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ABC News – Cutting Workforce 20% – Suprising No One
ABC News has announced today that they are cutting 20% of their staff.
According to a spokeperson, to keep content flowing…”The network will rely more heavily on ‘digital journalists’ who produce, record and edit much of their material.”
Those in the local news business have seen this trend for years. First they cut the sound guy, then later the cameraman, so eventually it’s down to pretty much one person from conception to broadcast. The quality of the work has gone down in a few cases (IMHO), but it’s still “good enough” in most cases to convey the stories that are being told. Those of us in corporate video production are used to putting two people on a shoot where we used to use four. Producers edit. Editors shoot. Everyone “does” sound.
My question is – how far do you think this “micro-staffing” will go? I’m thinking it will go at least as far as print – and (hint, hint) I’m not dictating this post to a Secretary.
For instance, I work in an organization that has people with the skill, the experience and even the equipment to produce very high quality work at a robust – some may even say fast – pace. BUT our production staff will NEVER be as fast (or as authentic) as a guy in an office with a Flip Mino camera and nothing standing between him and YouTube but a corporate firewall. If he really knows what he wants to say, he can have a video DONE and out to the world in the time it would normally take him to fill out a production request.
The ONLY value proposition I have to justify using (read: paying for) a team of professionals to create video is QUALITY. But just like some print messages can be conveyed effectively through a few xeroxed flyers on a bulletin board, technical quality sometimes comes in behind speed and cost in the customer’s mind.
I say, don’t let this drive for fast and cheap drive you crazy. The trend will continue as it always has. Instead, let it drive you to a higher level of production. Let go of the other stuff as fast as you can.
How many of us got into the video production business to put “fast” and “cheap” over “quality” anyway? Not me. I like having a professional on set that I can depend on to focus solely on audio… or lighting… or directing. Especially if that specific skill is her passion and she is given the experience to learn that part of her craft as deeply as possible.
So, all of this scary news is actually GOOD news for creative professionals who want to get back to producing high-end work. Because we are at a tipping point of customers realizing they don’t really NEED to come to you for the low-end (and soon the middle either). They can do low-end by themselves.
When the client’s ideas deserve more – that’s where we come in. That’s where we want to be involved. That’s where we save them money and time by using highly skilled people. To put it back in the print context, I’m no longer fighting for that “lost dog flyer to post on a bulletin board” type of work. Give me the “full color photos, color, custom die cut, unusual folds” type of work.
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22 Replies
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They’ve evolved waay to slow to keep this from happeneing. Same with the other broadcasters. If you talk to many who work for these networks laying folks off, they’ll try to tell you how ratings are up.
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yeah… for youtube. lolThe problem is in th eold school mentality of the big wigs still in charge who can’t so much as operate a mouse. New blood would do em good but new blood seldom seeks a sinking ship.
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I think it’s broader than “organizations got big because bosses are clueless.” Which is true. But it’s not the ONLY thing that’s true. There was a time when journalists on the ground actually gathered news. They sifted through events and, for better or worse, tried to pull the pieces together to make a coherent story.
In other words, pretty much what WE do.
Not to make a political point, but I sensed it changing in the early 90s around the first Gulf War, when spreading the official word almost became a patriotic duty. There’s always an element of that in war journalism from every nation, for obvious reasons…but my lack of political point is that this seemed to spread across entire organizations, for every area of news, including entertainment and sports, which have largely blurred into each other and wind up being treated as news. It’s a mess.
To put it another way, again, sans politics, there was a time when journalism seemed a high calling. For individual reporters this can still be true, but I think organizations as a whole are largely cynical. Their business models are just now catching up with the changing realities of ownership – ideals are ideals, but people watch screaming.
A general manager’s ONLY reasonable response is to protect the value of the BUSINESS. People watch screaming. End of story. Bring the reporters home. Fire ’em.
PS. TJA, when you’re talking about micro-sized printing, are you talking about a magazine done by 2 guys in their pajamas?
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The jobs of those big bosses is to predict and adhere to and/or lead the viewers you speak of. They are watching a todal wave and don’t know how to surf. As sponsors pull, they don’t even counter with web solutions for them. They just kind of shrug as if they don’t know where the ratings are going.
This is not unlike GM pretending they don’t know why another 30mpg fugly car doesn’t sell like hotcakes.
Competing comes to mind. -
Tim hit the nail on the head, it’s purely a biz thing…
Before I sold my soul to advertising, I was in the televsion news business for quite a few years. I had a little sign on my desk that said “I’m not a journalist, but I play one on TV.” Which was absolutely true.
Looking back I was a terrible journalist. But people thought I was good. I did high-profile stuff. I won awards. I turned out slick stuff. I looked smooth on the air. I mastered the patented “Peter Jennings head tilt, with concern.”
I was also not a good journalist… but it didn’t matter.
Because television news isn’t journalism. Television news is show business. And very little more.
There are good television journalists out there. But they all work for organizations that dont value that… they only value dollars and how many cents they have to spend to get each viewer. And do whatever it takes to cut whatever fat (or non-fat) they can, and make whatever extra buck they can.
