I worked as a television news photographer for years. I was lucky. I started not that long after those bulky, heavy, external recording decks had been subsumed into the the camera body itself (“camcorder” or “dockable”).
The bulky, heavy battery belts were still needed to power a camera light but that too went away within a year or so (if your station could afford* the new & improved equipment.)
*fun side note: I asked the chief photographer at my first station how much the insurance cost for the cameras. He told me they didn’t carry any because it would be prohibatively expensive. If someone stole a camera the station was just out $80,000-100,000.