The idea to start this thread came to me the other day, when I was shooting a news event using a Panasonic AGHPX600. Someone there (I think he was a fashion print photog) asked me why, if there are so many models of video cameras on the market that shoot "just as good a quality," do so many TV stations like mine still invest in such large cameras, instead of smaller, more lightweight ones. I was a little busy shooting my b-roll at the time, but my quick answer to him was that many of us prefer to work with cameras where we can still control a lot of stuff manually and have more bells and whistles on it, and that in many cases, the smaller cameras are harder to operate because the controls are so small. That was MY brief answer to the question anyway.
Other more self-serving answers that I might give if I had more time and felt more comfortable saying it to strangers would be:
-The big camera makes me feel and look more important than all the other people at the event who are there with cameras.
-The big camera is harder for a reporter to learn to use, and so having such heavy hardware in our shop makes me feel reassured that I’m not likely lose my job soon to an MMJ reporter.

Now, of course those are MY answers, not the answers from those who run TV stations. I do know of plenty of stations out there where they’ve pretty much gone completely MMJ, and even the full-time photogs use small MMJ cameras, but so far, my shop still has the big ones for the photogs and just a handful of small ones reporters can sign out if they really need to shoot something solo. And honestly, I really don’t know the correct answer as to why some TV stations still invest in big cameras. In the old days, of someone had asked, "why are your cameras so big and heavy? I’ve got a home VHS camcorder and it shoots just as good a quality…" -I would have laughed and said, "No it doesn’t." But now, I’m not so sure. Is a AGHPX600 or AJ-HPX2000 really that much better quality than some of the smaller HD memory card cameras out there used by MMJs?

Not that I want a smaller camera, I’m happy with the one I have mainly for the reasons I stated above. Just wondering, what answer do the rest of you give when someone in the field asks why TV videographers’ cameras are still so big in this day and age?