20 years ago, we had 9 people behind the camera running a live local newscast (Floor Director, Cam Operator, Teleprompter, Chyron, Graphics, Video Playback, Live/Commercial Cut-in, Audio, and Director). Now, in a market three times the size, the same job is done with 3 people and a metric ton of automation. What used to feel like a bridge crew piloting a ship now feels like conducting corpo bots within time-frames that prevent giving any of them real attention. I do believe most AI systems will continue to need people in the loop. It’ll just be fewer people in less fulfilling positions.
OK, not disputing that, but that process has eff all to do with AI. Gen AI gave people a recognizable target, but automation was done using good old dumb algorithms for a long time before we taught computers to babble like a toddler. I was in the room for a ton of “can we automate all this QA” when machine learning was failing to tell a cat apart from a bycicle.
Also, for your specific case I think Youtube and social media had a TON to do with the shifting standards of running a skeleton crew TV studio. Ditto for the press in general. Remember when copy editors were a thing?
I don’t even know what it can do that’s useful. The prompter maybe, and captioning if you’re feeling frisky and don’t mind airing something insane by accident.
But what, you’re going to let an AI handle chyrons and cut-ins? I did briefly work at a TV station and back then we had two separate continuity guys and three redundant automated sources for all canned content just to make sure you never got a black frame. I once saw a guy get fired for three seconds of dead air in a commercial break because at least back then absolutely any mistake around commercials was a huge, automatic money loss.
I absolutely believe you when you say it’s degraded, because… well, again, Youtube and Netflix, but at most you can… you know, cut one of the two guys so you can still fire the other when the AI plugs in something random instead of an ad.
Alright, let me rephrase that. You can definitely cut more than that, but you’re probably going to have to un-cut that pretty fast when some AI claims that someone is an international art thief in a chyron or something.
20 years ago, we had 9 people behind the camera running a live local newscast (Floor Director, Cam Operator, Teleprompter, Chyron, Graphics, Video Playback, Live/Commercial Cut-in, Audio, and Director). Now, in a market three times the size, the same job is done with 3 people and a metric ton of automation. What used to feel like a bridge crew piloting a ship now feels like conducting corpo bots within time-frames that prevent giving any of them real attention. I do believe most AI systems will continue to need people in the loop. It’ll just be fewer people in less fulfilling positions.
Citing the same time period, it used to be each local station had a Master Control Operator.
Now an MCO is expected to run 10 stations all at once from a remote location. No change in pay. Just more responsibility.
OK, not disputing that, but that process has eff all to do with AI. Gen AI gave people a recognizable target, but automation was done using good old dumb algorithms for a long time before we taught computers to babble like a toddler. I was in the room for a ton of “can we automate all this QA” when machine learning was failing to tell a cat apart from a bycicle.
Also, for your specific case I think Youtube and social media had a TON to do with the shifting standards of running a skeleton crew TV studio. Ditto for the press in general. Remember when copy editors were a thing?
YouTube and Social Media were part of the '05 (algorithmic) AI wave, yeah.
I don’t even know what it can do that’s useful. The prompter maybe, and captioning if you’re feeling frisky and don’t mind airing something insane by accident.
But what, you’re going to let an AI handle chyrons and cut-ins? I did briefly work at a TV station and back then we had two separate continuity guys and three redundant automated sources for all canned content just to make sure you never got a black frame. I once saw a guy get fired for three seconds of dead air in a commercial break because at least back then absolutely any mistake around commercials was a huge, automatic money loss.
I absolutely believe you when you say it’s degraded, because… well, again, Youtube and Netflix, but at most you can… you know, cut one of the two guys so you can still fire the other when the AI plugs in something random instead of an ad.
Alright, let me rephrase that. You can definitely cut more than that, but you’re probably going to have to un-cut that pretty fast when some AI claims that someone is an international art thief in a chyron or something.