The traditions of video for the communication of news and information – where do they come from and how have they evolved?

The most obvious use of video and image for communicating news and information has obviously come through your TV sets.

Television arrived in Australia in 1956 and like most other developed nations, dominated the media landscape up until the introduction of the internet.

Colour TV came to Australia in 1975, followed by cable and satellite in the 1980s.

We traditionally think of television and video in two separate ‘strands’ of production; commercial and public television and use of video on the internet. Of course those boundaries are collapsing now – but let’s separate them to think about the development of video and image in a historic context.

When we think historically about video in Australia, we generally think about television news and then online—but the production and dissemination of image has gone through a lot of changes in between!

In the mid-1950s making television news was an expensive business—and it still is.

To create a single television story for news, you needed to send a reporter out with a camera crew –sometimes that would be three or four people, who shoot the story, then the reporter would sit with an editor, a graphics person would put the any animated aspects into the story like titles, then the crew will put the story into the bulletin for a news presenter to read.

So if you were (or are) producing video news as a journalist within a newsroom:

•                First: the Vision has to be shot on location and most newsrooms run with separate camera people (unless you’re a video journalist)

•                Second: The material has to be edited into the final package which often involves working with an editor.

•                Lastly: The story has to be placed within a bulletin by a producer and read by a presenter, working with editorial staff to put the bulletin to air.

 That’s a lot of people for just one story.

The structure of the newsroom that you are working in is a little different too:

•                At the top of the newsroom hierarchy is the News editor (or news director) who is really the management end of the newsroom. Editorial decisions and overall responsibility comes to them. They also deal with the owners and executives of the organisation

•                The chief of staff and the executive producer are really the work horses of the newsroom. They organise the entire newsroom is terms of what individual reporters are doing, sort through story information and put the bulletin together.

•                In TV the producer is the editorial side of production and provide technical expertise and support to journos and oversee their stories. This will involve preparing the rundown of stories, depending on the size of the organisation.

•                A TV director is usually responsible for the smooth running of the bulletin when its on air.

•                The technical team includes audio operators, technical producers and a floor manager who are all ensuring that the stories go to air perfectly.

•                Then there are a raft of other jobs including administration and archiving of stories and resources, editors, technical operators and graphic designers that also help put a story together.

       

So as you can see, producing a news story in a television news room is not just all about you and your story—you are working in a very large team.

So what this meant in Australia was that the potential big players in TV had to be pretty flush with cash—and in Australia it was the newspaper barons that became pioneers in building the television networks.

 Nowadays Australian television stations are owned by consortiums, but still very much driven by ratings and the advertising dollar.

 There was and still is concern about how this would affect media diversity and you can see that certain elements of this debate continue today.

News however, is still considered the flagship of everyday ratings on Australian TV—because it is programmed at a time when generally most people would think to be watching television—after work, at dinner making or dinner eating time.

 There was -- and still is -- concern about how this would affect media diversity and you can see that certain elements of this debate continue today.

 Other technological changes have also caused debate and development in the industry such as:

-the introduction of colour TV in 1975

-the arrival of cable and satellite technology in the mid-1980s

-the advent of digital technology in the 1990s

-and the new delivery options available via broadband in the 2000s

-the diversification of news and information products available to audiences online now

-the ease of making and distributing indvidual video news content without official affiliation now