FOUR people to do one Interview?

Posted July 08, 2017

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Our friend, professional working VJ Rav Vadgama send us this photo from Germany, where he is covering the G-20 Summit meeting for ITV.

You will note, in the photo, there are 4 working 'journalists' (TV people), 'working' to produce a few vox pops (man on the street) comments from ONE person.  

I cannot even begin to figure out what all these people are actually doing. Is it any wonder that TV news is a) so expensive and b) in so much trouble?

This is ridiculous.

But hardly an anomaly.

When I was a producer at PBS in the US, we not only took a crew to do stuff like this, we also had to take a Director.

We were signatories to the DGA, the Director's Guild of America, ans so we were contractually bound to bring a director with us on ever news shoot.

I was not allowed to tell the cameraman (they were all men then) what I wanted.  Instead, I had to tell the Director, who then told the Cameraman what I had said and what shot to get.

Did that make any sense?

Does this?

But this is how we work in the news business.

My question: where are the iPhones?