TV Station Ditches Traditional Equipment for iPhones
The Swiss news station Léman Bleu began using
iPhones in 2015 to shoot their stories, record inter-
views, and do live shots. Armed with an iPhone, a
reporter with a mic in one hand could use their free
hand to grip a selfie stick for live standup shots. The
station now creates 100 percent of its broadcasts on
the iPhone.
The iPhone’s growing technical sophistication
has helped photographers and videographers pro-
duce beautiful, publishable work indistinguishable
from that made with more expensive dedicated cam-
eras. The move by the Geneva-based news station is
sure to have camera operators nervous and station
accountants hopeful, as the typical iPhone costs
pennies compared to traditional news video cameras.
And with an app, like LIVE+ from Dejero, stations
will no longer need expensive satellite trucks for live
reporting.
“The main reason for this radical change was
the quest for lightness, responsiveness, and interac-
tivity,” news director Laurent Keller said. According to
Keller, Léman Bleu took its cue from a Scandinavian
station that switched to iPhones. He said the quality
of iPhone video is not inferior to that shot with a
standard TV camera. He thinks the cost savings is
especially important for a small, regional station that
airs only a few hours each day.
In 2018, Keller said the station purchased
10 iPhone X’s for its team of mobile journalists. Even
with the most expensive iPhone in the kit, the cost is
much less than traditional equipment, like cameras or
a live truck.
Cost aside, Keller notices that the storytelling
from his journalists has a more “lively grammar.” For
really big events, like elections, Keller’s team will use
a traditional video camera or two.
“Broadcast cameras provide basic coverage
for television; at the same time, journalists equipped
with smartphones act like a swarm on all the other
side, backstage interviews, live for social networks,
etc.” Keller said. “This allows us to be very strong on
both TV and social networks — the winning mix.”
News organizations in the United States have
explored using iPhones as well. In 2015, a television
station in Charlotte, North Carolina, tried using
iPads in the field but stopped because of technical
problems and an amateurish quality they gave the
broadcast. In 2013, the Chicago Sun-Times laid off its
entire photography staff and boldly claimed it would
train reporters to use the iPhone.
The move to discard traditional camera equip-
ment in TV reporting would make sense for journalists
like Glen Mulcahy, who believes in the potential of
mobile phones as a journalism tool. He remembers
having arguments with engineers who belittled the
quality of mobile video and tried to block his footage
from airing. But then the Arab Spring happened,
when participants on the ground captured some of
the most poignant moments of the protest using their
smartphones.
Mulcahy runs RTE Mojocon, one of the largest
media conferences focused on mobile content cre-
ation. The number of attendees at the Dublin-based
conference in 2015 was double what it had been the
previous year. Mulcahy travels throughout Europe
training journalists with the BBC, NRK Norway, SVT
Sweden, France TV, and other organizations. He also
manages a YouTube channel called Here that features
a variety of video pieces created using the iPhone.
“The business case is simple,” said Mulcahy,
who observed that the device of choice in the field
seems to be the iPhone. “Lots of newsrooms have
camera crews, but no matter how good a camera per-
son is, he or she can only shoot so many stories per
day. Train all your staff on how to be effective mobile
journalists, and now your camera–journalist ratio is
1:1, with everyone having an opportunity to shoot and
create content.
“If Mojocon taught me anything, it’s that the
mobile content creator community is growing expo-
nentially and on a global scale. Sure, not everyone is
using their iPhone to create epic feature films … but
the diversity and variety of content being created is
actually very impressive.”
TV Station Ditches Traditional Equipment for iPhones
A reporter for Léman Bleu in Switzerland executes a live standup with an iPhone 6 on a selfie stick. PHOTO: Léman Bleu/FTVLive
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