The Secret To Excellence In TV News

In 1977, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created the Apple II in Jobs’ garage.

It was actually Wozniak who invented the Apple II and changed the world of computing forever. Jobs, unlike Bill Gates, was not really a computer nerd. But Jobs brought something far more important to the Apple equation — the thing that made Apple the most successful tech company in history.

Aesthetics.

This may sound a bit odd, and you may, properly so, wonder what this has to do with TV news production.

Trust me.

Jobs, unlike Wozniak (and everyone else in the burgeoning home PC market in the 1970’s) was an aesthetic perfectionist.

If you have seen the film Jiro Dreams of Sushi, what Jiro was to Sushi — an ardent aesthetic perfectionist, Jobs was to his Apple devices.

Things of beauty.

Perfection.

It is this intense and unyielding drive for perfection that makes a 3-Star Michelin meal in Paris what it is. It is what makes German automobiles so outstanding. It is what separates a Leica from Kodak.

When it comes to the world of TV news, the world is flooded with content.

When TV was first invented and for its first 50 years or so, there was little competition, so just showing up with a camera was more than enough to mesmerize the public.

Now, of course, anyone with an iPhone can create ‘TV news’ or at least video and put it online -which is where broadcast is headed.

So what can now differentiate TV news?

In my opinion — aesthetic excellence.

This can be achieved, even with an iPhone, but it takes focus and concentration.

Here is a lovely story reported, edited, shot and produced by Robbie Vaughn, an MMJ with Spectrum News 1 in Austin, Texas.

When we run the bootcamps, I always tell the participants that I have only one demand for them for their videos — perfection.

“You will decide when to push the record button. Only record if it is perfect. If you record something less than perfect, you have two choices- you can put the imperfect shot in the final story, which messes it up. Or you can leave the imperfect shot out, in which case, shooting it was a waste of time.”

We strive for a very low shooting ratio — 3:1.

But we strive for something more important — aesthetic perfection.