I’ve referred to the ridiculous use of news helicopters before – particularly the pointless “Chopper 4” here in Washington, DC. Today I was amused by another example of this wasteful gimmick: on today’s News 4 at 5. A story aired about “lobby day” at the Maryland General Assembly in Annapolis, Maryland. The lobbyists were students and faculty from the University of Maryland, who are protesting budget cuts. The reporter was live in Annapolis (long after all the protesters had piled on the bus and left, by the way). During the live stand-up, they cut to a live shot of Chopper 4… hovering over the University of Maryland, many many miles away in College Park, Maryland. For 5 seconds. This aerial footage of the University added absolutely nothing to the story (nor did the live reporter at the scene many hours after the event). How much fuel do you think it took to hover that helicopter over a college campus in order to provide a few seconds of live footage for a minor story on the evening news?
Incidentally: this morning it took me one hour to get about 3 miles, and I didn’t even make it across the bridge into D.C., so I turned around and came back to work at home instead. Chopper 4 didn’t show me any of this. Why didn’t they hover over the traffic problems to let me know I should find another way to work?
