Helicopters Used for News Coverage

Or you have to option to look at something else.

Mouseboy are you in the LA area? I'm wondering with July sweeps are stations breaking into normal programming or are these from live streams?

They do a bit of both

no I dont live there. And as elmarko says a bit of both. alot of time they seemed to be streamed on their social media and then if seems if its particularly dangerous pursuit or goes on for a while or if its during their newscast they interrupt and carry the pursuits. But usually it will start off exclusively on their social media/websites etc.

Live police chase - KABC 7 Los Angeles. - Notice SKYMAP technology in use on screen from their news Chopper.
http://abc7.com/live/23340/

KCTV 5 CBS- Kansas City MO/KS. Live streaming video and coverage of a massive flooding across Kansas City Metro. They are broadcasting live water rescues of people stranded as well.

http://www.kctv5.com/category/274238/watch-kctv5-live-newscasts-and-replays

Minneapolis TV station choppers are live above a gas explosion at a school in the city. One death reported initiall by the fire department, but now the MFD has retracted their first report. People possibly trapped. This apparently happened 25-30 mins ago. Most stations already in rolling coverage.


http://kstp.com/livevideo/
http://www.kare11.com/news/watch-live-buliding-collapse-at-minnehaha-academy/461291925
http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/

Sad news out of Albuquerque, New Mexico KQRE's pilot, Bob Martin, died in a helicopter crash this past Sunday. Bob was flying the stations owned helicopter Saturday afternoon. Bob has been a reporter both in the air and on the ground for over 40 years and covered all the major events in Albuquerque.

It is not clear what caused the crash but the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.

I saw that the other. Its really sad. And certainly as he has been reporting for decades, he is well liked and familiar to many colleagues. Quite sad indeed.

Since about Febuary or before KABC has been using this SKYMAP7 tech on board their chopper Air7HD. And its amazingly impressive. With the wildfire recently and with the innumerable car chases that occur in Southern CA I think this tech is important tool for the viewer to understand what they are seeing. Besides the live overlay of the streets. They recently have been employing another feature in which the live view with the street overlay can be toggled on and off with a 3D satellite view similar to what you will see on GOOGLE EARTH 3D. But it moves in motion with the camera and be toggled on and off.
For instance when they are covering the devastaing wildfires at night that killed people and destroyed homes. It was important not only to see the streets but they topogaphy that surrounds. It fascnating to see the chopper shot with the graphic street overlay switch instantly to the GOOGLE EARTH 3D topopgraphy image so the viewer and see exactly what the are seeing and then toggle back to the live nighttime images.



The O&O sister station KGO 7 San Francisco has lauched the new tech with the same branding as well.

That's f***ing awesome.

Oklahoma stations using it as well I think.

Yeah, they were the first. The mapping overlay is done by a company called Churchill Navigation. The first generation of the device took an HD-SDI input, outputted via DisplayPort or DVI and at times you could see the computer menus pop up on screen. There’s new version out that’s HD-SDI in and out.



I believe Cineflex has their own mapping feature as well.