Facing the challenge of local HD news
Oct 30, 2006 9:00 AM
Stations considering the move to capturing, producing and airing their local newscasts in HD should work closely with their vendors to negotiate the technology costs and seek help from their fellow broadcasters with experience. That was the message from a panel of station representatives who have completed the transition and shared their experiences as part of an RTNDA discussion at the NAB New York conference last week.
WFTV went live with its HD newscast in June with a new set and Sony HD studio cameras.
All had similar difficulties when moving to HD, yet said it was worth the extra costs, training and long hours. They said there’s nothing like an HD migration project to unite station personnel for a common cause.
Leesa Moore Craigie, director of news operations and special projects at CBS affiliate WRAL-DT, said because they were one of the first to do local HD news (in 2000), they had to wait for the technology to catch up to what they wanted to accomplish. The station currently shoots HD in the studio and the field, and has an HD helicopter in the sky over Raleigh-Durham, NC.
Citing the vision of Jim Goodmon, Moore said HD had become a brand identity for the station and had helped to attract additional viewers. She also said that as a customer service, her station engineers continued to go out to people’s homes personally when HD reception problems occurred.
She said when they pitched this to management early on, they were careful to explain that going HD would not negatively affect its existing analog viewers. “In fact, we’ve improved their [analog] picture with downconverted HD signals,” she said.
WRAL’s latest innovation is moving to a tapeless news environment, based on the BitCentral Precis system. They have been doing a lot of tape-based editing for the past five years.
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