choked on a pretzel.
[ January 12, 2007, 06:35 AM: Message edited by: Rosenblum ]
Posts: 472 | From: New York | Registered: Dec 2006
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Spike
Open Line Veteran
Member # 3434
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posted January 12, 2007 06:58 AM
quote:
Originally posted by Rosenblum:
If I were taking a page from the President's playbook I would go on a bender and say I had choked on a pretzel.
Hey now, you can't criticize the President if you haven't ever held public office yourself, remember? Didn't we go over that one when you kept insisting that your detractors reveal their background and experience? You also can't criticize the President because so many people voted for him. Twice. I think we hit that one when you kept trying to argue that companies wouldn't hire you if what you were doing wasn't a good idea. Well, if that's true, then people wouldn't have re-elected President Bush if what he were doing wasn't a good idea. The vetting process for a President is very vigorous. Don't you recall his background being thoroughly scrutinized? I bet the press even looked in Europe to see if he had wrecked any television networks there.
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Always watch television in a bright room with a dark heart.
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Rosenblum
Member
Member # 12682
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posted January 12, 2007 07:48 AM
oye. with you its endless.
Posts: 472 | From: New York | Registered: Dec 2006
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Consider This
Senior Member
Member # 3201
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posted January 12, 2007 08:10 AM
quote:
Originally posted by Spike:
If it really were all about the money, Enron would be the gold standard of corporate America.
Most of that post was merely nonsense but this rose to the level of genuinely stupid. Enron cooked its books to artificially inflate its stock price. If anything it demonstrates how much money matters in corporate America and how aggressively shareholders demand that companies find ways to increase profits.
WRAL-TV in Raleigh was the first station to go HD. It is still locally owned and may be one of the great stations in the country. I wish all stations operated the way Capital Broadcasting Company runs WRAL. Unfortunately, it is the exception that proves the rule. Deregulation has discouraged family owned (or at least locally owned) stations, who don't have to answer to stockholders.
Look at Media General's homepage. What's the most obvious thing on the page? Its stock price -- updated to the minute! In the center of the page are links to stories under the heading "Company News." Every single one of them is investor related. This from a company whose flagship station recently had one of its main anchors celebrate her 30th anniversary at the station. Not worth a mention?
Same at Sinclair's site. Stock price right on the home page. Company news and calendar both include only investor related items.
Belo Corporation was as close to a dissenter as I found in my brief search. You have to scroll down the home page to get to the stock price and one of the company news items is titled "Belo Television Stations Provided 146 Candidates Free Airtime During The 2006 Political Season."
In another thread (or maybe this one, they get confusing), I had asked whether VJ jobs were better than no jobs since it seemed that stations desperate enough to go OMB would be more likely to drop news entirely than to re-fund positions necessary to do it "right." Spike answered "neither" and seemed to suggest that Young Broadcasting was using the VJ model to prep KRON and WKRN for sale. (Forgive me if I misread the post. There was a lot of writing, articulately assembled, that didn't say anything clearly.) Say that (a) that's what Spike meant and (b) that he's right and Young dumps the two stations.
Who's going to buy them? A Capital Broadcasting Company? Look at recent sales. In ones I've read about, the buyer has been another investment company that thinks it can squeeze even more profit from the operations it's taking over.
At most stations, the bottom line really is the bottom line. Managers answer to remote people in faraway places who see only numbers on a chart. It might not be right but it certainly is true.
If Rosenblum Associates decides tomorrow to get out of consulting to focus on creating VJ programming for cable networks -- or on farming yams -- will you be happy? Or will you see, as Hawkeye Pierce once uttered on M*A*S*H, "You've cured the symptom. The disease rages on."
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News Is Broken
Open Line Veteran
Member # 9091
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posted January 12, 2007 11:10 AM
Holy hell.. Spike, bud, we love ya but please give it a rest. Rosenblum ain't gonna stop what he's doing just because some anonymous dude on a media message board says so. I've read through the numerous rants on b-roll too over the last couple years and I'm sorry to say it but nothing you say or do in here is going to dissuade the man from "destroying your craft" as you say. If it would, believe me, the bashing he took on b-roll would have done that for us long ago.
Now, I've been a photog before, so I can tell you a few things about your "craft". It's how I got my start in the biz.
