Posted by chicagomedia.org on January 13, 2009 at 20:45:04:
WMAQ-TV, WFLD-TV sharing helicopter, plan to share more soon
Television viewers may never notice, but the skies above Chicago are a little less crowded than they used to be.
Since New Year's Day, NBC-owned WMAQ-Ch. 5 and Fox-owned WFLD-Ch. 32 have been sharing a single news helicopter and whatever video is shot from it.
And now that the two news operations are sharing some video from above the Chicago area, they are that much closer to sharing some video on the ground within a few months, according to Sharri Berg, senior vice president of news operations for the Fox Television Stations.
The 50-50 arrangement between WMAQ and WFLD on the leased helicopter for aerial shots here was in the works even before NBC Local Media and Fox Television Stations announced in November they were moving ahead in Philadelphia with a pilot program that uses resources from their respective outlets there to establish a video-sharing cooperative called Local News Service.
Philadelphia's LNS is seen as a template for similar operations in the other markets where the companies both own stations, such as Chicago.
LNS is independently run but draws on resources of the participating stations, dispatching camera crews but not reporters to provide a pool feed of raw video for news events that don't demand proprietary coverage.
How the shared LNS material of press conferences, fires and so on is used is up to the individual stations. The service's content also could be available to other interested local media outlets, including other TV and radio stations, print publications and digital media.
The idea of LNS is to save costs and also allow the crews at each station not assigned to LNS on a given day to pursue video unique to its newscast.
The shared helicopter in Chicago has "been up and running and ... we've been sharing that video between the two" since Jan. 1, Fox's Berg said.
Weekday mornings from 5 to 7, Channel 5 can have a traffic reporter on board. That person can be replaced by a Channel 32 traffic reporter from 7 to 9 a.m. If news breaks during that time, the other station can run the video but not the reporting, according to Berg.
The helicopter is available for shared coverage the rest of the day, and either station can brand the video from the helicopter coverage as it chooses.
"So the groundwork is laid," Berg said. "We've been able to philosophically work out the aerial newsgathering portion of the news-sharing, so I think the ground news sharing ... will be shortly coming. I don't have an exact timetable, but I would think it would be soon."
(Phil Rosenthal, Chicago Tribune)