In one of the most surprising of casting announcements of the holiday season, Madison Square Garden Co. said Intel’s Shooting Star drones will join the Radio City Rockettes for the finale of its annual Christmas Spectacular at Radio City. One hundred palm-sized drones will create a light show over the stage, using…

TV news helicopters are so passe: CNN says today that it’s the first organization that has secured a waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly an unmanned drone — formally called an unmanned aerial system (UAS) — over people in the U.S. “The ability to fly over people is a huge step forward, and a…

It may not provide deeper journalism, but at least it will be higher. CNN says that it just reached what it calls a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration to “integrate Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) into newsgathering and reporting.” Several TV news organizations are…

UPDATED WITH MORE DETAILS: The FAA has approved the limited use of drones as camera platforms for film and TV productions, opening the skies to swarms of small, camera-mounted planes and mini-helicopters over film locations across the country. Unmanned aerial cameras are legal elsewhere in the world, but have been…