Breaching the Fiefdom

Like a weathered but still proud gargoyle hunched above the Fourth Estate, the broadcasting vet can't help but wonder what's crumbling underneath. Okay it's not that Gothic, but the rate of decay is all the talk in the TV News kingdom, from the Earls of Anchordom to the serfs with tripods in their oxcarts. From my particular perch, I see nothing but upheaval on the horizon, a relentless schism that will leave the media landscape unrecognizable to all but who enter it anew. Then again, I'm not the only stone monkey dragon thingie peering into the distance. Many a village elder and more than a few damsels in tight dresses have clamored for a better view. What they've spotted has caused many of them to breach the fiefdom, to run screaming for higher ground, wherever their checkbooks or cheekbones would take them. Me, I'm part of the architecture - but even a sculpted dolt like me has to ask himself...

"Why am I still hanging around?"

That query is answered of course every time I pull into Castle Pittman. Let's face it: no one's going to pay me to sit around and pen venomous epistles for the internet. Not yet anyway. There's plenty of TV in my future and not just the 42 inch Sony I sit with my back to most every night. No, I make my living off the evening news and while it ain't the deep kick it was back in '91, I still dig it more days than not. Truthfully, it's all I know. Running around mass communicatin' is something I've done for most of my adult life. Thus, I see the world through a prism of lenses, one eye buried in the 'finder while the other scans the room for the very next view. It ain't a habit that lines your pockets with silver. Dead 9-volts, maybe, but not silver. That kind of currency's reserved for folks with far duller gigs that mine. I get paid in access, perspective and two week increments. It'll never land me a shopping spree in Belize but I knew that the moment I first dedicated myself to the pursuit of news. I just never realized how quickly the world would change.

But it has.

Audience, technology, resources and rewards are at levels unthinkable just a few years back. Even us squatting quadrupeds have had to sit up and take notice - a tough enough nut when you're forever burdened with deadlines and live shots. From here, it's easy to bury your head in the morass of the next newscast, provided those newscasts keep on coming. I'm not so convinced they will, which is a helluva thing to mutter out loud, for when I first hoisted a fancycam it was generally agreed the evening news would last forever. Well, score one for the odd oracle out there who predicted a renaissance. Most of us weren't listening, cleaving instead to our individual disciplines as the calendar pages fanned before us. Me, I got lost in the pixels and fell in love with a form of communication that never had much respect for itself. That's cool; I didn't have much else planned anyway. But as the rub of unending updates has worn away my reserves and I find myself wondering if I should have a crack at my shackles and at least attempt to fly away. Sure beats choking on the coming rubble...

Now help me up, would ya? My haunches are killing me.