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Open Source... Television?

Posted by michael on from the someone-tell-him-about-mbone dept.

jarit0z writes: "In Robert Cringely's latest column he toys with the idea of creating a TV show to go along with his rants. The show would be freely (as in beer) distributable, to hopefully keep bandwidth costs down. And it would also be freely (as in speech) modifiable, since he would also be releasing the "source" or raw footage of the show. Very interesting ideas if you ask me."

1 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. Re:pbs by foobar104 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I don't believe it works exactly like that. The stuff that ends up going out over the various PBS stations is finished programming. Somebody had to produce that programming. I live in Dallas, and the local PBS station, KERA, has been doing a lot of production lately, shooting and finishing various shows.

    When a production company or station makes a program, they turn over only the finished piece to the distributor or broadcaster. The production company or station keeps ownership of and rights to the stuff that went into making the program. Sometimes there are agreements between the distributor and the production company, like the production company promising not to turn around and use the same footage to make a different cut of the same program and sell it to somebody else for instance.

    So what PBS gets is actually just the finished programs, not the raw footage or anything like that. It's not theirs to release.