Diving Into The Pool

Saying TV news is competitive is akin to saying one needs air and water to live. It’s such an obvious statement that I can’t imagine why you’re still reading this.

And yet......

How much longer before a major media market begins to explore ways for stations to pool resources rather than compete?

Before you rush to correct me, and tell me the unions and guilds will never allow it to happen, that producers and news directors would rather die in a knife-fight with the competition than rely on them for footage, let me explain why I pose the question.

First, I am not alone in posing this question. Writer Lauren Rich Fine recently asked the same question, and offered some reasons why she believes that stations may move in this direction. In Cincinnati, stations have agreed to pool resources in covering Bengals games. In Denver, reports say the NBC affiliate and Telemundo are playing somewhat nice together,

I am not crazy. It’s not impossible, And in many cases where there is shared corporate parentage, the idea is already being implemented.

But what about in cases of hardened competitors? People who engage in battle every day to beat the other by seconds? Can they ever rely on each other for footage? Are they so trained to seek exclusives that this idea will never take root?

Well, anyone who’s ever actually BEEN out in the field knows the truth: we already do. Listen, news directors know this goes on, but nobody really wants to admit it: colleagues often share non-exclusive footage with each other as a matter of professional courtesy.

There were many occasions when I would go to folks from other stations because we missed something. And they gave up the video. And there were plenty of times where we provided video to someone who had missed a press conference, etc. Although we were competitors, we were also mostly friendly with each other, and so nobody wanted to see somebody else get a whooping from the ND because they (God forbid!) missed the press conference of the opening of another fast food chain or such other nonsense.

So my question is this: why not formalize the agreement? Not for exclusives, not for investigative reports, but for the daily dog-and-pony shows, press conferences, weather footage, and other routine items it would make sense.

In fact, I would argue that having full-res video online as a shared local resource would make local coverage cheaper, and would also result in fewer crews getting “jerked around” from story to story. And not being asked by an assignment editor to be in two places at one time for two different B.S. stories is something I think we all could live with.

Would this also mean a loss of jobs? Probably. But aren’t we already shedding jobs like a dog sheds it’s winter coat in May? Maybe if stations are able to maintain coverage with a pool approach, the jobs that still exist will continue to exist.

But hey...we know you gotta get the EXCLUSIVE video of the same thing everyone else has. That’s the rule, right?