When Sarasota, Fla., resident Nik Wallenda traveled to Arizona in June 2013 to attempt a 1,400-foot-long tightrope walk across the Little Colorado River Gorge near the Grand Canyon, we wanted our Sarasota station, WWSB, to provide coverage for his hometown fans. The station had previously covered Wallenda’s tightrope walk across Niagara Falls in June 2012.

For Niagara Falls, we coordinated with another ABC affiliate for satellite uplink time. In Arizona, we relied on the built-in streaming capabilities of our new JVC GY-HM650 ProHD mobile news camera, a two-person team of anchor Lauren Dorsett and creative service producer Charlie Yeagley (handling shooting duties), and a Verizon 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot that Yeagley kept in his pocket to provide live coverage of press conferences, stand-ups from the event, and more from Arizona.

The use of the GY-HM650's built-in live streaming capabilities for live shots saved WWSB roughly $10,000 for satellite truck rental, as well as additional uplink fees. We covered a local story 1,500 miles away at a cost of travel for two people. Most of the time, the GY-HM650’s live delay was around two seconds. The camera setup worked during every live shot, and the quality of the output was really good, especially when you consider we were using the camera with only a 4G Wi-Fi hotspot.

It was very easy for Charlie to move from one live shot to the next – he walked to the next location with his camera and tripod, turned on the camera and hotspot, and was live. He also watched as another shooter from a local station had to unravel two spools of cable and struggle to run them underneath a boardwalk to get the same live shot. Apparently there was some jealousy – and a lot of interest. In fact, the other shooter started taking pictures of our JVC camera and sending them to his news director.

On site, Charlie said the amount of work he didn’t have to do for a live shot made his job easier, so he could focus on the product, not the technical stuff. Between locations, while Lauren was driving, he used the camera’s built-in clip trimmer to edit specific clips, which he uploaded via FTP to a shared site for the company. As a result, the individual files could be edited at WWSB or other Calkins Media stations and newspapers, which streamlined our workflow.

The Wallenda coverage was our first use of the camera’s built-in streaming, but it certainly wasn’t the last. WWSB is now using the technology regularly to produce live shots from Venice, Fla., which is about a 30-minute drive from the station. The GY-HM650 should be considered an addition to microwave and satellite uplinks, not a replacement. That said, this is absolutely an additional tool we can use to get content back to the station. Now we can reach out and do more and more live content. This is a better way to serve our audience and give them the live content that they want.