Will independent television/press ever take off?

seahorsegenius

It's just me.
*Little, tired rant*

We have all the resources right now. Bittorrent, P2P, FTP. Even portable media players that support these videos that you can take anywhere. But still nothing that makes any noticable splash. How hard would it be to make a video equivilant to a Podcast?

People are constantly complaining about the news, here in America at least. But will we ever get comfortable with watching a news show that doesn't have someone sitting at a desk, in a studio? Specifically, how do you think this would work on small budget?

Would it ever work?
 
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Canada J Soup

Monkey Man
I reckon it's just around the corner...there are already some free software projects that integrate RSS feeds with easy to use BitTorrent clients and trackers, enabling anyone with a computer and a halfway decent internet connection to disseminate large files without the need for server space and serious bandwidth. Personal media players with decent video capabilities are becoming more and more common, so downloading things to watch while commuting is bound to become more and more common (and just wait until Apple come out with a video iPod or Sony brings out recordable UMDs for the PSP). As more people become aware of video podcasts / figure out how to download and view them (anywhere) the amount of video available will grow beyond the current man-gets-hit-in-groin home movies and 5 minute pr0n clips.

Without cheaper but better services (interactive content and IP video on demand for less than US50 a month) I reckon this kind of thing may well kill TV as we (currently) know it in five to ten years. As with record labels right now, TV channels will cease to be important as far as distribution of media is concerned. They will either shift focus to brokering the production of premium content and then marketing it (a la HBO in the US) or will develop lower cost content that is paid for by promotional tie ins you can't fast forward past.
 

Diaz

Well-known member
I just found out that a friend of mine is in the midst of trying to create an independent video outlet on the net that uses a combination of tags, RSS feeds and cheap/free video technology to basically allow you to stream any kind of video content you'd like in and see plenty of amateur and professional independent content. could be mega-rad. details being worked out, but as far as i know, it's gonna be called the "Rise Up Network" and looks like it might be @ www.riseup.net

could be wrong, could be changed later. indymedia was doing an ok job before they got totally hosed by the US gov.
 

Woebot

Well-known member
seahorsegenius said:
*Little, tired rant*

We have all the resources right now. Bittorrent, P2P, FTP. Even portable media players that support these videos that you can take anywhere. But still nothing that makes any noticable splash. How hard would it be to make a video equivilant to a Podcast?

People are constantly complaining about the news, here in America at least. But will we ever get comfortable with watching a news show that doesn't have someone sitting at a desk, in a studio? Specifically, how do you think this would work on small budget?

Would it ever work?

I have a fantasy of buying a cable channel! Maybe one day....

..also this is a topic close to my heart. Wrote my dissertation at University on "Third Circuit Cinema". This was 1993 and I interviewed Hex (who were Coldcut's Rave visual outfit) and the guys at XPress Publishing (Dotun Adebayo and Steve) who put out those "Yardie", "Stush" and "Baby Mother" books and ended up making a movie actually.....

Really interested to hear about New York's alternative cable channel in the 80s the other day (interviews with Basquiat, George Clinton and the No Wavers etc)

I reckon when this sort of thing works its because it attaches itself to a pre-exising subculture. So for instance, the Grime DVDs are a great example, as is London's Channel U. Maybe we should turn Dissensus into a TV station!

As for your comment about these things "making an impact" or "being taken seriously", hmmm, what you're really talking about there is looking for/expecting these channels to be approved and sanctioned by the mainstream media? Seems like you're wanting SKY News to cover the story, ha ha ha. And surely the whole point is that will never happen, its counter-productive for the mainstream media to really take this kind of thing seriously isnt it? Not being paranoid, but.....

i suppose the net would make a good tool for this kind of thing.....
 
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john eden

male pale and stale
In terms of print there are a load of people knocking out little local newsletters which sometimes get quite wide distribution - for example Haringey Solidarity Group do about 20,000 of their newsletter in north London.

In Bristol, The Bristolian is like a local version of Private Eye with all sorts of stuff on local scandals, etc.

On a more national level you have things like the indymedia sites and the weekly Schnews etc. The anarchist newspaper Freedom comes out every fortnight and seems to be improving. Perhaps this is all from an overtly political angle but the capability is already there, certainly.
 

seahorsegenius

It's just me.
WOEBOT said:
As for your comment about these things "making an impact" or "being taken seriously", hmmm, what you're really talking about there is looking for/expecting these channels to be approved and sanctioned by the mainstream media? Seems like you're wanting SKY News to cover the story, ha ha ha. And surely the whole point is that will never happen, its counter-productive for the mainstream media to really take this kind of thing seriously isnt it? Not being paranoid, but.....

i suppose the net would make a good tool for this kind of thing.....
Well I was more talking about how the viewers themselves would view it. If it would seem cheap in any way, getting news from smaller sources, or how long the idea would take getting used to.

Though maybe I misunderstood you.
 
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