Pilot Patty Smith, jockeying a helicopter for Channel 11, hovered over the plane wreckage below, filming live images for the 5 o'clock news.
Working the controls, speaking in clipped sentences over the radio, Smith kept the bright-red Robinson R-44 at 1,000 feet, well below the drooping gray clouds.
She has been flying for WBAL since August, covering traffic snarls and jackknifed tractor-trailers, apartment fires and shooting scenes. But this was different.
Smith and her back-seat camera operator were reporting the death of a colleague, a traffic pilot for a Washington station who crashed in fog last week while patrolling the roads near Bowie.
"It was an odd feeling, a brother-in-arms thing," Smith says. "It reminds you about the risk involved. But I still feel safer in the helicopter than on the highways."
Smith is part of a growing industry in the United States - covering daily television news from the air.
Driven by increasing competition, with the indelible image of a Ford Bronco driving down a Los Angeles freeway four years ago burned into the national memory, TV stations across the country are gathering more news with helicopters loaded with gyro-cams, microwave transmitters and infrared cameras.
The sky war came to Baltimore last July. Channel 11 (WBAL) and Channel 13 (WJZ) both began daily coverage from the air, oddly enough on the same day, initiating a new era of TV coverage for the area.
"That's been the big trend the last couple years," says Leroy Tatom, chairman of the National Broadcast Pilots Association. "Helicopters are not cheap by any means, but television news seems to be shifting more toward spot news coverage."
About 200 stations now operate helicopters, Tatom says. A few use planes, like the one that crashed outside Washington, but planes cannot hover over scenes indefinitely the way helicopters can.
Industry observers say TV stations are competing for viewers who wield remote controls like never before, flipping to cable news - 24 hours a day - demanding more graphics, better effects. As the line between news and entertainment continues to merge, helicopters often offer stunning images of carnage and car pile-ups.
"Police can rope off a crime scene, but it is hard to rope off the skies," says Herbert Altschull, a professor of media studies and history at Johns Hopkins University. "Things have really changed, a competitive push has taken place."
Channel 11's and 13's news directors decline to discuss the costs of their helicopters, leased from two national outlets. Recently, Helicopter magazine reported stations pay between $20,000 and $75,000 a month to operate news helicopters. On the open market, Channel 11's R-44 costs about $600,000, and Channel 13's Bell Jet Ranger exceeds $1 million.
The financial burden has kept away other competitors, including Channel 2 (WMAR) and Channel 45 (WBFF), where station managers say the occasional rental of a helicopter serves their viewers just fine. But as more stations begin to operate helicopters, industry obersvers say, daily coverage will increasingly rely on images from the sky.
And, it seems, just having a helicopter is not enough - you need one that's faster, sleeker, bigger and flies higher.
"This is a competitive tool," said WBAL news director Princell Hair. "I know their helicopter is bigger but I'm told ours is faster."
"The type of helicopter WJZ-TV selected is technologically superior to others, including the Robinson R-44 [flown by WBAL, which] ... is slower," gushed a WJZ press release.
Usually, the pilots mask their rivalry beneath a facade of stern-faced concern for safety. Sometimes, though, their competitive spirit breaks through.
"I can get to the airport in 22 minutes from a dead sleep," said Channel 13's pilot, Roy Taylor, 44, a veteran who once commanded the Baltimore County Police air unit.
"I can make it in 20 minutes," said Smith, 40, a new recruit from Fort Myers, Fla.
Waiting for news
About 5:45 a.m., with blue and orange runway lights twinkling in pre-dawn darkness at Glenn L. Martin State Airport, Smith slips her tall frame into the R-44 and flips a few switches. She likes her speedy, stable and fuel-efficient bird. This morning, like most, she flies traffic duty for two hours, patrolling the Beltway, I-83 and I-70.
About 8:30 a.m., she lands, leaves the 'copter parked on the tarmac and waits for her pager to buzz with news. If a call comes, she flies a reporter and camera operator out to cover traffic accidents, shooting scenes, apartment fires, from Eutaw Street to Ocean City. On traffic flights, no reporter goes; the camera operator reports and films.
"Every single flight is different," said Smith, speaking in the measured tones of an airline pilot addressing passengers before landing. "Breaking news can happen anywhere."
For years, Smith, a native of Erie, Pa., worked as a mechanic at construction sites, on ski lifts in Colorado, then on nuclear submarines in Connecticut. She started taking flying lessons, and fell in love with helicopters during her first flight with an instructor. She remembers the date: July 14, 1990.
Soon she became an instructor and, in 1996, opened a helicopter transport company in Fort Myers. After a while, she needed another challenge; last summer, she helped Florida TV stations cover wildfires. A few months ago, she got the job with Channel 11.
