McGraw-Hill’s KGTV training VJs
Cory Bergman August 30th, 2006
Slowly but surely, more local TV stations are beginning to add video journalists — people who report, shoot and edit their own stories on lightweight gear. VJ pioneer Michael Rosenblum dropped Lost Remote a note to say he’s in San Diego at KGTV holding his VJ bootcamp. “Unlike WKRN and KRON, they are taking a much more gradual approach to the process,” he writes. Rosenblum says he’s training 9 people, half reporters, half photographers. “So far, so good,” he says. As I’ve written before, I think the VJ approach — as controversial as it is — is just getting started in local TV news.
17 Comments Add your own
1. Pete Liebengood | August 30th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
There are now two VJ training companies. Michael also dropped me an e-mail from San Diego welcoming my company into the VJ training mix. He says he welcomes the competition and believes there will be plenty of work to go around. If that’s true, I’ll keep you posted on developments from my end.
2. Tom | August 30th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
VJ’s have been around since the days of film. Only we called them “One Man Bands”. You can still find them mainly at small market stations and 24 hour local cable news outlets. But there’s a reason larger market stations went to the two person crews, a reporter & photographer.
It’s called division of labor. You can cover daily stories much better, and put on a superior product with a two person crew. There are of course exceptions to every rule and I am sure there are exceptional VJ’s, but it has never been the equipment that has prevented stations from going that route, it’s been the quality of the product. I am sure that if your station is #4 in a 3 station market you would try anything too. See WKRN.
3. thedetroitchannel | August 30th, 2006 at 3:33 pm
it’s also called twice the expense, tom.
is the product so superior that the beancounters are willing to cough up twice the union scale to produce it???
me highly thinks not.
i always liked the story of the little engine that could. i think it was #4 in a 3 locomotive market too.
4. Allen | August 30th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
Of course the VJ backers will always point to the money side of the issue. The “Little Engine That Could” stations are still dead last in the markets (Nashville and San Fran) that went vj. Apparently they never left the train station.
5. thedetroitchannel | August 30th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
yeah, they wouldn’t want to get stuck on the tracks when the others go off the cliff from carrying all that dead weight.
6. Z | August 30th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
If by paying for two people they make three times as much as the guy paying one, yep, they’ll stay the course until someone becomes number one using VJs. Then the bandwagon will become full.
7. Allen | August 30th, 2006 at 6:04 pm
Oh, it’s “deal” alright. Dead last. Nobody is watching. The system is a ratings failure. If it were a horse it would have been put to sleep a long time ago.
8. Allen | August 30th, 2006 at 6:04 pm
Correction: “dead” not “deal”. Sorry.
9. thedetroitchannel | August 30th, 2006 at 6:44 pm
boy, i love a good argument.
mcgraw hill must be looking to have the cellar all to themselves, eh?
10. Anonymous | August 30th, 2006 at 7:38 pm
Mcgraw-Hill only acts like it cares about ratings. In truth, they’ll gladly let their stations live in the cellar if it keeps their stockholders fat and happy in the penthouse.
11. Just a VJ | August 31st, 2006 at 7:09 am
I’ve always appreciated the fact these guys post the numbers everyday for all of us to see. Actually our morning numbers are up and we’re giving WSMV a run for their money between 5 and 7am. Big story in the evenings is WTVF falling off dramatically and Channel 4 with Dr. Phil and Oprah doing very well. 10pm we’re simply getting slaughtered and I think that’s why the anchor change happened. I was very pessimistic about this switch and still have some doubts from time to time but it didn’t have any negative effect on ratings. You wanta take shots go ahead but the ratings don’t support your argument at all. Just saying.
12. Allen | August 31st, 2006 at 2:43 pm
July ratings? Please. Maybe it didn’t have a negative effect on the ratings, but did they improve? And you simply cannot tell me the quality of your newscasts has not gone down because it has in dramatic fashion. If counting beans is why you are in this business then I wish you much success.
Granted, being in last place you have to pull out all of the stops in an effort to try to right the ship, but making drastic cuts is not the answer, imo. Then again, I don’t get paid the big bucks like Rosenblum so what do I know?
13. Telling It Like It Is | September 1st, 2006 at 9:19 am
McGraw-Hill’s income for its TV stations is extremely low. Most of it comes from their financial companies and educational services. Keeping two mid-20 market stations and mid-120 market stations in dead last while saving a few bucks doesn’t affect anyone’s Christmas bonus in that company — it just makes the television folks work harder.
I’ve seen WRTV’s newscast. I nearly hurt myself laughing. I can’t imagine how much worse it’s going to look when one person is expected to do the work of two.
Gradual implementation or not, the system is destined for failure. No news assignment desk on the planet will send two people to a story if they’ve been trained as a VJ and have a remote possiblity of putting two stories on the air instead. Thusly, their spot-news coverage (among other stories) will always, always, always fail. Traditional crews will simply steamroll VJs over and over.
Viewers in San Fran and Nashville have noticed, and not surprisingly, aren’t attracted. You don’t have to be in television to understand what that means.
thedetroitchannel: work on your analogies. That “off the cliff” thing was pretty lame.
14. ben theredunthat | September 1st, 2006 at 11:01 pm
Rosenblum is a joke. He;s been pitching this thing since 1994 and it has done noting but fail in the United states.
http://www.digitaljournalist.org/platypus/platypus3.html
He’s a great salesman though. Notice that he has saturated the tv message boards trying to create as much buzz as possible about this vj thing. He’s trying to create the false impression that everyone is doing this when they are not. It’s a lame attempt to make money and right now, he is just glad that the KGTV management has fallen for his scam.
15. Current Thinking » &hellip | October 9th, 2006 at 10:09 pm
[...] Rosenblum also trained a small contingent of staffers at San Diego’s ABC affiliate, KGTV. [...]
16. men putting there penis i&hellip | January 27th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
free teen images…
porno and tits ad pusy…
17. registered sex offender i&hellip | January 29th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
zoo fucks girls fucking zoo beast zoo fuck…
nude pics of britteny spears…
Leave a Comment
(Please keep URLs out of the comment body or the spam filter will block you.)Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed