These days, the technology is there for anyone and everyone to
run their own live video channel. Using a variety of services and
websites, it’s possible to be your own broadcaster.
Just over a month ago I, Robin Good,
decided to test a new
grassroots live video format by utilizing the zero footprint and
zero cost technologies available to anyone wanting to start a live
video news channel.
The idea was one of leveraging the latest live video streaming
technology to create an experimental grassroots independent news
channel that would broadcast news from all of the major cities around
the world.
I made
a call to
volunteer newscasters and then went about putting it into practice.
Media Experimenter
As in the past, I am at heart a true media experimenter, and I
had
decided to take up this challenge, not because I wanted to make a
business out of it, but only because I really thought that the time was
ripe.
For the first time, I wanted to go out and try something
totally from
the roots in this new direction.
The
technologies are now there and they are free…
there is infinite bandwidth available to you and me at zero cost… we
are fed up to the nose with the lack of relevant and more personalized
news from the mainstream media.
What better opportunity for me, the
guy who loves to be a new media explorer to go out and recruit a small
newsroom of independents and do this?
…or at least this is what I thought.
There’s nothing I could learn if I knew the solution to any
new
media development looming out there. I, like you, have to go out and
get my hand dirty to find out. And so I did.
20 Newscasts Later
After a little less than a month
and with a over 20 newscasts having been published online, my initial
enthusiasm has indeed faded a bit, especially since I was
presumptuous in my expectations of how difficult it would have been to
get people to do this, but not my desire to further test and explore.
And so, nonetheless the very humble results (only a few
thousand
views so far) I find this experiment to have been a truly valuable
learning experience so far. And writing about it publicly, makes it
dramatically more so.
To be honest, and I have made this mistake before in the past,
I
thought everyone was going to really get a kick around the idea of
being part of a grassroots independent international newscast channel
where to contribute his original 5 minute newscast. It wasn’t so.
Most everyone thought I was crazy to ask for those 5 minutes a
day,
and counter-proposed to do a bit, here and there, possibly in the
weekends.
From over 12 newscasters I had hoped to get together, I ended
up with four only, including myself.
But all these mistakes, have allowed me to
learn
and uncover aspects of my own approach to independent publishing, that
are absolutely priceless to me.
After an initial set of enthusiastic responses, most of my own
contacts evaporated like perfume under the sun. after having written
how much they thought this was a great idea, one by one disappeared
into eternal silence to never reappear.
The idea of having to stop
their existing workflow to broadcast a 5 minute personalized news break
was too much of a challenge for most everyone.
But I am not blaming them… or I would not be learning
anything useful here.
It was my plan that was defective from the beginning, and I
think I have learned a lot in this initial flop.
What Did Not Work?
Well, asking prestigious and busy professionals to go record
or go
live for a newscast for 5 minute a day, 5 days a week, for no money and
on a channel that has someone else name (mine), is really like asking
people for 50 dollar bills while they are waiting at the red light.
But evidently, I was so enthused by my own idea, that I did
not see
things this way and insisted more than it was wise to, on these very
premises.
In the beginning, and I am talking here about the first week
of
July, we had probably the most momentum and were able to start a
mini newsroom of four thanks to great spirit and spontaneous
contributions from John
Blossom, Eduardo Perez, Mike
Shea.
You can see some of our humble attempts at doing some kind of
alternative and very informal news reporting on the archive of RGTV
News channel,
or right here:
Perez
Blossom
Shea
Good
Looking back at them, they were not that bad
indeed, and I
actually liked some
of
them very
much.
What lacked was having a few more newscasters and more than that a
minimal marketing and promotion apparatus to give continuous light to
this new endeavour.
Glaringly lacking was a way for the audience to
participate
into the newscast, even asynchronously, by having a way to post
comments.
Reviewing this first phase of the project, I
think this has
been a major mistake, though I can’t be sure we would have had a
substantial amount of comments without having first done our homework
on the community, marketing and communication fronts.
One other major realization, is
that I can’t really
pull off this magic, brave experimental new media feats, unless I start
grooming in a serious way my own community.
This is well too evident
now and a powerful lesson for any independent online publisher still
toying with the term community and not yet understanding that without
this new media component little change action can be achieved
collaboratively and at-a-distance.
A strong community, one ready to
support,
criticize, and promote your new initiatives and project would have
served beautifully the challenging goals I had placed ahead of us.
Indeed good ideas, great reporting or technology
scoops can
only do
so much when it comes to moving individuals to do something.
It is
rather the social media component that when properly cared and
supported by dedicated staff can truly provide marketing penetration
and access to talented human resources like no other service could.
In synthesis, I am not yet a good enough
promoter of my own
initiatives (I tend to limit self-promotion as I feel it could take
away some of my credibility).
I have not built a community of
supporters and have not partnered with whoever else could have helped
push this initial phase to a larger audience of contributors.
The Technology Factor
To be fully honest, I have to admit that the
idea of this
international video grassroots channel had been sparked by the highly
innovative and promising Mogulus
video broadcasting platform.
Mogulus,
if you have not yet read anything about it, is a video
publishing platform which already provides to anyone willing to try it,
the opportunity to broadcast
live video on the Internet while being able to coordinate a
miniaturized control room and live / recorded contributors from any
connected location.
But Mogulus, not withstanding the great things
that it already
does,
did not deliver.
It did not the reliability and performance I
needed,
it didn’t allow me to record (which it now does, though with some
significant limitations in re-usability of those recordings) the way I
wanted.
It also did not provide me with enough control
on the
distributable
video player (issues with resizing, transparency, pre-sets) and on the
live correspondents connecting into my video control room.