She feels at home in the R-44's large cockpit with its easy-to-handle controls and its bubble-like canopy. This morning, she lightly pulls back on "the collective," the stick that controls vertical flight. The rotor blades thump-wump-thump, changing their pitch, and the chopper levitates from the ground.
Sitting in back is camera operator Justin Berk, a short man with a spunky voice that rises when deadline approaches. He is actually a meteorologist. He was volunteered for the traffic flights.
"Up here, you're not stuck in an office," Berk said while frantically flipping through a binder of maps. "There's a lot of busy work with a pretty view."
The team circles the headlights of scattered cars waiting to enter the Harbor Tunnel. Berk broadcasts his update to the Channel 11 morning show.
"This is Justin Berk in Chopper 11," he says. "Looks like a three-minute wait at the Harbor Tunnel ..."
Then they head west, circle the interchange of I-70 and the Beltway. Again, Berk does his thing.
Over a car crash
An hour later, Smith and Berk meander into Harford County and circle a car crash on a highway overpass.
"Maybe somebody will see this and drive more safely today," Berk says. "That's why we're doing it."
But the team worries that ambulances might leave before the 7:30 broadcast.
Some media experts fear the copters could change news values in the Baltimore area. In Los Angles, helicopters follow high-speed chases that otherwise wouldn't be covered. This spring, they circled a man who committed suicide, and several stations aired it live, which in itself became a national story.
"There's a lot of pressure on stations to get stuff live," said Charles Rhodes, an instructor of broadcast journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park. "The stations have to justify costs. If you never use it, what good is it?"
"The stories happen in people's neighborhoods, not at 12,000 feet," said Drew Berry, station manager and news director for Channel 2. "Most of the time, stories don't need helicopters. I'm not criticizing them. It's just another tool."
Berk and Smith finish shooting pictures and head back toward Martin. After landing, with the rotor blades still beating, Berk sprints toward the tower building and a make-shift studio - he has another traffic report to make.
On his way, he passes the hanger that houses WJZ's helicopter.
Getting the images
WJZ doesn't cover traffic. The station focuses its energy on spot news.
The station has four helipads around the city. Taylor waits in his small office in the Martin tower until something happens, then flies off to one of the helipads to scoop up a reporter and camera technician. (Smith must wait about 40 minutes for her crew to arrive.)
The other afternoon, Taylor and technician Tom Kiel take a reporter on a demonstration run.
Taylor, wearing a purple shirt, khaki pants and cowboy boots, walks around the Jet Ranger, its rotor blades tethered to the ground, sun glinting off its windshield.
He's a former Baltimore County police officer who learned to fly during his spare time, and eventually founded the force's air unit. July he retired from the force to join WJZ to earn more money and keep flying.
He speaks like a cop, in short sentences loaded with acronyms like ENG (Electronic News Gathering) and ATC (Air Traffic Control).
Taylor joined the police department after graduating from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute in 1971 and became a full-fledged officer in 1975, patrolling the Fullerton area. His only backup was Foxtrot, the Baltimore City police 'copter.
By 1974, working on his own, Taylor had earned his pilot's license, a year later his commercial license and, in 1982, his commercial helicopter pilot's license.
Worried that Baltimore County didn't have an air unit, despite its 610 square miles of land and another 170 miles of water to patrol, Taylor took out a $12,000 loan and bought the department a 1965 Cessna C150F.
Today, four police scanners perch on his office window sill, constantly chirping about accidents and shootings. Four televisions babble in the background, tuned to news broadcasts.
"This is a really challenge, getting good images at scenes," Taylor says as he runs his fingers through thinning blond hair. "I go all over the region."
After picking up Keil at a nearby helipad, Taylor hovers at 1,200 feet near Towson as Keil focuses his camera on a tiny piece of cardboard drifting across an overpass.
"That could be a gun," Taylor says. "If there was a standoff or a shooting, we can zoom in that far."
Some media experts and police worry that the stations could broadcast live images of, say, a barricade and endanger officers' lives. Taylor, the ex-cop, says he would never do that.
Later that afternoon, Taylor and a technician fly to Laurel to take close-up video of a man found drowned in the Triadelphia Reservoir. They even take pictures of the man being zipped into the body bag. But WJZ does not broadcast those. Instead, station managers decide to air an overall view of the scene.
"I'm used to the bodies from my law enforcement days," Taylor says. "It is an easy decision, we just don't air those types of pictures. We're a family-oriented station."
It's a living
Back at Martin airport, Channel 13's and Channel 11's helicopters rest side by side, like two enemies sleeping before battle.
But perhaps the battle is not really with each other.
As Taylor puts it:
"If they get good images, good pictures up there, then, maybe, the stations will keep their helicopters. Maybe, other stations will be forced to get them. Then, I keep my job."
Pub Date: 10/26/98