One-Man Reporting Band
It started as a joke. More than 10 years ago, Al Franken strapped a satellite dish to his head and became a one-man remote TV crew for Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update. Desperately trying to deliver the news, Franken would unwittingly lose the signal every time he turned his head. The sketch was inspired by a technician’s strike at NBC. If your sound, satellite, and cameramen refuse to work you don’t just stop doing the news, you do it yourself.
Today, there’s no strike, but with more news programs and more channels reporting news 24-hours a day, there’s increased competition. And all the networks, not just NBC, laugh about the possibility of using the "Al Franken Cam" to cut network costs. It’s definitely a possibility today thanks to improved video compression, small DV cameras that offer near broadcast quality, and Inmarsat satellite phones that can make data connections from anywhere in the world. Variables Al Franken didn’t consider when he wrote the bit 10 years ago. It didn’t matter; it wouldn’t have made it funnier. He had a satellite dish on his head.
Franken may have made the networks laugh, but CNN made the networks panic when in April 2001 correspondent Lisa Rose Weaver shot exclusive video of a detained U.S. military crew leaving Hainan, China. The broadcast seemed impossible since all the networks had been unable to book satellite time or get a camera near the airstrip. Not for CNN. The 24-hour news network brought backup, a 7E Communications TH-1 videophone. Even though the image quality was grainy, CNN got what they needed — video — and the result was a multi-coup. The network beat the competition with pictures by 30 minutes, got footage from an unapproved location, and on top of it all drama unfolded live while the Chinese authorities dragged the cameraman away.
Recently, videophone broadcasts have become almost regular. With the rugged topography of Afghanistan and dangerous conditions journalists face there, reporters have been relegated to file reports via videophone from remote sections of Afghanistan in the news coverage of the U.S.-led military attacks.
Although CNN first used a Toko unit via satellite phone in December 1999 to cover the release of hostages from an Indian Airline flight, it wasn’t until the China spy plane episode, did video over an Inmarsat phone finally get recognized as a legitimate competitive medium in network television. Taking the "if it looks like crap, it’s got to be good" approach, CNN’s chief news executive, Eason Jordon, told the Associated Press, "The jittery images from a satellite phone bring excitement to the situation, because, clearly, the news organization is going to extremes so you can see what you can't see elsewhere."
The other networks noticed. ABCNews VP of Operations, Mike Duffy, tipped his hat to the competition, "What CNN did is say (technical) quality is less important than the fact that we’re there. We want to show that we’re there; we want to tell the story. Go beyond the phone, the still photograph and the map and at least get something on the air." As a result of CNN’s broadcast, ABCNews quickly bought a case of mm225 videophones from Motion Media (www.motionmedia.co.uk) only to discover the phones were more appropriate for the office than the field.