They line up on one number. The number is real. But it is the wrong number to read for most of us.

Here we go.

1. What the headlines got right.

A study from Wiingy this week named broadcast technicians as one of the occupations most damaged by AI. They were citing a specific Bureau of Labor Statistics of the USA (BLS).

The BLS defines that role (occupation code, 27-4012) in narrow language. “Set up, operate, and maintain the electronic equipment used to acquire, edit, and transmit audio and video for radio or television programs. Control and adjust incoming and outgoing broadcast signals to regulate sound volume, signal strength, and signal clarity. Operate satellite, microwave, or other transmitter equipment to broadcast radio or television programs.”

In plain language. Master control operators. Transmitter engineers. Signal-flow technicians. The people whose work lives between the camera and the antenna.

That role got destroyed. The US had 31,580 of them in May 2018. May 2024 had 21,080. Ten thousand five hundred jobs gone, a third of the workforce, on the same BLS classification system.

The Wiingy framing reads this as the AI story. The timeline does not quite hold up. The slide started in 2019, three years before ChatGPT, deepened through the pandemic, and accelerated through 2023 and 2024.

The wave that broke this area of our industry was master control consolidation, IP-based workflows replacing dedicated transmission hardware, REMI and at-home production thinning the field crew, cord-cutting collapsing the pay TV subscriber base, and yes the recent AI layer on top. All of that is automation in the operational sense, plus the platform shift from broadcast and pay TV to streaming. Generative AI is the most recent push, not the foundation.

So the headline number is real. The story behind it is older and broader than AI.

2. What the headlines got wrong.

When you put the broadcast technician role next to the other four occupations in the same BLS broadcast and video family, only one line falls off the chart.

Audio and Video Technicians ( code 27-4011) finished May 2024 at 92 percent of their 2018 level, after a deep pandemic dip and a strong recovery. Sound Engineering Technicians (code 27-4014) at 97 percent, basically flat. Film and Video Editors (code 27-4032) at 102 percent. Camera Operators (code 27-4031) at 116 percent. These last 2 occupations were larger in the last reports than they were six years ago.

The roles that require a human in a specific physical place, looking at the actual frame, with the actual equipment, are stable or growing. The transmission specialists are not. That tells you what was getting automated and what was not. It also tells you that the Wiingy headline of “AI is eating broadcasting” reads as true if you only look at one row of the table. It is not true for the rest of us.

3. Camera operators deserve a closer look.

This is the role that surprised me most.

Camera operators went from 21,080 in 2018 to 24,460 in 2024. Three thousand three hundred eighty new jobs. Up sixteen percent over six years. The median annual wage rose from $54,570 to $68,810. A twenty-six percent nominal gain.

Read the wage number carefully. Cumulative US inflation from May 2018 to May 2024 was also about twenty-six percent. In real terms, camera operators’ wages have been flat. The headcount growth is real. The salary growth, after inflation, is roughly zero.

That is still a better outcome than what the broadcast technicians saw. The camera in the room kept the people behind it.

4. The yet is doing a lot of work in that title.

The 2025 BLS release lands later this year. 2025 was the year AI tools moved from demo to production. The release will likely show:

— Broadcast technicians continuing to fall.

— Audio, sound, and editing roles pressured by AI captioning, audio cleanup, editing assistants, and graphics tools.

— Camera operators? Probably stable for now.

Probably. Not certainly. And not for long.

AI-driven robotic cameras are not yet good enough for top-flight live sports. Shot selection on a Premier League, NFL, or NBA match needs a human reading the play inside a two-second window. AI cameras handle amateur and lower-budget work. Not the top tier. Not yet.

That “yet” is doing the same work it does in the title. If AI learned to drive a car in the streets of Manhattan or LA, it will learn to operate a camera. My honest guess: twenty-four to thirty-six months before automated cameras start displacing operators in second-tier live sports, longer before the top tier feels it. The pressure is coming.

What it means for camera operators is what it means for everyone still in the room. Learn the tools that complement you. Run the AI-driven camera array as well as the human-driven one. Be the operator the system depends on, not the one it replaces.

One line I keep coming back to

“The camera operator is not going away. Yet.”

The word “yet” is doing more work than the rest of the sentence combined.

Curious to know if there is information like this in other countries. Let me know if you hear about it.

See you next week.

Oscar S.

Bulletin board

You read this and thought, “I want to be the operator the system depends on, not the one it replaces.”

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The truck went dark and silent mid-show. The generator failed. The signal dropped. It took us three minutes to bring it back.

