mikemcguff.com: The future of TV news work after COVID-19

TV stations have been forced to jump technologically thanks to the coronavirus, so when this is over, do we fully return to normal operations?

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I was on 950 KPRC with Michael Garfield "The High Tech Texan" a few weeks ago talking about the future of TV news after COVID-19 (30 minutes into audio recording above).

And I guess the future is already here.

The coronavirus has pushed TV station owners to quickly embrace the technology that was already out there by necessity. As they have moved into "the cloud" and adopted remote working, the kinks are getting worked out.

Over the years, there has been talks of moving TV workflows to the clouds, but no station group seemed to jump all in until the pandemic reared its ugly head.

For example, Fox Television Stations’ engineering chief Richard Friedel told TVNewsCheck's Michael Depp last week his company can do lots of the stuff on the could thanks to AWS WorkSpaces.

So you have already gone beyond sales to other parts of the company with WorkSpaces?

Everybody, including me, the business people, even some of production is on it. There isn’t a video switcher in it. I can’t do that. There is still somebody at the station punching buttons on a switcher, but virtually everything else you can think of — iNews, our Bitcentral newsroom systems, editing systems, virtually everything else.

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I told Garf that TV news insiders I've talked to think many COVID-19 workflows could be here to stay when things return to normally.

For example, maybe that awful weekend morning shift won't require staffers to risk their lives driving to the station after the bars have closed.

Multiple morning show employees from various stations have told me the dangers they encounter on the road at that time of the morning. So with technology, they could work from home.

From cost cutting measures, and we've already seen multiple TV companies start those, will all the rented space be necessary for stations?

For those stations in their own buildings, this won't apply, but what about those in office buildings? Will they need all the square footage if people can and are willing to work from home?

Then there is the bigger picture that has been the storm on the horizon for a decade or more. When you finally get all the work assets on the cloud, employees won't even need to be in the same city.

Much in the way many companies have hubbed out certain tasks, will you really need producers or web producers even in the same city to work on a newscast?

As long as the employee has a rudimentary knowledge of Houston, will they need to be here to get the job done?

Stay tuned.