Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Denver Open Media's Stunning Approach

Ok, so maybe your main frame of reference for "public access TV" is that "3 a.m. show about dressing up oranges and bananas as celebrities" or "that 4:15 pm program with that screaming guy with the crazy eyes". Or perhaps you just dismiss it as "stuff that wasn't good enough for public television," or "coverage of city government so excruciatingly boring that it makes C-SPAN look like ESPN." Well, it may be all that and more (or less), depending on where you live.

This, then, is something that will shock you. I strongly, STRONGLY recommend you watch the video presentation at Denver Open Media's website. I'll wait here while you go watch...


Ok, welcome back. As you've seen, what they've doing at DOM is combining the virtues of "Web 2.0" with easily-accessible cablecasting. (Once again, a similar approach to Current TV and WYBE-TV.) Are you starting to see the pattern here? As well, these people in Denver are thinking beyond their community, to how public access nodes on the national map can work together, distributing and filtering and promoting content on a national (if not global) scale. Good stuff, Denver. Great work.

2 comments:

Chris said...

That is a great video explaining corporate TV and a great use of archive.org moving images library.

Question: How do you sell anyone on the idea of "deproduction"? My thought is that it starts grassroots..

Philip Luckey said...

I agree that a major strength of public access TV is its grassroots origins -- both in terms of "how the public access movement came to be" and "how public access gathers content." To me, it's a bottom-up type of communication: people from the community expressing their ideas, sparking discussions, and displaying the wide diversity that our community has in common. However, I think it's helpful (if not essential) to have some level of infrastructure (communication architecture) to enable and enhance and encourage this flow of information from the grassroots to the treetops. (Think craigslist: a fairly straightforward system of categories that enable personal/public interaction on a staggering local & national scale).