Reporting Live, Indiana Jones-Style (August 3, 1998)
By LISA NAPOLI (New York Times)
When documentary producer Jim Bruton first saw a satellite phone, it was 1993, he was in Africa, and a figurative light bulb went off above his head.
"I thought, 'Man, I've got to have one of these,'" he said, imagining the communications possibilities from the far-flung places around the globe where he typically shot his nature films.
Tracking down a phone and dissecting it was just the beginning of what has become a digital-age Indiana Jones-like quest. Bruton -- who possesses the bearing and the rugged looks of an explorer straight from central casting -- has invented a television field production package that puts the transmission technology currently available in a giant, half-million dollar satellite truck into a backpack. He claims his rig makes broadcasting live pictures from anywhere in the world possible -- with just ten minutes of setup time -- calling it a "TV truck in a suitcase."
Bruton has experimented with his system in a variety of places you'd expect to find a member of the Explorers Club. In May, he set up in base camp at Mount Everest, beaming back information for a Yale telemedicine project to monitor the physiology of climbers, as well as broadcasting live video for segments on the major networks. For CNN earlier this year, he transmitted live video from the Persian Gulf aboard the USS Independence. He has field-produced for Discovery Channel Online's coverage of the raising of the Titanic, and for the Web-based adventure magazine Mungo Park's "Journey of the Wise Men" -- a recreation of the biblical journey from Iran, through Syria and Jordan and finally to Israel.
Although he has boldly gone where satellite trucks and field producers don't typically go, Bruton maintains that what he's doing can work in less exotic live news situations just as well.
"Newsworthiness is not defined by broadcast quality; it's by who gets there first," he said -- not to mention who manages to set up their gear the fastest. Recent breaking stories that illustrate an application for the rig: A solo journalist carrying Bruton's system in the nation's Capitol could have broadcast live, without the aid of colleagues, after the recent shootings there. (The CBS network was criticized for its lag time in getting on the air.) And instead of the line of live trucks parked along Fifth Avenue to beam back reports from a recent construction accident in New York City's Times Square, a properly equipped journalist could have moved even closer to the scene, at a fraction of the cost.
"Satellite trucks are expensive. The trucks alone cost $2,500 per day and the camera crew costs more," said Bruton, who said his fee works out to be less. What is sacrificed in favor of cost and portability is the quality of the video: while traditional broadcast video transmits 30 frames per second, Bruton's system sends data at 18 frames per second.
Although the pictures aren't as clear as traditional broadcast video, there is no competition as far as size: Bruton's kit is small enough to take on an airplane. It includes: two 64 kilobits-per-second satellite phones; a video compression module; a virtually indestructible computer made from magnesium, aluminum and rubber by Fieldworks (Bruton said that on Everest, other PCs succumbed to the temperatures and thin air, but his kept ticking); a camera; and a wireless transmission device the size of a pack of cigarettes, developed by Bruton himself.
"What Jim did was he took standard technology and found the right satellite strategy and connected it to the network," said Seymour Friedell, chief executive of Zydacron, a Manchester, N.H., company that makes video conferencing tools.
Veteran journalist Ed Turner, currently a fellow at the Media Studies Center in Arlington, Va., and an Editor at Large for CNN, considered what Bruton's invention could mean for television newsgathering.
"There are all kinds of ramifications," he said. "If the editorial content is dramatic enough, the fact that the quality might not be as good is not that great a distraction." He recalled CNN's use of still photos transmitted over phone lines from Tiananmen Square in 1989 after their broadcast lines were unplugged. "People want to see live events, and they automatically mentally correct for something that's less than ideal studio standards."
Turner also suggested that the notion of having a journalist act as a type of "one man band" -- while useful in cramped and urgent circumstances -- also has its downside. "To be a reporter, having also to be a cameraman, sound man, and technician is, to say the least, an annoyance with doing a job as a reporter," he said. "Mankind always chases technology, and in catching up with it, there are plenty of dropped principles that occur as we learn how to manage it."
Bruton knows the best way to learn is to use the rig in the field, which is why he keeps in touch with the various networks in the hopes of doing real-time research and development.
"I have transmitted video to every major network in the country," he said. "I want to have an established relationship with them so they can see how small this is. Eventually, we can parachute into any area with this system."
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
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