Denver stations KMGH and KUSA have just announced plans to pool their helicopter coverage. They follow stations in Chicago and Philadelphia that have made similar decisions. It’s all about cost-saving ways to cover stories that every station chases.
Of course, newsrooms would prefer to go it alone. But pooling the most expensive tools makes sense, especially if what’s saved on choppers helps protect the reporting boots on the ground. I made just that argument here in my 2007 article “Re-Thinking the Chopper Wars”:
The cost of maintaining choppers and crews takes a big chunk out of a newsroom’s operating budget. Ask any news director about managing the flight hours, sometimes grounding the machine to bank the time for the next rating period or breaking news story. When that happens, it can’t fly to the distant and less-dramatic news, the kind that doesn’t immediately grab eyeballs but feeds the brain or the soul.
More importantly, potential for disaster is high as multi-tasking pilots swarm police chases and other unpredictable events.
Let me anticipate some other arguments against my pool proposal:
Q. What about traffic? Our morning show is all about traffic and weather.
A. Not all stations use helicopters for traffic. In huge, gridlocked cities, there may indeed be a good service provided by helicopter traffic reporting. Then do it — pooled or otherwise. But traffic is also reported by road sensors, fixed highway cameras, creative graphics, good reporters and helpful viewers.
Q. What about accuracy and independence? Isn’t it better to have more eyes in the sky rather than fewer?
A. Pooling is a tradition borne of limited access — not of any desire by journalists to have one media outlet do the work for everyone. The helicopter would provide pool video. It would be up to the individual news outlets to do the reporting that goes with the video. They do it now anyway, since staff in the helicopter are often busy just documenting what is in front of their eyes — not the complete scope of the story.
Q. Won’t viewers be disappointed?
A. Will they? If they still have aerial views of important events and if the cost savings are plowed back into the newsroom for better, substantive daily reporting, they might even be pleased.
I wrote that after two Phoenix TV helicopters collided while tracking a police chase. Four men died that day. Even as a former TV news director who loved her helicopter’s view of news, I believed that the time had come to take a hard look at both the risk and expense of helicopters. Just what is the return on such an investment?
The National Transportation Safety Board has just released its report on the Phoenix crash, determining that the pilots were distracted by the multi-tasking involved in reporting the story, and lost track of each other. According to an Associated Press report, “The five-member board voted unanimously to recommend that TV stations no longer have helicopter pilots also report news while they fly unless the stations can demonstrate pilots can do both safely.”
So, even as stations pool helicopters for economic reasons, let’s make certain they focus on safety as well as economy.
Meanwhile, what else could stations pool to help the bottom line, without harming journalism and viewer service? Since I stirred the pot by bringing up helicopters a few years back, let me toss in another conversation starter: Doppler radar.
Yes, weather is a major competitive battleground, and most stations already have significant investments in radar and related tech tools to predict and report weather. But when the capital costs run into the millions, isn’t time to consider whether stations may be at parity when it comes to the major equipment? Promotion and cool names for your weather gear aside, isn’t it the interpretation and on-air presentation (clarity, immediacy, accuracy, user-friendliness) of weather information that drives viewer choices?
I can see a day when stations share the radar, save the costs, and compete by creatively forecasting on the air, the Web and mobile devices. Just hang on to the smart and hard-working meteorologists and forecasters who can make that happen… please?