It's not brain surgery or rocket science. It was actually very easy for me. I may or may not have been very good at it, but in this business, sadly, you do not need to be. All you really need to know is how to listen to a scanner and play nice with the cops. The rest is evident to anyone who bothers to take a couple hours watching someone else's work. I didn't win any NPPA awards at it, but when you're chasing car crashes and house fires, or standing in a parking lot framing up the talking head during the live shot, well... who cares? There are days that I still miss it, and then there are others when I'm glad I don't do it anymore.
Now with this VJ thing going around, maybe I'll be called upon to do it again someday. I may decide to try it. I may decide to sign up for truck driving school instead. (I always wanted to do that, ever since I was a little kid.) But at least I'm aware that it's coming and that's good enough for me.
THAT is what you should take away from what Rosenblum says. Nothing else (unless you just happen to own your own TV station) is really relevant to you or me, is it? I'm flattered that you have taken it upon yourself to champion the cause of oppressed newsies everywhere, but in all reality it really doesn't matter what WE say about it - it's up to the suits to decide whether to do it or not. The only thing up to us is whether we want to take part in it, or not.
If it were to happen to me today, I'd go sign up for trucker school. But that's only because I slept in late, woke up with a headache and it looks like rain outside. Tomorrow I might feel differently about it. That's just me.
Life's too short to fight unwinnable wars, Spike. Go have a green tea frappuchino and a smoke. Relax. Marty will cover the phone for you while you're gone.
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-News is Broken
"You can't be like pancakes... all exciting at first... but by the end you're f--king sick of 'em." -Mitch Hedberg
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Ralphie the buffalo
Open Line Veteran
Member # 1050
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posted January 12, 2007 12:53 PM
quote:
Originally posted by News Is Broken:
All you really need to know is how to listen to a scanner and play nice with the cops. The rest is evident to anyone who bothers to take a couple hours watching someone else's work. I didn't win any NPPA awards at it, but when you're chasing car crashes and house fires, or standing in a parking lot framing up the talking head during the live shot, well... who cares?
Judas Priest. Are you kidding? That is like the lowest form of this job. If that was all there was to my future I would leave.
- Interesting people
- experiencing different things
- traveling around the country
- covering exciting sports events
- and most importantly...working with a reporter who makes me raise my game up a level
are just a few of the reasons I stay. It sure isn't for spot news. I could care less if I cover another tragedy even though I am very good at it.
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"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."
Guatama the Buddha
(more than 2,000 years ago)
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Spike
Open Line Veteran
Member # 3434
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posted January 12, 2007 04:52 PM
quote:
Originally posted by News Is Broken:
Rosenblum ain't gonna stop what he's doing just because some anonymous dude on a media message board says so.
You don't really think I believe I can stop him, do you?
I have no illusions on that point. I know that very few managers in a position to make this kind of decision read this board. Maybe a few news directors, but this will happen above their heads.
So why bother? The same reason Rosenblum continues to post here, and the same reason Rosenblum posted on B-Roll for so long, when he also knows I won't reach any of the people paying his fees. It's a struggle for the attitudes of the people who will be directly affected by this. Rosenblum comes on these message boards to try to grease the way, to convince people that what he's doing is a good thing so that they won't flee or rebel when he shows up. The last thing he wants is for all the good journalists to skip out and leave only the people not good enough to leave, all with a bad attitude toward the training and their new duties. He wants the good photogs to stay. He wants the good reporters to stay. If he can convince them this isn't a disaster in the making, he thinks perhaps they'll stay and help him succeed.
But I DO want them to leave. I want these people to see what a bad thing this is and rebel. I want the ones who remain to make this as difficult for him as possible. I would love to see them stand up and organize in response to him.
I know I won't reach any managers. But I also know that people who otherwise might not have understood what was happening have likely read this thread and will be prepared if he shows up with his sample case, ready to sell.
quote:
Originally posted by News Is Broken:
Now, I've been a photog before, so I can tell you a few things about your "craft".
You have misunderstood. When I say that I want Rosenblum to leave our craft alone, I'm not talking about photojournalism. I'm talking about the craft of television journalism altogether. I'm talking about the craft of reporters, producers, editors and yes, photogs. All of them. Because we all work together on a common product, in a common craft.
quote:
Originally posted by News Is Broken:
It's not brain surgery or rocket science... I didn't win any NPPA awards at it, but when you're chasing car crashes and house fires, or standing in a parking lot framing up the talking head during the live shot, well... who cares?
