If you want to know how much TV news has changed, let's take you back a few years. 

OK....maybe more than a few.

In my first full time job in TV news, I worked as a News Photographer at KTUL in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This was back in the 80's and there were times that we needed video from Oklahoma City, or they needed video from us. 

Now-a-days you could just email the video or pop it up on the satellite for the other station to get within a few seconds. In the 80's it was not that simple. Stations did have Sat Trucks or uplinks and Al Gore had not yet invented the internet. 

What we would do, is dub a copy of the video the station in OKC wanted and then drive out to the toll booth on the Oklahoma Turnpike. We would ask drivers if they were heading all the way to Oklahoma City? 

If they were, we would hand them the tape and ask them to leave it with the toll booth attendant in OKC. 

Then the OKC station would drive out to the tool booth on their end and pick up the tape.

Surprisingly, almost every time the video would make it to its destination. In fact I would say over 99% of the time it would. 

Now, can you imagine trying to do that Today? You ask someone to drop the tape off on the other end of the turnpike and I'm guessing most would never do it, keep the video or throw it out the window while driving. 

But, back in those days, it was a system that worked and it was how we exchanged video with a station 100+ miles away. 

Of course, as a Shooter you hated when you called in (via radio, no cellphones) to the station and said you were headed back. They would then ask you to stop by the turnpike to pick up a video from KOCO. 

You would have to drive out there, go booth to booth until you figured out which one had the video and then drive back to the station and edit the video for air. 

So, while you are out MMJ'ing and bitching about your job....be glad you don't have to drive to the toll booth to pic up a 3/4" video tape and bring in back to the station. 

That's Today's throwback Thursday. 

Next week....how we had to walk to work uphill, both ways.