Three of the longest minutes of my life.

We got the game back. Then we sat down for the post-mortem.

The post-mortem found what post-mortems usually find. The backup power had never actually worked. There was no UPS in the truck. We had been one bad night away from this for a long time.

That is when I went looking. There had to be a better way to find these things than waiting for them to break us.

What I found

I came across a line attributed to the famous American investor Charlie Munger that he liked to repeat. “All I want to know is where I’m going to die so I’ll never go there.”

He used it to teach inversion. Solve the problem backwards. Find what kills you. Then do not go there.

That hit. I kept reading. And that is how I found the pre-mortem.

The pre-mortem was popularized by psychologist Gary Klein in a 2007 Harvard Business Review article called Performing a Project Premortem. The technique is simple. Before the project starts, you assume it has already failed. Then you ask the team to write down every reason they think it failed.

You are not predicting the future. You are giving everybody on the team permission to say what they already secretly suspect, while there is still time to do something about it.

The post-mortem is what we have always done. The pre-mortem is what we should have been doing.

The two-word version

In a control room we don’t have time for a Klein workshop. But we can run the simpler version.

What if?

What if the generator dies. What if the talent does not show. What if comms drop on the side that runs the rundown. What if the iso operator on the goalkeeper cannot lock for the full ninety. What if the playback machine times out at the worst minute.

A club competition final, 2017. We asked “what if?” twice. First about the uplink truck. Then about the fiber feeding it. The uplink failed on air. The audience never saw it. A second fiber was already running on a separate path.

The discipline is the same as Klein’s. The format is two words. Asked early enough, in front of the right people, those two words have saved more shows than I can count.

Not because we kept bad things from happening. Because we already had answers in our heads when they did.

The pushback I got

The first time I ran a pre-mortem with a team I heard all of the lines.

“Don’t be so negative.”

“If we talk about it, it will happen.”

“No need to waste time on things that aren’t going to happen.”

I have a lot of sympathy for those lines. They come from people who care about the show. Nobody who is calm about the work asks “what if?” about a generator.

But over time I noticed something. The teams that were willing to sit with the question for ten minutes became the teams I trusted with the bigger shows. The ones who refused stayed where they were.

Planning for what we don’t want is how we get ready for what we don’t see coming. That is not negativity. That is the job.

The NBCU Academy line

I spent last week’s newsletter recommending the NBCU Academy video on the Super Bowl pre-game show. There is a moment in that video where the director says, “we have to try not to create curve balls for ourselves.”

He is right. The curve balls life throws at you are bad enough. The ones you create for yourself are inexcusable. That is what “what if?” is for. It promises you will not be the one who walked the show into a known hole.

It gives you the version of yourself that already thought about the worst case and already decided who would handle it.

That version is calmer at minute thirty when the thing actually happens.

The version of “what if?” for everyone else

If you do not run shows, the question still works.

What if the funding round closes a quarter late. What if the senior person on the project takes another job. What if the test that everybody assumes works actually does not. What if the demo on Monday breaks the way it broke last quarter and nobody fixed it.

You do not need a workshop. You need ten minutes, the right two or three people, and the question.

The post-mortem teaches you what already broke. The pre-mortem teaches you where you would die so you can not go there.

“Talking about what we don’t want is how we get ready for what we don’t see coming.”

Thirteen years since Costa Rica. The two words have not gotten old yet.

One ask

Forward this to a producer or a production manager who runs morning meetings.

If you teach live production, give your students ten minutes next week to imagine a show has already failed and write down every reason. Then watch them argue about who fixes what. The argument is the lesson.

Bulletin board

You read about the pre-mortem and thought, “I want to be in the rooms where this question gets asked before the biggest shows in the world.”

Here is your next move.

My course, The Global Business of Live Sports Production, is the field guide for the industry that runs those shows. Who is actually calling the shots on the biggest sporting events in the world. How their crew lists get built. How to get on those lists. Twenty-seven years of inside knowledge, organized so you can use it tomorrow morning, not someday.

65 broadcasting professionals have already gone through it.

TMB readers get 66% off. No code, no checkout gymnastics. The discount is built into the link below. If you have been on the fence, this is the week.

Take the course →

And NBC Academy just put the playbook on YouTube for free.

I have been in broadcasting for 27 years. This is the most useful twenty minutes I h…

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Here is mine.

From now on, once a month, I am going to send you the same kind of messages I already text my friends during the week. “Did you see this?” “Listen to this one.” Things I would hate for you to miss.

