Look At It This Way, It’s Not Nearly As Wasteful As The 7 Train Extension

Time was, NYC-TV served up glossy commercials for Manhattan businesses, er, attractions to entice potential visitors to visit our fair city (and before that there were the city council hearings!). Now it seems the mayor wants to take the channel in a different direction:

After his speech on environmental reform, reporters and photographers literally chased him through the conference center halls. His words and picture ran in more than 100 publications. New York’s dailies sent reporters who relayed hourly dispatches back home.

Despite this wall-to-wall coverage, the mayor’s office insisted that the city have its own camera crew on hand to record him. On December 12, a couple of days before the mayor flew out on his private jet, a pair of technicians from the city’s TV station, NYC Media, grabbed their camera equipment and took a taxi to Newark Airport. They paid an extra baggage charge to stow their gear, flew overnight to Copenhagen, put up at decent hotels, rented a car, and followed the mayor around, grabbing a bite when they could.

All told, the five-day trip cost $11,220. You can add another $1,500 for a week’s worth of wages for the hard-working cameramen who had to hustle through airports and foreign streets. Net benefit to the city? Their video footage ran for awhile on Channel 25’s “City Scoop” program. Then it went on a shelf in the archives, where it remains today.