Some people fear change in the television industry. After all, we are under “attack” from all sides, including satellite and cable TV and the Internet. Actually, I don’t fear change, I embrace it. And, I consider digital technology to be my friend, not the enemy. Yesterday was a great example as severe storms rolled through the eastern half of Alabama.
As of late last night, I had received over 100 digital photographs of severe weather; mainly large hail. These pictures came from “citizen journalists” armed with digital cameras. We have posted a number of them to our web site, and used many of them on ABC 33/40 news last night, and during our long form tornado coverage when St. Clair and Talladega counties were under a tornado warning. Sure, as always we had excellent work from our crews in the field, but with a TV news department you can’t be everywhere at the same time. I think the role of the public will continue to increase as we use their photos.
In addition to still pictures, we also received many nice video clips of large hail and high winds from a number of different Alabama counties. With a majority of Alabama homes how enjoying high speed Internet access, sending digital video doesn’t take long, and once again, it gives us a great advantage with our on-air coverage.
I want to thank everyone who took the time to send in images yesterday and last night. We aren’t able to use all of them in our coverage, but they sure help us understand what kind of weather is going on around the state. Want to help? If you have some interesting digital pictures or video of weather in your neighborhood, just e-mail them as an attachment to: weatherpix@abc3340.com
You can become a big part of our severe weather coverage! I will post many more pictures here on the blog tomorrow... in the meantime scroll down to see pictures from earlier today.
As of late last night, I had received over 100 digital photographs of severe weather; mainly large hail. These pictures came from “citizen journalists” armed with digital cameras. We have posted a number of them to our web site, and used many of them on ABC 33/40 news last night, and during our long form tornado coverage when St. Clair and Talladega counties were under a tornado warning. Sure, as always we had excellent work from our crews in the field, but with a TV news department you can’t be everywhere at the same time. I think the role of the public will continue to increase as we use their photos.
In addition to still pictures, we also received many nice video clips of large hail and high winds from a number of different Alabama counties. With a majority of Alabama homes how enjoying high speed Internet access, sending digital video doesn’t take long, and once again, it gives us a great advantage with our on-air coverage.
I want to thank everyone who took the time to send in images yesterday and last night. We aren’t able to use all of them in our coverage, but they sure help us understand what kind of weather is going on around the state. Want to help? If you have some interesting digital pictures or video of weather in your neighborhood, just e-mail them as an attachment to: weatherpix@abc3340.com
You can become a big part of our severe weather coverage! I will post many more pictures here on the blog tomorrow... in the meantime scroll down to see pictures from earlier today.