Here we go.

1. The NAB floor is smaller. The show is not dying.

NAB Show 2026 closed with about 58,000 attendees. Up 5% from 2025, but still 44% below the 2017 peak of 103,000. This is my tenth NAB. The shrinkage is visible: no satellite trucks in the parking lot, entire exhibitor categories gone, booths replaced by software demos on laptops.

Three causes behind what is actually happening.

Engineers no longer need to fly to Vegas for information. Product announcements, demos, and deep dives stream on YouTube within hours, and most vendors now run online workshops for serious buyers. The exclusivity that filled the floor for two decades is gone. The information is everywhere. The room is no longer required.

The industry is aging, and the next generation does not think like us. Most broadcast engineers are between 50 and 70, retirements are outpacing replacements, and the cohort building for YouTube, TikTok, and streaming-first does not see a $5,000 trip to Vegas as necessary.

US media consolidation collapsed the domestic attendee base. Local TV groups that used to send teams of twenty now send three executives, if that. The decline is structural, not a pandemic hangover. NAB lost 12,000 attendees between 2017 and 2019, before COVID even started.

This is why IBC in Amsterdam is the show worth watching. In 2015, NAB was almost twice the size of IBC (103K attendees vs. 54K). Today the gap is down to 12,000 attendees. NAB did not get smaller because IBC got bigger, they both shrank. NAB shrank faster. Europe is running 5 to 7 years behind the US on the digital transition, and when it hits full speed around 2028, IBC will face the same pressure NAB is absorbing now. If you want the unvarnished version of this thesis, read Evan Shapiro.

The question for each of us is the one a friend asked me in a text last week.

Does NAB still work for you, or are you going out of habit?

If you cannot answer clearly, you are going out of habit.

2. The masterclass in listening hiding in ninety seconds.

Dallas Taylor, who runs Twenty Thousand Hertz and has made me listen to the world differently for five years, just put out a short video where Ben Majchrzak, senior A1 at NBC Sports, walks through where the microphones actually sit during an NBA broadcast.

The surprise is not how many mics he uses. It is where he puts them. Most of what you hear on the broadcast does not come from the microphone you would expect. Ben has been refining these placements for years, and what he describes in ninety seconds is the product of a thousand small decisions most viewers will never consciously register.

Watch it here. If you work in audio, you already know this. If you do not, this is the best ninety seconds of free mentorship you will get this month.

3. Netflix opens the live operations door.

The Netflix Tech Blog just published a long piece called The Human Infrastructure: How Netflix Built the Operations Layer Behind Live at Scale. It is worth your time if you care about where live operations is going.

Casper, Brett, and Alo walk through how Netflix acquires signal from remote venues, manages traffic, and serves millions of simultaneous streams. What surprised me is where they put their focus. The operational complexity is not in the streaming software, which is largely solved. It is in the people layer. Who is on call. Who owns what decision. How a runbook gets written so a new engineer can follow it at 3 AM when something fails.

Here is the part I keep thinking about. Traditional broadcasters spent decades building the opposite culture: tribal knowledge, specialists who are never replaceable, workflows that live in the head of the person who built them. Netflix is building the system where the company outlasts any individual. That is a cultural shift most of our industry has not even started. The tools will follow. The culture is the hard part.

One quote I cannot let go of this week

“Every company is a media company now.” Heard many times on the floor at NAB, Devoncroft, and SVG conferences.

Quick poll

Know a colleague asking if NAB is still was worth the trip, working on an audio team, or rebuilding live operations? Forward them this. One of the three will land.

See you next week.

Oscar S.

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I sit down in front of a screen, any screen, to watch a game, a race, a ceremony. And within seconds, I am no longer a fan.

I am working.

I look at the camera coverage. I notice the replay choices. I suffer when something goes wrong on screen. I voice my frustration with a director’s decision, even though I know that directing live television is one of the most complicated jobs in the world, and I might not be able to do it better myself.

If you are in this business, you know exactly what I am talking about.

You Are Not Alone

I have talked to hundreds of colleagues about this over the years. I have read comments on previous editions of this newsletter about it. The conclusion is always the same.

We all do it.

Your partner is next to you enjoying the match. Your kids are screaming at the screen. And you are sitting there, arms crossed, analyzing a camera cut that lasted half a second too long.

It is almost involuntary. Your brain has been trained to see what most people will never notice. That is not the problem.

The problem is what you do with it.

The Thin Line

There is a thin line that separates two very different habits. On one side, criticism. On the other, professional curiosity.

