Local Media
Posted on July 14, 2006
Filed Under Channels and Content |
Back in April celebrated US tech-journalist Dan Gillmor announced the end of his personal involvement with Bayosphere, a Bay area local citizen media initiative he helped found.
Gillmor didn’t quite sound the death knell of local new media but his opt out put people “in the know” on their guard.
Gillmor found the business of helping create citizen media tedious and to fitted to his skill set. Backfence took over and now have six local area “do-it-yourself” local news channels. Backfence in Arlington Virginia for example hosts 74 local bloggers.
Classifieds are a good measure of how well local media are working - Arlington’s classified count is depressingly low. Still change takes time.
It’s a pleasure to announce that GDB, in the UK, have gone a step further and are about to launch 7 new local TV channels.
“Welcome to localTV!localTV are community TV channels, run by local residents and broadcast worldwide over the internet.From films, documentaries and music shows to live event coverage and the latest local sports news, localTV offers all you need to keep up to date with what’s going on - from anywhere in the world, at any time!” Local TV
The practice of devising, shooting and editing local TV rather than writing local news for a print-a-like web site might make all the difference.
Better still GDB recently learned they will not come under the rubrik of the UK regulator Offcom, which gives them a little leeway on cost.
Says local TV infrastructure founder, Jim Deans: “BT intend to have a walled garden similar to Homechoice but on a nationwide scale, Cable TV down a thinner cable. No web browsing, no open network, channels will fall under OFCOM so forget Local TV as it will too expensive. In fact there will be nothing new, just all the same stuff SKY or NTL have except possibly on demand. Big deal and no help to Britian’s up and coming producers. directors, actors editors or camera crews.”
Why is local TV important? It is an important part of the long term erosion of the star, hit, celebrity mentality that’s dominated our culture for seventy years.
It is about giving people what they want even if only forty of them want it.
It’s also about creating a new culture where values are widely distributed and diverse, where there is no dominant set of values that represents a right way, so it is politically highly charged.
And as Anderson has been busy pointing out it’s part of a total disruption of how western economies work, structured paternalism giving way to something anarchic and creative.
Comments
WordPress database error: [Can't open file: 'wp_comments.MYI'. (errno: 144)]
SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_ID = '135' AND comment_approved = '1' ORDER BY comment_date
Leave a Reply