In all the time I've been working in TV news, I've never seen anything like this - a television station in Houston that's cut the kind of staff that has always been vital to making a newscast work on air: camera people, an audio guy or gal, a technical director (sometimes called a switcher), a graphics operator, and most especially, a director. 

KRIV-TV has instituted a new policy where the anchor not only acts as director but also does everything all the rest of the crew once did. In a video posted to her Instagram site, Caroline Collins shows how the complicated process works. Not only is she reading the throw to the story, but she switches to it live on air, controls the sound, adjusts the TelePrompter, and prepares the next piece, all while sitting at a high tech anchor desk. 

Frankly, it reminds me of Gerry Tood on the old SCTV.

Needless to say, management types at the station are thrilled with the new arrangement, since it means eliminating a ton of employees who no longer need to be hired or paid for what one person can presumably do on their own. It's almost like self-oping a radio board - except there's a lot more going on. And there's no word on how they fix things if something goes wrong, which it inevitably will.

Not to mention the pressure of keeping this broadcast train on its tracks in real time. 

"...asking journalists to operate cameras, manage audio and direct live broadcasts while reporting the news raises questions about burnout, editorial accuracy and whether technical responsibilities are crowding out journalism. It also raises a broader question for an industry increasingly embracing automation and centralized production: What happens to the jobs traditionally performed behind the scenes?"

You can watch Collins doing a live newscast using this new process here. I just hope other stations don't think producing something like this is better than having an entire team there doing it properly.

You can only take cutbacks and automation so far. And this seems way over that line. But boy, is it cheap...

Local TV Anchors Are Becoming Their Own Production Crews