They look similar from the outside. Both involve noticing what happened on screen. Both involve having an opinion.

But they could not be more different in what they do to you.

Criticism Is an Empty Exercise

Let me be direct about this.

Criticism, by itself, is an empty exercise that damages the person who does it.

It does not help you grow. It does not teach you anything you did not already know. And it does not improve your standing in the industry.

What it does is something worse.

If you make a habit of criticizing other people’s work, your colleagues notice. They hear you tear apart a show during a dinner. They listen to you pick apart a director’s choices in a production meeting. And they start thinking one thing:

If this person criticizes everyone when they are not around, they will do the same with me.

That is how you damage relationships without even realizing it. That is how you build a reputation you never intended to have.

I wrote about protecting your reputation in TMB #143, "Don’t Burn Your Bridges." This is the quieter version of the same problem. You are not burning a bridge with a dramatic exit. You are eroding it, one comment at a time.

Become a Student of the Show

Now here is the other side of that line.

Instead of criticizing, you study. Instead of judging, you learn.

When you watch a broadcast as a student, three things happen:

You learn from what others are doing. Every show is a masterclass if you pay attention. That creative camera angle you noticed? That transition that surprised you? Someone made that decision under pressure, in real time. Understanding why they did it is worth more than pointing out that it did not work.

You share your learnings and grow with your colleagues. When you bring observations to your team, not complaints, but observations, you start conversations that make everyone better. "Did you see how they handled the VAR review on Saturday? That replay sequence was tight." That is a conversation that builds people up instead of tearing them down.

You understand how fans experience the broadcast. This one is easy to forget. We are so deep inside the machine that we lose sight of the person at home on the couch. Watching as a student helps you reconnect with the audience perspective, which is the entire point of what we do.

The Hardest Part

I will be honest with you. There is something even harder than going from critic to student.

It is learning to be a fan again.

That is what I am trying to do right now. To sit down in front of a race or a match and just enjoy it. No analysis. No frustration with the director. No mental notes about the graphics package.

Just the game.

It is incredibly difficult after 20 years in this business. Your brain fights you every second. But the people next to you, your family, your friends, they deserve to share that experience with you. Not with the version of you that is mentally in the production truck.

And here is something I did not expect. When I manage to turn off the professional lens, even for a few minutes, I come back to work the next day with more energy. More creativity. More love for what we do.

The best professionals in broadcasting are not the ones who criticize every show. They are the ones who never stop learning from them.

That is the line. Critic or student. One makes you bitter. The other makes you better.

Choose wisely.

If you know someone in this business who cannot stop working when they watch a game, send them this edition. They will recognize themselves in every paragraph.

Oscar

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I had the opportunity to talk about the work we are doing for this summer’s World Cup. But that was not the experience that impacted me the most.

Earlier that day, as part of the Summit, there was a Women in Broadcasting workshop. An opportunity to share time with three very successful women who are leaders in our industry in the UK.

Lowri Davies, Director of Broadcast Services at Premier League Productions.

Nia Wyn Thomas, Football Senior Producer at Sky Sports.

Alison Lombardi, Head of Production and Executive Producer at FilmNova.

The workshop gathered over 50 women from our business at different levels. Production managers, production assistants, executives, talented directors. Women who are building their careers and women who have already built them.

Lowri, Nia, and Alison shared their stories. Full of successes, but also full of self-doubt at different moments in their careers. And still, they pushed through and got to where they are today.

We were about 4 men in the room who were lucky enough to witness the conversations and participate.

It was amazing to see the flow of conversation. Opportunities, challenges, visibility, lack of respect, support, growth. All of it, out in the open.

The “Bitchy” Label

One thing impacted me more than anything else.

Most of the women in the room, if not all of them, agreed on this: a woman is easily labeled as “bitchy” if early in her career she shows a strong character. Or even if she simply fights back when a man is being disrespectful.

The best example came from a young director who walked into the truck and the “boys” around her asked if she was the graphics operator. When she said she was the director, one of them responded: “And do you know how to do that? I am not sure I want to work this show.”

While extreme, this kind of experience is still part of what our colleagues face in many productions today.

We Men Are Bitchy Too

My question to the ladies at our table was simple.

Why are you so concerned about showing up as bitchy, when we men are not concerned about it at all? We overuse confrontation. We push back without thinking twice. In short, we men are bitchy and we don’t lose a second of sleep over it.

This is not about being disrespectful. It is about showing up for yourself.

