Moving Pictures (a TV news question)

I know we have a few TV people on here, so here's my question:

What is with the trend/technique of having anchorpeople and cameras moving around during the newscast?

I don't watch TV news very often, but I watched a local station's late newscast last night, and for a few of the "top stories" they had the anchorman and anchorwoman walk away from their standup desk to a wall of screens. The camera moved with them, risking motion sickness among viewers.

Worst of all, they would position the camera lower at times, shooting up on the person and ruining whatever images were on the screens as the studio light glare obscured it.

Just wondering what they're trying to do here. I know they don't want 22 minutes of people sitting at a desk reading, but this looked like high school kids who were high trying to film a newscast.

 

They're trying to mimic the cable news style. CNN has famously tried different things with interactive displays, walls, etc. ESPN does it, too.

The problem is the local news channels have neither the technology nor personnel to pull it off well.

The worst one I've seen is reporting from the control room, where the reporter stands in front of a bank of monitors showing all the cameras in the studio...and you can see the anchors ruffling papers, writing stuff down, or staring blankly ahead over the reporter's shoulder.

It's the ongoing quest to look modern and most local stations fail miserably.

 

Managers love it. Consultants love it. Come up with a new move and management will gush over it during the next producers meeting.

I have never seen a shred of evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, that it moves the needle in the slightest with viewers.

 

The worst is those stations that use a green screen to make it look like there is an expansive newsroom behind them. I remember how irritated I got when reporters started ditching the handheld mikes and the anchors started gesturing "out" to the camera. And don't get me started about how many weather cut-ins.
About the only new wrinkle I like is running the scores on the bottom of the screen during the sports segment.

 

The thing I dislike most is how the local TV stations rip and read our newspaper. Damn, I hate that.

It got to the point where I'd hold a story for web release until well after 11 p.m. (We used to hold it until after 10:30, but one of the TV sports guys wised up and started checking our website after his signoff so he could have it on his taped 5 a.m. sportscast.)

 

THIS! At one stop, the Fox station would do a segment targeting news in our county each night. We'd stop production of the next day's paper, grab that day's paper and check off all the stories the did branded as their own. At another, a reporter did a story on a church program, and a couple of days later a station did the same story, but billed it as "a story you'll see only on News 4 Podunk!"

I got my pound of flesh elsewhere. We sent to AP a story about a suspect who. according to the surveillance tape, broke into McDonald's via a skylight and not only robbed the place, but grilled a burger while he was at it. AP called early in the evening, said they loved it for the odd news section, and, since we hadn't run it yet, when should they put it on the wire? I suggested doing it after our deadline, since I was alone on the desk and didn't want to put up with all the calls from TV stations wondering if we had the video yet, even thought we didn't.

 

I actually liked it when the TV station picked up a story I had written. In a lot of cases, they were stories the editors downplayed and they looked like jerks when they drew an outpouring from readers. Suddenly my follow-ups would end up on A1.