A look at the future as News 12 celebrates 70 years

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - This February, News 12 is celebrating 70 years of being on the air and “On Your Side.”

As we celebrate how far we’ve come in seven decades to bring you the best news coverage possible, we’re giving you a peek behind the scenes into the future of how local news is transforming.

Much like the move from black and white to color, the move from our studio in North Augusta to our state-of-the-art facility off Riverwatch Parkway three years ago brought our news coverage into the future.

“I started in TV engineering in 1985 at the PBS station in Denver, Colorado,” said Chief Engineer Joe McGee.

McGee is in charge of making sure the 10-15 miles of wire in one room communicate together to bring you the news.

“The technology in this room is state of the art,” he said.

It’s safe to say, he’s seen a lot of change over the years.

“It has come so far from back then. Back then, it was a two-inch tape that wide, now we don’t have a tape machine in the place,” said McGee. “It’s changed a lot.”

From innovation to automation, TV news now works leaner than ever before.

“Back in the day, you’d have an operator for each camera, a floor director, everyone in the control room, prompter operator. The list goes on and on. The only person in this studio now is the talent,” said McGee.

News 12 Richard Rogers said: “Now we have the teleprompter here on this little wand. I can ease the button up, and it goes forward. I can ease it down, and it goes back.”

Behind the scenes, the directors control the robotic cameras through automation — a carefully choreographed dance where every camera turns — has a programmed code.

“All the shots are usually preset. They can drive them around from back there,” said McGee.

Producers behind the scenes can more easily change scripts in real time for anchors to follow on the desk.

Rogers said: “Back in the old days when a producer made a change in the newscast, you had a stack of scripts you had to go shuffling to find out where that script was, pull it to the side if we’re ever going to do that story, and then hope your scripts are in the right order. Now, they change it on a computer, and in real-time, we see it on an iPad on the desk,” said Rogers.

When news breaks, instead of rolling out a helicopter to get a better look, we can send a drone.

Instead of a huge truck with an antenna mast to ping a satellite to bring you a live report out in the field, we simply grab a backpack.

“Its replacement is this. It’s loaded up with six cellular cards, makes six calls at the same time and combines the bandwidth. We talk to a receiver back here. Basically, a button pushed the plug in your camera, and you’re live,” said McGee.

Making nimble work of bringing you the news now even if we’re off air.

News 12 Nick Proto said: “Really all of our digital streaming didn’t exist as of a few years ago.”

Proto is our morning anchor. He’s also the anchor for our digital desk, which can stream live to Facebook, YouTube and Roku anytime news breaks.

“We’re on air about 40 hours a week, but news happens outside those 40 hours too. So, if something happens outside those 40 hours, we can bring it live to viewers in real-time. So as breaking news unfolds, we are able to hop on this desk and push that out to people, so they know exactly what is going on in real-time,” said Proto.

And the tools to walk viewers through what’s happening, from traffic to where to click on a website — that’s modernized too.

“This is not just a monitor. This is a touchscreen. It’s a big, gigantic computer monitor with touch screen, over here we have our big, gigantic iPad,” said McGee.

As news becomes more instantaneous through your smart devices and the web, the way news looks is changing.

But the goal is still the same — to give you the most accurate, up-to-date, news we can, every time.

You may not have to be sitting in your living room anymore to find out what’s going on.

But the more things change, the more they stay the same, and that means being able to count on us to get to the bottom of something.

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