Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2011/05/17

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Subject: [Leica] Re Ted's grandson, was Life in film yet.
From: lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)
Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 11:56:18 -0400

Ted,
Congratulations on having such an ambitious grandson. But a word of caution
about a career in television. My son, daughter and son-in-law are heavily
involved in TV. My son is an executive in a firm which makes and supplies TV
equipment. No problem there. Television will always require broadcasting and
cable equipment, My daughter and son-in-law both work for a major market ABC
TV station. Both have seen jobs contract by a significant amount in the last
few years. First the editing jobs were lost as TV stations could do their
editing on Mac computers rather than banks of tape drives. Then many of the
directing jobs, Cameramen are decreasing in number now, particularly in the
news departments, as much on air video is captured on handheld HD cameras
and HD cell phones.
My son-in-law, the morning news anchor of his station, rises at 2 a.m. every
morning to get to the studio and write/edit his copy for the 6 a.m.
broadcast. He also reprises the local news, weather and traffic after the
network cable feed goes off the air and is on duty for breaking news until
noon. He has to be in bed by 8 or 9 p.m. every evening. No parties or late
dinners. It is hell on family life. Despite union rules forbidding on air
personnel to use TV cameras, he was issued an iPhone 4 by the station and
was expected to take adventitious news video whenever he saw a breaking
story. The station had a legal opinion that a cell phone was not a news
video camera and was exempt from the union rules. The union, running scared,
did not contest it. He fully expects that in a few years news stories will
be read on air by animitronic robots or their video parallels. My daughter,
formerly on air "talent," saw how things were developing several years ago
and switched to producing. She is now a senior producer for the station, has
been nominated for five Emmys and has won three prestigious international
awards, but has seen her career opportunities decrease as well. She is
thinking of quitting her TV job to teach journalism in a nearby college.
So advise your grandson to take up a less precarious line of work, bull
riding for example. The photographic world, as we know it, has changed
markedly. Everyone has an image making device, not necessarily a camera, and
hardly any event can go unrecorded. Quality, at least in the news media
counts for little. Images are viewed briefly and then are replaced by more
recent images, and so on. That's not to say that there is no place for good
photography. It's just not relevant to your local TV station.
I wish it weren't so - but that's the way it is.
Larry Z
- - - - -

And on 24 May he turns 21 years young and is absolutely gung ho about

photography, photojournalism and shooting video! And is a natural writer,

physically going to be a good looking young guy in front of a TV video

camera as a broadcaster if that comes to be. There isn't going to be any

holding him as he says .... " I want to be as great as you are grandpa! But

I'm aiming at being better!" Then he smiles and winks at me! :-)
Dr. Ted