Television News Helicopters

Today was an interesting case with helicopter sharing in San Francisco. There are two helicopters that are shared N7QY which is controlled by KGO and images are taken by KRON (which is essentially along for the ride and is based at the KGO studios despite separate ownership) and N62TV which is used by the KTVU/KICU duopoly, the KNTV/KSTS duopoly and the KPIX/KBCW duopoly. For most of the day there was a helicopter flying around the Grand Princess providing constant images to affiliates and the networks. KGO was uplinking video to CNN NewSource whole N62TV was flying and then when their own helicopter was in the air. As KGO’s helicopter was flying they showed the tail rotor cam once or twice which went out everywhere and was seen on CBSN Bay Area. And even for a short period of time KTRK Houston’s helicopter was in rotation N42SL providing images. It seemed like every two or three hours the switched helicopters.

I imagine it was done to save money and resources as they’d all be getting the same images even if they flew themselves, but this way they got constant coverage. It like was also a safety measure as instead of two or three helicopters flying around the cruise ship there was only one. Additionally the ship was eventually docked within two miles of Oakland International Airport, so they would also have to be dealing with the take offs and departures from the airport.

Edit : Telemundo offered a live stream and they got the tail cam as well:

What was the point of providing continuous images of the ship? What were they expecting to suddenly happen, the vessel explode, sink, or be attacked by a 1000ft long sea monster?

To be honest I have no idea, I get images of it coming into the San Francisco Bay, docking, a fly around or two, the first people removed and then later on live shots during scheduled newscasts.

I imagine the images were likely demanded by the networks for their cable/streaming properties - the stations are all owned by the networks. CNN would want shots for NewSource, Fox for Fox News, ABC for ABC News Live, CBS for CBSN and NBC for MSNBC, CNBC and NBC News Now. It appeared through out the day even after the ship docked CNN and MSNBC (probably Fox as well) all used the live images when discussing it and sometimes used it as a bump shot coming into/out of breaks. ABC News Live had the image in a pushback for a good part of the day.

Also, it draws significant viewership to social media and web traffic. KGO (ABC 7) had the maximum 8 hour live stream and it was viewed by 976k on Facebook. Then a 2 hour 40 minute video had 158k viewers.

Of a ship in a dock? Crikey

The TVS News Helicopter G-BTVS- a Twin Squirrel - was flown by Captain Max Kenworthy. It was based at Redhill and used by both the Southampton and the Maidstone newsrooms, not only as an airborne live-link but also for live aerial shooting. Hovering above a location, it kicked up quite a racket a could be rather noisy for reporters and cameramen below. The machine landed frequently at the Southampton and Maidstone studios and, from time to time, ferried news staff from one end of the region to the other. One slight snag was that there wasn't an "off" switch for the on-board transmitter; that transmitter was always on whenever the aircraft was powered up. When TVS lost its licence, the company did attempt to interest Sky News in taking on the machine - but Sky decided they just couldn't afford it.

Surely a 5 minute job for a spark to install a single pole switch?

There might have been a mountain of paper work involved in getting CAA approval to mount one perhaps? Does seem odd.

I do recall the aircraft only had a crew of one?

There really shouldn't be any issue with fitting a breaker for the broadcast equipment.
There had to be one that was under the pilot's control at all times.
I'm afraid I can't believe that there was no off switch - what I suspect may have happened is that other equipment was also on the same breaker that was required whenever the helicopter was airborne.

I’ve reminded you guys a million times: no rotor discussion!!!!

The best video in the history of mankind pic.twitter.com/ajMTAqFS1X

— Roberto Alonso González Lezcano (@robertoglezcano) March 7, 2020

It appears that Arena Aviation's website is out of date - G-INTV is now in BBC News livery. (It's just flown past my back window)

There's a photo here of it in BBC livery from July 2018 - https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/9018652

It's been like that since at least 2016