It does sound like 1200 baud packet, commonly used in amateur radio, just never thought to try to decode it. Certainly would help to clear up the issue of watching a chopper feed and wondering where the (####) it is!
I have a couple of spare TNCs hanging around, might interface one to the left channel just for fun and see how it shows up on an APRS screen capture... one day when I am really bored..
Kinda thought they would be encoding position data inside the video stream somehow; tighter resolution of the location and path of the vehicle, but maybe this data is not really a big deal for the news crews, as long as they know approximately where their equipment is.
Glad someone had the curiosity to play with the stream and decode it!
-C.