Fox News Takes Mobile Approach

If you've been watching Fox News Channel's election coverage of the primary season, you have seen the beginning of a new era in televised live shots.

The live streaming image of chief political correspondent Carl Cameron as he cruises along the nation's highways in a colorful Ford Expedition may look a little primitive, but it is revolutionary.

"This is going to change the way breaking news is covered in the future," says Brian Wilson, Fox's Washington bureau chief.

After tinkering with various new technologies and video equipment, he says the network has converted a couple of sport utility vehicles into roaming live news centers.

"It's amazing how agile this has made us," Wilson says. "We're able to stay ahead of the competition and get more lives shots on the air. It's faster and less expensive. It's going to be a 'game changer,' and we had it first."

A live shot for a network telecast traditionally requires a lot of planning, plus a large, expensive satellite truck that needs plenty of room and a crew to operate it.

Fox News' ElectionLink vehicles eliminate all that. Each SUV has a small satellite uplink on the roof for transmitting the signal. Also mounted on the roof is a camera that can rotate 360 degrees.

Another small camera is mounted on the dash. Aimed at the front passenger seat, the dash cam allows Cameron (or any other reporter) to chat live with Fox anchors while the SUV, driven by a camera operator, treks along at 60 mph from news event to news event.

A third news crew member is seated in the back of the van to run the transmission equipment.

ElectionLink made an unplanned debut in December, when an armed man took hostages at Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign office in Rochester, N.H.

"We were still working on it but we decided to try it anyway," Wilson says.

Cameron and crew jumped in the SUV and started reporting live while headed to Rochester. It was exciting coverage that included shots of Secret Service cars racing by.

"We were able to get to the scene ahead of everyone else, and our competitors were scratching their heads and wondering how we did it," he adds.

He says the tricked-out SUVs have been useful in covering primaries while candidates are spread across entire states. In New Hampshire, for example, Wilson was able to interview candidates Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain at separate events within an hour of each other.

"Romney was working the crowd at a factory, and we rolled up and jumped out and talked to him live, and then we jumped back in the van, and 12 minutes later at a second location we grabbed John McCain," Wilson says. "You couldn't do that with those big satellite trucks."

Wilson says ElectionLink allows a political expert such as Cameron to stay on the road and still be available to offer insight and commentary. "When Fred Thompson bowed out of the Republican race Tuesday, the anchor desk was able to discuss it with Carl as he was traveling through Florida."

Cameron and the ElectionLink vehicle were in Tampa this past week covering a Romney event and getting public reaction to the upcoming primary.

The streaming video has drawbacks. It's not as sharp or fluid as the traditional images, and the signal from the moving SUV can be disrupted by things such as overpasses. But many viewers are accustomed to streaming video from the Internet.

Wilson sees the potential for future uses.

"The video is only going to get better," he says. "And imagine there's a news bureau in Dallas where a tornado has been spotted somewhere," he says. "It is an hour and 30 minutes away so the reporter jumps in the SUV and starts transmitting while driving toward the story. Viewers can see what is happening outside. They can see the approaching thunderclouds in the distance. This is what we're going to see in the coming years."