Today I am officially launching
the new RGTV News, a non commercial
alternative to the mainstream video
news channels.
We are going to be covering international news that
doesn’t get coverage on your typical television channels.
“Alternative world video news you won’t likely see
on your
mainstream network TV channels.“
I am acting as a
television
news editor, capturing and selecting those very news stories and issues
that are rarely picked up by mainstream media and which as a
consequence are never seen or talked about by normal TV
viewers.
Turning News On Its Head
Yes,
you are reading it right: I have created a video news channel made up
of all those original television news clips that while getting aired
somewhere at who knows what time of the night, never see the light of
being shown, juxtaposed and edited as if they were the key headlines of
the day.
You can see the RGTV News channel live on the home page of Master New Media.
The technology behind RGTV News
is the powerful multimedia solution accessible to everyone that
Splashcast keeps on improving.
Now with a full index of all the preceding daily issues, the
possibility to comment via text video or audio, a full RSS
feed, thumbnail and full screen view, the Splashcast platform
really offers all you may want to have to build your own custom video
news channel.
Splashcast doesn’t offer any monetization opportunities
(yet) but since this is a fully non-commercial endeavor I am
particularly happy right now with this solution.
Find out how I have arrived at this final video format
solution, how
I prepare and publish this video news channel and how you can help,
comment and provide feedback to it.
Here is the story:
Preparation – The Story So Far
My
original goal was one of creating a grass roots independent
international news video channel that would have spun all the
major time zones with individual bloggers-contributors from every major
city-region.
Unfortunately
I did not find enough volunteers and supporters.
We run the pilot for a few weeks but the distributed contributors were
too few to be able to create the non-stop news format I had in mind.
I decided then to acknowledge the errors made but wanted to
insist in finding an alternative road.
My next step was then to test my
secondary idea of
aggregating international video news clips available through the main
search engines and directories and to ideally build a
counter-information video news channel that would bring together those
very news and stories that never make it to our typical mainstream
network TV channels.
How do I prepare and select the news
To produce my daily RGTV News this is what I do every day:
1) I check first the key international video
news sources that produce the greatest number of
officially publicly accessible YouTube
news clips and I check personally all of the video news stories they
have published.
I look at the titles and description of each and put
aside all of those that may have some interest for Master New Media
international readership. Out
of 72 video channels I follow daily on YouTube those that
produce the greatest number of interesting news clips are the BBC World
News service and the English edition of Al
Jazeera.
These generally contribute a good 50% of all the news clips I
select
and publish every day. I hope to be able to have more breadth of
traditional TV broadcasters channels in the future as for now only
these seem to have made an official choice of publishing all of their
video news online via YouTube. When will other broadcasters follow?
2) I look at all of the video news clips I have selected
and save the ones that contain stories or that cover issues that I deem
fitting for the RGTV News format.
The format as I have mentioned, is
characterized by a liberal, uncommented selection of international
video news from different sources and broadcasters that are unlikely to
be aired inside your typical mainstream network TV channels. The viewer
is given the freedom to make sense of the news the way she likes.
3) Once selected, I sort the video news stories
according to the importance
and depth of each. Pressing headline-like stories get the top of the
queue while more in-depth investigative research reports are slotted in
the ending of my RGTV news compilation.
4) When I have at least six or seven good video news stories I publish
a new edition. It can be quite early in the morning (about 1-2am NY
time) though more frequently I finalize it around 6-8am NY time).
5) I update my Master New Media home
page
and provide titles and key info inside the news ticker that displays
just above the video news box. If there are key relevant news and
stories I also twitter the news release providing keywords for what’s
covered.
6) I repeat the process two or three times per day.
Seven days out of seven.
After the early morning edition I do my news-selection again at mid-day
and then in the evening as to make sure that if there are other
valuable news stories they also get included later on in the day.
Video Sources
My video news sources are open and publicly accessible to
everyone.
They are at present 71 different YouTube channels that I subscribe and
follow closely, but this number grows almost daily.
Keep in mind that
outside of heavy weight broadcast TV producers like the BBC and
Al Jazeera all other content producers on YouTube will have a much lower
publication rate. This is why increasing the number of video sources to
100 or more would certainly help.
I am also increasingly looking at
video news sources that have no content on YouTube but which allow
re-publication of their news clips. In fact, if you are aware of anyone
out there that I should know of please do let me know.
Team support
Right now I have no assistants or collaborators helping me on
this.
It would be of great help to be able to receive pointers to newly
posted interesting video content that my readers could discover before
me.
I in fact openly invite anyone wanting to contribute sparingly
or
even wanting wanting to become a fixed news contributor to do by simply
sending me relevant pointers at Robin.Good [at] MasterNewMedia.org
RSS and embedding
RGTV
News is also available as a RSS feed and can be republished
and embedded on other sites or blogs at zero cost. Just grab this code
below and run with it.
Technology
The
Splashcast multimedia publishing platform
is what is behind all this. It makes my newly invented international
video news editor job a breeze and it does let me focus on what is
important to me: finding great news clips rapidly and making it easiest
for me to assemble and publish them online at-a-click of a button.
Splashcast
is fully free to
use, carries no advertising, and it is a company that does listen to
its customers. Its features and tools keep improving as well as its
performance.
I get no commissions or special treatments from them and
while I am a Marshall Kirkpatrick estimator (Marshall is director of
content at Splashcast Media) I strongly believe that he treats everyone
who gets in touch with him the same way.
So just raise your hand out
there, and you have a guy here who seems to be taking good notes of all
the feedback he gets.
Other features
On RGTV News you can also watch anyone of the past newscasts
by
simply hovering your mouse on the RGTV News player and clicking on the
Channel Guide button that shows up on the top left corner.
You can
reference and embed specific newscasts or the whole channel which gets
updated daily. Full screen view is available and you can easily browse
through all of a newscast daily clips by scrolling your mouse over the
bottom left corner of the news player.
How you can contribute
If you like what you have seen and want to help or contribute
to
this independent international video news channel feel free to do
so.
You can send in URL of specific video news stories (they
should be
fresh news published in the last 24-36 hours) or even do a short (2-3
minutes) commentary on specific stories that you want to report or
express an opinion about.
You can also contribute by utilizing RGTV News feedback and
commenting facilities that are available to you by simply hovering your
mouse pointer on the RGTV News video player. Options for text, audio
and video comments are available to you and provide maximum ease in
making your voice, criticism or advice heard and seen.
Original article written by Robin Good for Master New Media and titled: “Video News Channel Captures International TV News You Won’t Likely See On Your Mainstream TV: RGTV News” on 11 September 2007. Some Rights Reserved.
