Video Training Becomes Essential for TV Careers

Even a blind person can now see what is coming...

Yesterday, CBS News fired most of its professional camera staff in its London bureau.

From now on, stories will be shot by producers.

This is not to say that the cameramen at CBS News in London were incompetent.

Far from it.

They were among the best in the business.

But it is a business that can no longer afford them, and a technology that now makes their skills less than necessary.

This is exactly the same thing that happened to professional photographers at places like Time and Life Magazines.

They were also highly skilled, the best in the business, and they too were let go because of changing technologies and changing times.

There will always be TV news in some form.

You may get it on your iPad or online or perhaps even still watch it on TV.

And there is always going to be a call for Video based journalism. If anything, the need for that is only going to expand.

But the idea of being a 'cameraman' is as dead as the idea of being a 'fireman' on a locomotive.

(those were the guys who shoveled the coal into the boiler to make the steam to keep the train going)

Or perhaps an elevtor operator...

Technology is merciless.

But technology also opens new opportunities, if you are listening.

CBS News announced that henceforth the producers would shoot all the pieces.

First, were I a television producer anywhere in the world I would be learning to shoot video as quickly as possible.

Second, and this I think is more important....

As the professional photographers were the first to go from Time and Life, look at what has happened to those publications.

Life is gone and Time Magazine is the width of a piece of paper. It's the width of a piece of paper because it has no advertisers.

Newsweek has already been sold for a pittance. Business Week went for $1 to Bloomberg.

As with the magazines, so too will the TV news operations go.

They won't discuss it.

They prefer the salami-like death of a thousand cuts.

So be it.

But the market for great journalism will always be with us - and in fact with iPad and online, it's ever stronger.

But the days of being a cameraman... or, I would venture to guess, a performing stand-up on-air reporter are fast drawing to a close.