In an era of a shrinking news budgets recent events in the Middle East and now Japan – the tens of thousands of dollars in staff time and satellites, in moving anchors and creating special event broadcasts will undoubtedly have a major impact on coverage for the balance of the year.
While there may be (limited) money for breaking news one can just imagine that any discretionary assignments – features, profiles, take outs and enterprises are going to find very paltry budgets and limited enthusiasm.
Just stay tuned.
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Perhaps this could all be good news. If the news operations are going to the model of covering “OMG” news events then they are going to have to increase their budgets because life is now a global OMG. Which will eventually include governments and countries imploding because they are completely broke, all services have been suspended, people are living rough of the streets, et al. So, as they say in the government contracting world when everything is going to hell…”It’s all good.”