Coronavirus Will Change the Media Business Forever1 min read
Reading Time: < 1 minuteBroadcasting from his basement, infected with coronavirus, quarantined from his wife and kids, Chris Cuomo had the pallor of a subterranean being. It made for riveting television, a reality show that’s now all too real. “Brace yourselves, not for a hoax, but for the next few weeks of scary and painful realities,” Cuomo told viewers at the top of his show, some wall art and family photos visible in the background. “Don’t get caught in the numbers. Why? They’re just scary and they’re out of context. We do not have the testing data to make real sense of our reality beyond what we know is the face of it for an overwhelming number who get sick. And that face is mine. I tested positive. Scary, yes, as you might imagine. But better me than you.”
TV news seems to be undergoing a change akin to the shift from black and white to colour, and it’s revelatory, literally. Everyone is revealing something: their taste in home decor, their real hair colour showing at the roots. Guests are beaming in via Skype and Zoom, without layers of makeup caked on their cheeks, their bookshelves and furniture and occasionally their intruding children on display for millions to see. It’s lo-fi, ad hoc, a far cry from the big-ticket productions that talking heads are accustomed to. And some would say it’s not a bad blueprint for what TV news could look like once we’re on the other side of this whole mess.
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