Shooting video is easy. Shooting it well is not. Writing is easy. Hell, everybody with a sixth grade education can do that. Writing well is NOT easy. Even speaking is easy. But speaking well is not.
It's not whether the activity is easy in its most basic form. It's whether you can do it well while also doing other things at the same time, things that use different parts of the brain that conflict with each other. The overwhelming majority can't.
The proof is in the work itself. The stations that have gone VJ converted experienced photogs over to one man bands. What did we see? When the photogs had other responsibilities thrust upon them, the video suffered. Award winning photogs were making what I would consider rookie mistakes, with bad framing, bad focus, jump cuts in the editing, and all manner of mistakes that shouldn't have happened if things worked like the sales pitch said they would.
I agree with you about how difficult it is to shoot video. I could train just about anybody to get a picture. I could probably train the majority to do it well. But the majority will not do it well when other responsibilities prevent them from concentrating on doing it well. The brain just doesn't work that way.
A final example. Driving a car. Any idiot can drive a car. Proof of that is that idiots pass the driver's test and get licensed every day. But people have the damnedest problem talking while driving a car. Safety researchers had noticed this long before cellphones, discovering that a large percentage of accidents were caused by people trying to talk to other people in the car with them while driving. They discovered that driving and talking used different parts of the brain that competed for attention. The talking was a distraction from driving. People on average simply don't drive as well when they're trying to hold a conversation. This didn't really become a major issue until so many more conversations were taking place inside vehicles as a result of cellphones.
Operating a car isn't really that complicated. Most of us have been driving a long time. It should be second nature. But even when something is second nature, you can't go against the structure of the brain. How often do you see people on cellphones weaving, speeding up and slowing down, running red lights, etc.? I see it every day.
Likewise, you can't ask the motor, visual and verbal centers of the brain to compete with each other in television and expect a good outcome.
[ January 12, 2007, 04:54 PM: Message edited by: Spike ]
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Always watch television in a bright room with a dark heart.
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News Is Broken
Open Line Veteran
Member # 9091
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posted January 12, 2007 05:26 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Spike:
The proof is in the work itself. The stations that have gone VJ converted experienced photogs over to one man bands. What did we see? When the photogs had other responsibilities thrust upon them, the video suffered. Award winning photogs were making what I would consider rookie mistakes, with bad framing, bad focus, jump cuts in the editing, and all manner of mistakes that shouldn't have happened if things worked like the sales pitch said they would.
That's not because they were OMB's. That's because they were given the title of VJ but not allowed to work the way Rosenblum describes, i.e. 2 stories a week, 2 weeks to work on features, etc. It's the same daily turn run and gun stuff as before, and that's why it sucks. Not his fault.
quote:
Originally posted by Spike:
The last thing he wants is for all the good journalists to skip out and leave only the people not good enough to leave, all with a bad attitude toward the training and their new duties. He wants the good photogs to stay. He wants the good reporters to stay. If he can convince them this isn't a disaster in the making, he thinks perhaps they'll stay and help him succeed.
But I DO want them to leave. I want these people to see what a bad thing this is and rebel. I want the ones who remain to make this as difficult for him as possible. I would love to see them stand up and organize in response to him.
All that will do is put the people you are fighting for out of work. Any ND can tell you - there are stacks and stacks of reels out there from people ready to replace you at any time. So what if half the staff or even ALL the staff walks? They can be replaced in a week or less. And they'll be replaced with people fresh outta school who think being a VJ is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Now what?
We all already know what he's all about and how well the system works (or more precisely, doesn't). All you're succeeding in doing is giving him attention at this point and playing right into his hands. He's loving all the free attention right now... trust me, he will turn it all against you and say something like "See, if you look here you will see what some of your less desirable employees will say - you should be on the lookout for guys like this and get rid of them ASAP if you want your VJ implementation to succeed. I've found that if you just say 'everyone will do this or there's the door' then that little problem tends to solve itself."
Think about it - you're a fool if you don't realize he's just using you for his own ends. He hasn't made millions of dollars in the cable tv biz by accident, and he's no dummy.
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-News is Broken
"You can't be like pancakes... all exciting at first... but by the end you're f--king sick of 'em." -Mitch Hedberg
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Roy Hobbs
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Member # 8266
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posted January 12, 2007 08:15 PM
It's not a VJ's demo tape...
IT'S A COOKBOOK!!!
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The Mockingbird
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Member # 6852
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posted January 16, 2007 04:00 AM
It's the right size for 3/4".
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