I get it. You don’t want to fight with the crew you are working with. But sometimes, showing up strong while remaining respectful is the first step to earning their respect.

You have the talent. You have prepared to do your job. You have the same rights as any of the guys in the room. Why would you tolerate being disrespected when none of them would?

It is not about being feisty. It is about showing up for yourself and caring zero about the “bitchy” label.

This Should Not Be a Conversation

I think that under normal circumstances, we should not even be talking about this. We would all be treated the same no matter our gender.

Our industry has improved. A lot. But it is still not equal and fair to all the women out there. Those who already are in the room and those trying to get into the business.

Part of that improvement is women feeling safe enough to be themselves. No matter if this is still a boys club in many places.

And no matter how much you need the work, don’t tolerate disrespect. You can be respectful, but if you need to protect yourself, don’t be afraid of being bitchy.

If You Need Support— risewib.com

SVG Women in Sports — svgeurope.org/women and sportsvideo.org/svgw

Gals n Gear — galsngear.tv

Participate in one of their programs or simply talk to people in the same situations you are. You will find support and guidance to navigate this complex business we love, and where we need all of us.

If you know a woman in broadcasting who needs to hear this, forward this edition to her.

Sometimes knowing that someone else went through the same thing is all the push you need.

Talk soon,

Oscar S.

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There are never enough cameras. No matter how many you give them, they will always ask for more.

And if you give them a new toy, a new resource, a new piece of gear, they will use it as much as they possibly can. Every shot. Every angle. Every chance they get, just to justify having it.

Now, I am not talking about all directors. But it happens with most of them, especially the younger ones.

The veterans already understand something that takes years to learn: just because you have the most luxurious camera or the most advanced technology doesn’t mean it needs to be in every shot. They know that camera numbers are not the reason a great show is a great show.

I want to highlight this because of what I saw this past week.

The Winter Olympics Got It Right

If you have been watching the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, you already know what I am about to say.

The FPV drones.

They have been delivering breathtaking shots in skiing, luge, and speed skating. The kind of perspectives that make you feel like you are right there on the mountain, on the ice, inside the competition.

But here is what impressed me the most, they are not overusing them.

The drones show up at the right moments. They help tell the story of speed. They reveal the complexity of the landscape where these athletes are competing. They give context, emotion, and information, all without overstaying their welcome.

It is so beautiful to watch how the production teams are deploying FPV drones at these Olympics that I did not want to miss the opportunity to highlight it. They are not showing off the technology. They are using the technology to show off the athletes and the sport.

That is a massive difference.

One Camera. One Shot. Forever.

Now let me take you to the Super Bowl.

Obviously, the game was well covered at the highest level. The halftime show, whether you liked it or not, was also great from a production standpoint.

But I want to point you to the pre-game ceremony. Specifically, when Charlie Puth was singing the U.S. national anthem.

There is a shot that, to me, is extraordinary.

Charlie Puth is singing. A steadicam operator has him framed perfectly. And then, at the exact right moment, the operator, zooms out, tilts up, smoothly, precisely, to reveal a formation of U.S. military jets flying over Levi’s Stadium.

From the singer to the sky. One continuous movement. One camera.

In principle, it seems easy. You might say, “Yeah, anyone could do that.” But think about it. One operator. One camera. One chance to get it right. The timing had to be perfect: the tilt, the speed, the framing, the coordination with the flyover. There was no second take.

They did it not once, but twice.

Those shots will live forever in the memory of anyone who appreciates great television. And it was not a drone. It was not an aerial. It was one Steadicam, operated by someone who knew exactly what they were doing, guided by a director and producers who gave the exact right call at the exact right moment.

What I keep learning

Here is what both of these examples remind us:

Resources should be used to tell a story. Resources should not be the story.

Having drones is not the story. How you use those drones to show the speed of a downhill skier, the danger of a luge track, the scale of a skating oval, that is what makes them valuable.

You could have hundreds of cameras at the Super Bowl. But it might be the one Steadicam, one of the usual tools in the compound, that gives you the shot everyone remembers for the rest of their lives.

The next time you are planning a production, ask yourself: am I adding this resource because it helps me tell a better story, or because I want to have it on the truck?

There is a big difference between the two.

If you watched the Milano Cortina Olympics, the Super Bowl, or even tonight’s NBA All-Star Game, and something caught your eye (a shot, a transition, a moment of great television) share it with me. Hit reply.

The more we discuss these details, the more we learn. And the more we learn, the better we get at putting resources to work in our own productions.

Talk soon,

Oscar S.

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