News Brass Not Stingy On Tsunami

By the time the last American TV crews have left Asia, the networks will have spent millions of dollars covering the tsunami tragedy.

Exact figures were hard to come by Tuesday, but the networks likely have spent several hundred thousand dollars since the story broke. And it will cost more before it's over.

The disaster area's far-flung, remote locations force TV crews to bring everything with them. They either have to haul in or share satellite-uplink equipment, which is expensive even beyond the thousands of dollars per half-hour of satellite time needed for the nightly news or live or videotaped reports to be sent to East Coast control rooms.

"It's expensive to do this," said CNN president Jonathan Klein, whose network has been going almost wall-to-wall with coverage of the tsunami since it struck Dec. 26.

Each network has dozens of staffers in the region, many having to be flown in from New York or elsewhere. But few of the places affected by the tsunami have regularly scheduled airline service, which adds immensely to the costs.

"There's chartering — a lot of chartering," said Paul Slavin, senior vp of ABC News.

It's not only the quickly bought airline tickets; it's also the equipment they've got to carry with them on the plane.

"Excessive baggage is very expensive," said one news exec.

The 10 days of constant coverage of the tsunami — a little less than a week at the end of 2004 and every day so far in 2005 — capped what was a pretty expensive news year. How TV news executives plan for news coverage is part art, part science — and a lot of financial discipline.

Execs start with the money they know they'll need for everyday coverage — traveling with the president, what has become a constant presence in Baghdad, occasional trips to places like Afghanistan — and the other regular news needs. Then, as in 2004, they add money for anticipated special events that will occur during the year, like the primaries, two political conventions and the campaigning leading up to the elections.

But if there's anything to be said about the news, it's that there's no projecting it. Last year had more than its share of breaking news — expensive breaking news — in the death of former President Reagan, several Florida hurricanes and now the tsunami.

"One of the things that we do is plan for the unplannable," Slavin said. "You know that, year to year, there is going to be a certain amount (of news) you can't plan for."

Said Marcy McGinnis, senior vp news at CBS, "That's the money we pull on for hurricanes, the tsunami, anything unexpected."

Planning for unexpected news coverage is the business of Slavin, McGinnis and their counterparts at the other networks. They say it's possible not because there's unlimited amounts of money available for news gathering but because they're careful with the regular expenses during the year.

"We're very responsible throughout the year with how we spend our regular dollars," McGinnis said.

Slavin said it's something they look at every day. "We make very hard decisions every single day, knowing that the next day we may have to spend millions of dollars on another (breaking-news) story," he said.

None of this will provoke a budget crisis or complaints from higher-ups. News executives say the story comes first.

"Nobody gets in trouble for (spending) on something like this," one exec said. "We spend what it takes to cover it."