If a network can spend 50 grand and produce a half hour of some reality show, or spend $2 million to produce a single episode of Law & Order… which one do you think they are gonna choose? Cheap crap trumps expensive quality almost every time… sadly.
Viewers may refer to a network, local, or cable news program as a “newscast.” But in the GM’s office, in the sale’s manager’s office, in the news director’s office, even in the newsroom… it is only ever referred to as the “show.” Because that’s what it is. And that’s all it is.
Just a show.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Thanks for the grin this morning, Todd, recalling Peter Jennings and his well remembered tilt of concern.
Today, it’s hard to be a “concerned” journalist — with the patented Peter Jennings Tilt™ or not — when you are spending most of your time talking about stories at which journalists of a few decades back would be laughing their asses off, if told to read them on-air. Britney and Paris?
Oh please make it stop!$#@!
I think I catch network news once every few weeks or so. I think I have watched it twice since last December.
I am sure I am not the only one and so it’s likely budgets are reflecting the eroding market confidence and respect that people feel towards the “news” organizations.
Ron Lindeboom
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Just a quick addendum…
For anyone who doubts that network news is show business… you only have to watch the first 10 seconds of any newscast to see.
Who do you hear saying the words “This is the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric”? It’s no longer the venerable (and now late) Water Cronkite. Now those words are spoken by Morgan Freeman.
Over at the peacock, and ABC? It’s Michael Douglas and Mike Rowe with the voiceover duties.
We’ve come a long way from James Earl Jones and his golden pipes proclaiming “This…… is CNN.”
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Ron Lindeboom] “I am sure I am not the only one and so it’s likely budgets are reflecting the eroding market confidence and respect that people feel towards the “news” organizations.
“TMZ is the only honest source of tabloid journalism left. They make no bones about it, they hire kids to do the reporting, and they only seek out fluff about the private lives of celebrities and politicians.
Meanwhile, the networks do exactly the same thing, only they hide it behind the faces of people who look like journalists.
I think FOX News really changed the game when they entered the marketplace and began to call their brand of news “fair and balanced.”
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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Fox actually had to go to court not too long ago and explain that what they did was not technically “news”. ‘Nuff said about that.
As far as ABC downsizing, will they now call it “The Craig’s List Nightly Report”?
I have worked alongside good and bad reporters for years, and shooters from various small market stations as well as old pros from Chicago.
Yesterday I went to shoot an event and put up a mult box to feed everybody good audio. The kid from the local station shows up with a creaky betacam SP camera and asks where the audio is. I tell him take any open plug, they each have a switch that flips them to line-level or mic-level, whichever you prefer.
“What’s line level mean? Is that what I want to use?”
I think he was also the reporter, as well as the shooter.All stations are cheapskates, small market stations are the worst. We had a promising intern that took a nightside shooter job at the local TV station after he left us, he had to quit it after a couple weeks and now works at a rent-a-car place because the news gig didn’t pay enough to live on. And we’re talking young single guy who can subsist on not much more than dollar store ramen and a used shipping crate for food and shelter. I think they made him buy his own gas to drive to gigs too.
Cable news is particularlyy afflicted in that they have a gaping hole that needs filling every 24 hours, but filling it with quality material costs more than they are willing to pay. So what they do most is rip-and-read versions, shoulder-surfing the radio, print, and web journalists and not so much reporting any story, as they are reporting on the reporting of the story done by someone else. They will wheel a handfull of stories on the hour, then fill with pieces that are “reactions” or “analysis” of the same story. The reactions and analysis shows are dirt cheap, using material that is phoned in, shot in-studio, or provided thru cheap sat uplinks somewhere near wherever the spokesperson the producer dug up is located. I would say in 24 hours of cable news you would find an actual 15 minutes of real jouranlism. All the rest is just cheap filler for the meatloaf. What’s scary is that the radio and print journalists that are the plankton for these behmoth operations are also downsizing, so basically if it wasn’t covered by an AP stringer, you’re not going to hear about it very soon, if ever, from the main cable news places, until they find it posted on the web somewhere and decide to follow it up. At that point, you can do the same for yourself, and better, if all you’re doing is aggregating web feeds. I don’t need some pretty lady reading a web update to me, so I don’t watch much cable TV news any more, I know how the hot dog is made.
You can trace the fall of news to the time when the government stoped insisting that stations had a duty to the public good in exchange for using our airwaves. Since the creaky old days, news was always a money-loser for networks as well, but doing news and public affairs programming was considered part of the cost of doing business and the pay-back for raking in money from the entertainment division, which offset those costs. News also was a prestige element that gave networks something to brag about and market with. When much of broadcast deregulation came in, the dog was let off the chain and ran off to chase the shiny hubcaps of “sharerholder return.” I would like to see the Fairness Doctine restored, and the re-imposition of some standards for news and public affairs, not about their content, but at least about the amount aired weekly.
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Is “video production” the new “communications” degree?
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[David Roth Weiss] “TMZ is the only honest source of tabloid journalism left.”
According to the movie MEN IN BLACK, that honor belongs to The Enquirer.
“If you want the real truth that you won’t find on the nightly news, then you must turn to The Enquirer.”
— Tommy Lee Jones
Best,
Ron Lindeboom
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