A TV station put AI on the air this week, and its own press release didn't mention it.
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A TV station just put AI on the air. Its own press release didn't mention it. And if you've been quietly doing the math on which part of your job goes first,
a newsroom answered that out loud this week. Monday, KSAT in San Antonio launched a new one o'clock newscast called The Rundown. The station's announcement is all about more local stories.
Nowhere in it does the word "AI" appear. The Express-News asked. KSAT confirmed it.
The show has an AI voice reading some of the teases. If you're not in a newsroom: a tease is the scripted line that bridges one story into the next. Written before anybody goes on air. Same shape every single day.
KSAT says those teases still get approved by a person. Their words: they use AI, quote, "to help our teams." Here's what didn't move.
Reporters are still, quote, "the face of the stories, told from the field." And live weather is still a human being. The one thing that can go wrong in real time, they kept that.
So look at what the two sides have in common. AI got the part that was pre-written and repeatable. People kept everything that happens live, in the room, where somebody has to make a call.
I direct a newscast. So I know exactly which pages of my rundown are written before anybody walks into that control room. I counted mine this week.
It was more than I wanted it to be. And to be straight with you: nobody lost a job at KSAT over this. It's one afternoon show.
When Scripps tried their version in Baltimore, the community panned it. This is a pilot, not a collapse. But the line is real, and now you can use it.
Go count your own pages. Which of your tasks are written before you get there, identical every time, and don't need you in the room? That's the category that moves first. Not your whole job.
Then go ask your news director, or your post supervisor, which of your tasks they'd put in that same bucket. You'd rather hear that answer from them than find it on a schedule. Comment the one task in your week that's already written before you get there, I go through every one of them.
I'm a thirty-year guy working this transition out in real time, and I post what I find.
Source: KSAT.com (9/3), San Antonio Express-News (9/7), The Desk (9/8).