It used to be there was an art to switching the news...almost a rhythmic grace to pushing the buttons and taking or dissolving as needed...being able to manually change the pace of the transition on the fly. Those that were good switchers were able to make a rapid newscast look like a graceful waltz on a switcher...those that were bad....more like a tap dancer who's had too much Red Bull. Computerized news systems such as Ignite or Pakervision have stripped the control room of all its grace. They have reduced the once magnanimous TD's to lowly introductory computer programmers...and have taken all of the flexibility and grace out of a fluctuating rundown.
While news stations are clamoring to get the new systems in order to cut staff and payroll, they forget to take into account the loss of talent....of reducing a once well executed newscast to a quality level that you would expect from Youtube. Unfortunately, ratings seem to be on the stations side....and someday in the near future all newscasts will be executed via computer, rather than having a graceful director take the show home. How sad.
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