It has been. a year since the COVID pandemic started to grip the United States and it likely has changed TV news forever.

Anchors and Reporters started doing newscasts from their homes. Interviews were often done over Facetime, Skype or Zoom.

Now, as there is finally an end in sight for the COVID pandemic, many changes in TV news will likely stay.

D’Artagnan Bebel, senior vice president, and general manager at KRIV, the Fox-owned TV station in Houston, said his correspondents have found it easier to book interviews for their pieces by using Zoom instead of sending a crew to travel to a location and set up and then break down equipment, which can take more than hour.

“A lot more people are saying yes,” Bebel said. “They pop on, they do it and it’s less time on their part. It give us the ability to create more content.”

Even at the network level, it is likely things will be different. “I think the days of sending a full camera crew to grab what will ultimately be a 12-second sound bite for a ‘Nightly News’ piece are over,” said NBC News President Noah Oppenheim. “In many ways, it’s actually opened up what we can do because it means a lot of the logistics getting cameras to places or people to studios are no longer obstacles to conversations we want to have.”

With phones that shoot broadcast-quality video, it is likely that the future will not include as many News Photographers.

“I can have my Reporter shoot the story on their iPhone, edit on their laptop all without them having to step a foot inside the station,” a News Director told FTVLive.

MMJ’s have been around for years, but the pandemic could be speeding up the hiring of them in larger markets and the job of Photographer could be going the way of the dinosaur.

Also on the hit list is Makeup artists.

While you would be hard-pressed to find one in small and mid-markets, there were still often used in big markets and the network lever.

During the pandemic, many Makeup Artist were sidelined from working and some ended up giving tutorials over Zoom so that anchors could touch up themselves. Many stations and networks might not want to bear the costs of bringing them back.

When you watch old clips of TV news and you see everyone sitting so close together, or Reporter’s live talking to people without masks it looks strange.

The pandemic has changed all of us, and it appears has changed the business we work in as well.

Stay tuned….

H/T LA Times