NewsTECHForum 2020

Executives from NBCU Owned Stations, CBS Television Stations, Graham Media, SmithGeiger and the Local Media Association envision a future for TV news in two years’ time that is more inclusive in its coverage and among its decision makers, holding on to the heightened sense of relevance it struck with viewers in the pandemic. “It’s incumbent on news departments not just to serve facts, but relevance, perspective and helpfulness,” said CBS’s David Friend at last week’s NewsTECHForum.

Social media experts at newsrooms including those of Gray, Fox, Graham and Scripps stations and national outlet Newsy says viewers have ramped up aggressive attacks on their social posts this year. At TVNewsCheck’s NewsTECHForum on Dec. 18, they said a more polarized audience has heightened their need to be more circumspect on social and to diffuse often hostile salvos they receive.

TV broadcasters are aiming to move live production workflows to the cloud, but executives from Sinclair, ABC News and Vizrt said at last week’s NewsTECHForum it will take faster tech development from vendors and possibly new financial thinking from customers.

Tech leaders at E.W. Scripps, Meredith and Hubbard Broadcasting as well as at tech vendor Avid say that remote production workflows are getting more refined, while vaccine promises also have them hopeful of a return to newsrooms. “The adrenaline that goes through a newsroom is hard to duplicate at home,” said Scripps CTO Ray Thurber at last week’s NewsTECHForum.

Journalists from AJ+, NBCLX, NBCU Owned Stations and Graham Media said 2020’s confluence of major stories prompted a surge of creativity and experimentation in video news storytelling. They told a NewsTECHForum panel that working conditions prompted the acquisition of new skills and more elasticity in their story length.

News leaders from CNN, BBC News Labs, ABC Owned Stations, Gray Television and The Weather Company foresee improving news personalization and story versioning, expanded data journalism and a less polished, more authentic look to reporting on streaming channels, they said in a NewsTECHForum panel on Wednesday.

David Bohrman, a veteran producer with tenures at ABC News, NBC News and CNN, told NewsTECHForum attendees Tuesday that news organizations of all sizes should embrace technologies like “magic” video walls and augmented reality, where he has been a pioneer. “The more of us that experiment with it and use it, the more creative we can be at helping to tell the stories,” he said.

COVID-19, a historic election and Black Lives Matter protests kept local and national TV newsrooms in a state of perpetual vigilance this year. News executives from ABC News, Tegna and Hearst at TVNewsCheck’s NewsTECHForum on Tuesday said the year’s challenges revealed some remarkable resiliencies in their newsrooms, but also made their journalists a bigger target.