We’re witnessing a rapid adjustment in our economy due to the coronavirus. The social distancing shutdown has shown that workers on apartment couches can fill previously immovable jobs in major cities, and that distance learning can work in schools for all ages. Similarly, it has been both enlightening and heartening to watch the evolution of cable news in recent weeks, as serious changes were desperately needed.
In the wake of President Trump’s 2016 election, there was a particularly visible degree of confusion emanating from the glitzy skyscrapers of Manhattan and Los Angeles, where the majority of our nation’s news media reside. We all remember the mournful punditry and print columns smacking of a certain disdain for the country at-large, with the sharpest scorn saved for “flyover country.” There was a sense among the liberal media in the year after the election of Donald Trump that an effort was needed to reconnect with the country it was tasked with covering.
It’s not that CNN and the New York Times actively rebel against hiring political conservatives to fill entry-level jobs, folks who might have seen Trump’s win coming. Instead, there’s a much more natural sorting mechanism — the appeal of big city life, which on its own limits the pool of political renegades even applying to CNN, to begin with.
After Trump moved into the Oval Office, some journalists seemed to learn their lesson.
There’s a handful of stories of journalists at elite institutions moving to the heartland in hopes of better understanding the whole of America. Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post notably relocated to Red Lake Falls, Minnesota, after he somewhat slandered the town in print. In 2017, the former head of NPR, Ken Stern, authored the book Republican Like Me: How I Left the Liberal Bubble and Learned to Love the Right, chronicling his own move out of D.C. to Texas.
Over at 30 Rock, the home of NBC Universal and MSNBC, news is largely being made elsewhere. Since an NBC News employee tragically died in late March from the coronavirus, roughly 95% of staff are working remotely. This includes everyone from line producers to scriptwriters to the on-air talent and the anchors themselves.
Prime-time host Chris Hayes was a trendsetter for the network on how to cope with the times. As described in a company memo from the network’s chairman, Andy Lack, All In With Chris Hayes was being done with only two producers in the control room.
“I’m spending less time thinking about production and more time thinking about content,” Hayes said in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. “The interviews are longer. The amount of guests we can talk to is sort of democratized. So, in some ways, it’s weirdly kind of closer to my ideal model of a show.”
That’s a telling statement from a top talent in the cable news business. It might not have been his intention to undermine the status quo of his industry, but it certainly raises some questions about what was being prioritized before — and why.
If you follow news producers on Twitter or LinkedIn, you’ll see numerous posts of screenshots from staff Zoom calls between cable news producers, all working on shows from their homes. Presumably, they’re coordinating with a skeleton staff who is still stationed inside the headquarters of their given network. In many cases, the anchor is also at home, working from a makeshift home studio.
Shannon Bream of Fox News shared a video of her home setup, where she was anchoring in a bedroom with a TV screen behind her featuring an urban landscape, a blanket draped casually over her lap. It’s taken a few weeks for the programming to mature in quality, but the transformation has been rapid across the cable networks.
The hallmarks of the average Skype video call, such as shoddy lighting, echoing audio, and awkward background scenery, have all started to disappear. The split screen views of cable news punditry, whether it be The Five on Fox News or CBS This Morning, look remarkably polished and natural. The only drawback continues to be the persistent delay of audio between hosts and guests, but this is neither a new problem nor one that’s impossible to adjust for in production.
The coronavirus may just reveal that many of our assumptions in the world of media were just born out of habit and comfort, not necessity.
In theory, cable news is focused on issues of national importance, and it makes sense to be nearer to power centers such as Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and New York City. But it does not make sense for every scriptwriter, booker, or segment coordinator to be expected to reside in these places as well. (Especially considering the lackluster pay put up against the extraordinary costs of living.)
Once it has been established during a global pandemic that media professionals can do their networking, hosting, producing, writing, and editing from any couch in the country, why would we ever go back to the way it was before?
Stephen Kent (@Stephen_Kent89) is the spokesperson for Young Voices, host of Beltway Banthas Podcast, and an entertainment contributor for the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog.
