5 and 46 have long shared a copter. 11 used to have extremely high promotion of their SkyCam copter piloted by Bruce Erion. It used to visit schools and other public events and was a huge part of the station imaging. Bruce was doing flying for LifeFlight last I heard.
It would be a shame if 11 was now sharing with 5 and 46 but the truth is all three stations had been leasing copters and pilots from the same company. Downsizing to a shared copter makes sense. There are rarely ever two or more breaking news events in this town. And nobody uses the copters to catch the sunsets like 11 used to.
Anyway, WSB still flies their own copter and they have the SkyCopter flying traffic coverage at the same time. Both ships are fully equipped for live shots and WSB does use them as-needed. The deep pockets required to fly two ships at once are something only a Cox could ever afford to do. Just flying the bird alone is around $800/hr before salary and other costs. It's a very steep bill every single day.
Many stations are opting to fly cheaper copters or do the 5-46 shared model. Done correctly, the public may never even notice.
But I miss the days when Erion and SkyCam were literally the tangible real-world presence of 11Alive. You saw it on the news opens, on the ads, in the sky all the time, AND if you were lucky, landing at your school to pass out stickers. Brilliant marketing. And a chopper landed on a school field costs nothing as long as it stays on the ground. Do as much of that as you can and the operating costs per flying hour can be sort of spread around.
Side note: many locals are starting to use drone footage in various ways, but nearly all of it that I see is illegal. Almost 100% of Atlanta is a no-fly zone and yet there was Fox 5 at the scene of the I-85 collapse flying a drone, literally down the road from PDK. The stations are really skating on thin ice with some of this footage. Somebody is going to have the FAA squash them flat. It's a matter of time.