Direct YouTube Newscasts
I decided then to opt for a less risky approach,
and suggested
to
the distributed newscasters team to simply log on to their YouTube
account and to record their newscasts directly there, which makes the
process very easy.
This in turn gave me the opportunity to “test”
and verify much
better how each one of the newscasters was going to perform and whether
or not he was going to have some technical issues of some kind (audio
not god, bad quality video, etc.).
The more advanced among them took immediately
the opportunity
to do
more advanced work, including video editing and picture in picture
compositions that allowed them to showcase interesting web pages and
new tools.
Some like me, who were stranded on a remote
location with no
immediate connectivity to the Internet, just recorded with their own
webcams locally and then, once a connection spot was found, uploaded it
rapidly to YouTube.
All these approaches had their pros and cons and
they appear to me as being all valuable format styles that can be
employed in these situations.
But the greatest technology surprise came from
my need to
create a
continuous playing loop of the news clips that would come in gradually
during any given day.
In those days, about a month ago, YouTube
playlists were having some serious problems, would not play back
through all the clips and just behaved erratically.
As timeliness is an
important factor, I immediately headed west to seek some alternatives
among our recently reviewed video publishing tools.
I suddenly remembered that Splashcast had
a cool system to assemble playlists of just about anything,
and did have the ability to embed its programmed player on any web
page. And in fact it did.
Splashcast allows easy embedding into your
site or blog, can create daily shows, and though it still misses an
automatic loop function, it does most everything I needed inside a
web-based, reliable package.
The Human Side
Also, for those who had volunteered to be among
this brave new
RGTV newsroom, the issues were quite a few.
Not only the time issue was very relevant for
everyone, but
more
than anything the logistics of making this happen seemed to scary the
majority of the original volunteer contributors out of the picture.
Mogulus is too slow… which webcam
should I use?…
why doesn’t this mike work OK…. what dress should I put on…
and so on. Each one had a thousand and more questions that I didn’t
expect.
There were editorial issues too.
Not everyone got a
clear idea that this was not a personal promotion channel and somebody
decided to feel hurt that he could not publicly recount the story of
his group and founder inside a world video news channel. Well… too
bad.
I like to be open and democratic but if you want
to do
personal
promotion I think you can just publish these things on your blog. No
need for Robin
Good to create a new channel for it…
As I well knew, these endeavors always require
you to be
proactive,
to guide step by step your kind friends and to be both tolerant and
highly respectful of their personal needs.
Unless you are willing to be
a social nurse for each one of them, it is going to be very hard that
notwithstanding their liking your idea and having the tools to do it,
they will be confident and motivated enough to do so.
And so I learned quite a bit here as well,
especially in the
direction of planning enough human resources and time to devote all of
those you would like to see participate.
Each one of them needs a
little hand-guiding and a some encouragement to start. Not a list of
errors or a detached reprimand.
I also remembered that more than technology, it
is the
individuals
that choose to work with you and the clarity of your original idea that
make the most significant difference.
Where Do I Go From Here?
Coincidentally, and with no particular personal
merit,
something
came to mind this week that suggested to change the channel format
approach, especially in view of the decreasing enthusiasm coming my
already very small newscasters team.
I said to myself: Well, if it is so hard to get
these guys to
do
newscasts and if I hate so much to scream wide and large that we are
doing this new project and need more of you joining us, why don’t I
just go out and “aggregate” the ones that are already doing this
spontaneously?
Isn’t it written on the wall already that
wanting at all costs
to be
a content producer today is not as smart as wanting to be a
high-quality content aggregator?
And so I did.
Armed with patience and a good dose of curiosity I
headed out to
see
if there was the possibility to reverse my independent world video news
grassroots equation.
I did this by scouting for independent or hard
to find news
content of the last 24 hours, that I could indeed preview, evaluate,
select and assemble into a daily news compilation.
And
boy did I find some interesting stuff!
An Ocean Of Crap
This is a full-time job… and especially so
until the tools
available to manage, preview, select and organize this ocean of video
content don’t get a LOT better than what is out there now.
Today, you
have to be superman to find good video news content in this ocean of
crap. You really need to know what you are looking for, and you need to
have serious time to do it.
But the moment you realize the above you also
realize that it
could
be a person just like you who could really perform these very initial,
primitive but highly useful curating and video news mastering of such
new and original daily video news compilations.
And so there you have it.
Curating grass roots, independent or
just
plainly unknown video news from around the world into a daily news
compilation could very well provide a valuable new format to aggregate
and distribute effectively some of the great underground or
little-known material available out there.
It is my strong opinion that such an alternative
aggregated
format
has much greater value than my original idea, which it can integrate.
It serves useful social purposes in acting as a
natural,
human-powered filter aggregator that provides, within a specific
audience demographic, more relevant news and information from sources
that are truly alternative to the mainstream media.
It goes with this that a strong editorial
direction, high and
tight
standards in the selection of what goes in and what does not could make
of a project like this a potential evolved equivalent of Slashdot,
which could be slanted in a hundred different themes.
I am not saying I am going to be ever able to
pull off such a
highly
respected news source, but I am certainly making the road easier for
whoever will.
Some Open Questions
Should the two formats be mixed?
– Should I mix video aggregation with selected newscasters
contributions?
– Should I interject this new experimental format with my own personal
news like I was doing before while pushing for more newscasters to join
in?
What would be the best way to
provide audience
participation?
A chat? Forum?
In which format?
How else would you like to see
the video news
channel evolving?
>Original article written by Robin Good for Master New Media
and entitled “Online
New Television Formats: The RGTV News Experiment – How Did It Go? What
Next?”
on 2nd August 2007. Some Rights Reserved.
