TV matters: Skype and satellite links

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Skype and satellite links can add to the authenticity of reports from foreign warzones – but are less effective when coming from closer to home

Satellite and Skype technology have changed TV news, making accessible people and places otherwise inaccessible to journalism. It's incredibly rare now to watch on television a still photo of a reporter or witness while we listen to their crackling telephone voice.

But the spread of these methods has created a peculiarity of viewing grammar. A satellite link or internet pictures signal emergency, restricted access, a desperate and necessary connection. The imperfections – flickering or fizzing pictures, time-delayed or echoing voices – are part of the atmosphere of broadcasting from a riot or warzone or people's uprising. As with a samizdat manuscript or surveillance footage, purity seems inappropriate. This is, in every sense, hard news.

Increasingly, though, sat-links and Skype are used on domestic stories that entail no physical jeopardy beyond the unwillingness of senior politicians or media pundits to leave their mansions at weekends or at the extremities of the day. For these reasons, a dawn or midnight interview on a 24 hour news network about the NHS or Murdoch or Amy Winehouse will frequently feature at least one contributor being beamed through space or cyberspace.

But the use of these devices feels wrong if the speaker is in no danger other than the prospect of being demoted in the next cabinet reshuffle. The satellite gap between question and answer, which is forgivable and integral to the situation if the contributor is talking from Libya, seems ridiculous when the location is an idyllic old vicarage in Wiltshire.

We also sometimes suspect that politicians are cynically extending the time-delay – or are even only pretending there is one – in order to ignore the question or buy time.

The grammar of difficult contact only works when the inconvenience is danger or remoteness, rather than the inconvenience of catching a taxi to the studios. Satellites are for Beirut, not Banbury.

• Television
• Television industry
• Skype
• The news on TV

Mark Lawson

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Josh Halliday 11 Aug, 2011

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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/aug/10/skype-and-satellite-links-tv
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