I'm old school. I see nothing wrong with having a floor director and camera ops. Yes, it costs money, but it also keeps viewers that might switch to the competition if your automation keeps screwing up.
Automation is a good recipe for trouble if you have breaking news close to showtime, because then someone has to scramble to rescript the cameras. You'd better hope that news doesn't break during showtime. We had one incident where I was photogging for a live shot outside a courthouse, when the guy on perp walk broke loose and tried to escape. Crazy cop pile-on, yelling, tazering, etc. We got the first 5 seconds of it on air and then it was cut off because the automation went on to the next shot.
It's also a recipe for trouble if you have an anchor who likes to improvise, and sometimes goes a few seconds too long. Oops. Yes, we had that too. Every. Damn. Day.
And yeah, pulling footage in from others is always a risky proposition
