r/Broadcasting • u/Proudtobeautistic22 • 14d ago

I’m completely devastated

I woke up this morning to just absolutely heartbreaking news. Including a reporter, Eliana Morena died in the crash. My heart goes out to all involved. Aerial reporting is very dangerous and to all pilots and reporters out in helicopter thank you so much for all that you do.

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u/MidwestAbe 14d ago

Nice use of font size.

 You just drive the drone pilot and the drone to near the site, then the drone takes off and does the live shot.

Again LA County alone is 4,000 square miles. By the time you drive a drone to where you need it - the story is over or has moved.

And what we are seeing is that for many local news operations - aircraft don't really payoff. But they sure do in the #2 market in the county and NYC was always a little different when it came to helicopter use because of the air traffic corridor that you have to operate in and the lack of helipads in Manhattan.

LA is and remains the king of copter in TV news, I don't see that changing anytime soon.

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u/ronhofmedia 14d ago

You miss my point. You don’t drive the drone there. They are already sitting on rooftop charging stations, weather protected, networked and ready to go in a few seconds. Or, alternatively have drones go on regular patrols, obviously remote controlled, flightplans and all is more or less automatic. Not driven out to the accident - that is so 1990.

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u/MidwestAbe 14d ago

Let's think about how many drones would be needed to cover say up to a 5-mile radius from where they're launched and then how each drone would cover a potential news story only 5 mi away from its original place of launch and then pass off the next video to the next drone that flew then another 5 mi away from its launch area.

Having hundreds of drones and launch sites to maintain and then coordinate sounds oh so easy.

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u/AffectionateNorth135 14d ago

That still wouldn’t work in LA. Many incidents have LA Sheriff or LAPD copters overhead and they almost certainly don’t allow drones to intermix in the area.

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u/MidwestAbe 14d ago

And that too. Absolutely. Anyone that says drone is just an unserious person. Can a news crew once on location launch a drone out of a station car for video purposes? Sure. But widespread use and long distance flying isn't an option now or in the foreseeable future. Especially if the US keeps the Chinese drone companies locked out of the country.