Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2011/05/17
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Ted, Congratulations on having such an ambitious grandson. But a word of caution about a career in television. My son, daughter and son-in-law are heavily involved in TV. My son is an executive in a firm which makes and supplies TV equipment. No problem there. Television will always require broadcasting and cable equipment, My daughter and son-in-law both work for a major market ABC TV station. Both have seen jobs contract by a significant amount in the last few years. First the editing jobs were lost as TV stations could do their editing on Mac computers rather than banks of tape drives. Then many of the directing jobs, Cameramen are decreasing in number now, particularly in the news departments, as much on air video is captured on handheld HD cameras and HD cell phones. My son-in-law, the morning news anchor of his station, rises at 2 a.m. every morning to get to the studio and write/edit his copy for the 6 a.m. broadcast. He also reprises the local news, weather and traffic after the network cable feed goes off the air and is on duty for breaking news until noon. He has to be in bed by 8 or 9 p.m. every evening. No parties or late dinners. It is hell on family life. Despite union rules forbidding on air personnel to use TV cameras, he was issued an iPhone 4 by the station and was expected to take adventitious news video whenever he saw a breaking story. The station had a legal opinion that a cell phone was not a news video camera and was exempt from the union rules. The union, running scared, did not contest it. He fully expects that in a few years news stories will be read on air by animitronic robots or their video parallels. My daughter, formerly on air "talent," saw how things were developing several years ago and switched to producing. She is now a senior producer for the station, has been nominated for five Emmys and has won three prestigious international awards, but has seen her career opportunities decrease as well. She is thinking of quitting her TV job to teach journalism in a nearby college. So advise your grandson to take up a less precarious line of work, bull riding for example. The photographic world, as we know it, has changed markedly. Everyone has an image making device, not necessarily a camera, and hardly any event can go unrecorded. Quality, at least in the news media counts for little. Images are viewed briefly and then are replaced by more recent images, and so on. That's not to say that there is no place for good photography. It's just not relevant to your local TV station. I wish it weren't so - but that's the way it is. Larry Z - - - - - And on 24 May he turns 21 years young and is absolutely gung ho about photography, photojournalism and shooting video! And is a natural writer, physically going to be a good looking young guy in front of a TV video camera as a broadcaster if that comes to be. There isn't going to be any holding him as he says .... " I want to be as great as you are grandpa! But I'm aiming at being better!" Then he smiles and winks at me! :-) Dr. Ted