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With next week’s NAB Show looking at artificial intelligence’s future impact on television, now might be a good time to also talk about the new generation of employees who will be needed to take full advantage of that future.
The current shortage of new college graduates wanting to work in television, combined with the continued exodus of younger workers, is cause for great concern because they are the ones who will be needed to advance not only AI, but the many other new opportunities on the horizon.
For more than 60 years television news attracted the best and the brightest, until it suddenly did not. Like an unexpected drought, a lack of entry-level candidates is already impacting the industry. Instead of the best and brightest, we now seem willing to accept any applicants who are capable and consenting.
Conventional wisdom says low pay and difficult working conditions are at the heart of the problem, and those are certainly issues, but I think there are also other forces in play. Industries don’t suddenly go from attractive to unattractive in a handful of years.
Those of us from past generations were just as unhappy with pay levels and working conditions as today’s generation, yet we eagerly paid our dues as we slowly climbed the ladder. That’s because we were excited about local television, enthusiastic about the future and unable to imagine doing anything else. We were in