Local Internet TV Takes Off In Austria 110
Cyrus writes "The BBC reports on an Austrian village that is testing technology which could represent the future of television. The pilot has been so successful that Telekom Austria is now considering setting up other projects elsewhere." From the article: "The hardware and software to turn video footage into edited programmes has been provided by Telekom Austria but this equipment, following training, has been turned over to the villagers. Any video programme created by the villagers is uploaded to a Buntes Fernsehen portal that lets people browse and download what they want to watch. "
I can see the benefit... no wait.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I can see the benefits possible with on-demand television. Downloading what you want to watch and watching it. The idea has been proposed before and is not really new.
What seems to be new here is the local production and upload of television programmes. I don't mean to be pessimistic, but I don't see this being adopted worldwide. Consider something like this being implemented in a large city. Not only would you possibly now have thousands of options to download in varying degrees of insanely crappy quality, but I'm sure you'd also fill up these "portals" with tons of crap uploaded by people thinking they are doing a public service.
Unfortunately, if this kind of idea takes off, we wouldn't be able to just limit it to places that need it, like rural areas that otherwise don't have their own coverage. I'm no fan of the news media industry, but there is a reason people go to school for journalism and don't become newscasters simply by living in an area where news is made.
Re:It'll never work in the U.S. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I can see the benefit... no wait.... (Score:3, Interesting)
As a former journalist, editor I can tell you this: going to school of journalism does not make you a journalist. I helped several talented people to become journalists, although they did not take any formal education in that field. It's more like writers, actors, painters, singers: you are either gifted or not. Obviously, being gifted is just the beginning, you need to learn a lot on your way to become a recognized journalist, but none of my "personal picks" failed. Mind you, they came from all walk of life, most of them highly educated in other fields. Journalism is actually a teamwork: journalists are only one part, equally are important editors, who most of the times serve as mentors. They together can become each others inspiration, healthy critics and able to create great journalism.
I do believe that there are plenty of undiscovered, true journalists, editors around the world - many more than the big, visible media outlets can absorb.
Obviously, a project like this would create tons of fairly useless reports, it would attract tons of wanna-be journalists. Talented editors would still be needed to separate the gifted ones from the rest.
It would be extremely interesting, though... it would allow local colours to go global... It would allow a much broader point of view what you can see currently in the media industry.
It could provide a much better public participation than the current, sickeningly manipulative radio "talk shows" deliver.
It could help to "compete" with media oultlets, which beat their competitons only by being better funded and able to afford to send journalists to more hot spots than others.
Now we see wars and "international events" as a CNN (and a few other media giant) reporter reports it to us. It would be extremely interesting though to see the same event from a truly local prospective at the same time. At least it would help us to understand the world better.
You have that exactly backwards (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically what needs to happen in regards to copyright extenstion is a end-run that cuts of Disney's oxygen - and it's already happening. They've run out of old stories to steal from and even very old stuff is still under copyright, thanks to them, and thus very expensive to get rights for. So they shut of the source of much creativity and are slowly strangling on what is left.
New media companies need to spring up that realize the value in letting people download and actualy own digital copies of media. I think perahps one of the online movie stores may go that way someday. It's basically the only thing that will self-regulate the pressure from overly long copyright extention.
Re:It'll never work in the U.S. (Score:3, Interesting)
Correct. It's only illegal to stream video on the internet without a license from Acacia [com.com] Technologies [eff.org].
goooood morning Austria! (Score:1, Interesting)
Things you should know, before cheering about this "empowerment of the public" et c.:
"Telekom Austria" is our telecommunication monopolist. Since about 10 years there are competitors, but they don't stand a chance. The dinosaur "Terrorkom" has much more money for ads, and still owns most of the cables (and charges too much for competitors who want to rent them).
So it's _not_ a "good" company. They don't do things because of some leftist empowerment-shit, they want to make more money.
Second: Sounds like that thing only works with their own DSL-solution, which is the crappiest available in Austria (crappy as in "slow, unstable, too low traffic limit, too expensive").
Maybe this'll give you an idea: http://www.aon.at/
(yeah, that's news about Britaney getting divorced. Other questions?)
--
douglas at karanet dot at
Re:Been there done that (Score:1, Interesting)
Well the villagers in Austria apparently. But seriously; if they make interesting shows people will watch it, I would at least. Just because a show is on a major channel doesn't automatically mean its any good. And just because it's on public access doesn't automatically mean that it sucks. Though the larger networks have bigger budgets and their shows are more polished, in my opinion many of those shows are soulless. I would rather watch a low quality show that's interesting, then a high quality show that's boring. Anyway, that's just my point of view.
What I want to know is how they decided what's suited and what's unsuited for these shows. What kind of regulation do they have concerning profanity, sex and violence?