Open Source... Television?

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."

Comments

pbs

[sulli]

Since taxpayers cover at least part of the cost of these shows via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, shouldn't ALL these shows be free-as-in-everything? We paid for them, after all!

Zed on CBC TV

[InterruptDescriptorT]

Zed bills itself as 'open source TV, v1.1'. (Was v1.0 mothballed?) Anyway, Canadians send in music, film clips, little productions, etc., and they are shown on the show. The Web site has clips of some of the entries.

Definitely a step in the right direction. I think you could only see this on public or semi-public (like the CBC) television. Networks out to make money would never dare put anything like this on the air--the airtime is only for the big stars that pull in ratings. Kudos to my home and native land!

Video is something that's VERY different.

[crovira]

Hmm. I wonder what made him think that up? This sounds like getting on a buzzword bandwagon.

While its a fine concept, letting the viewer have some control, its only control over some of the parameters of the show not really its content and those parameters are narowly defined by the show's producers.

There's really very little that can be done with raw footage. The creative control comes with the direction and that happens before the cameras are rolling.

It would be more useful to be in on the writer's metings or the story/editorial selection.

Raw footage would only be good for people with access to the technology to cut and splice and produce a segment. (Oh wait. that's anybody with a Mac and iMovie. :-)

Bottom line is, if you don't get to pick WHERE to aim the cam, you don't have much control over the content. If you don't get to pick HOW you aim the cam, you don't have much creative control either.

Try it again cringely.

Business Model?

[joshuaos]

I think this is a very interesting idea, as I would quite like to see a geek talk show, and I would also like to see the release of the un-edited data. Maybe Cringly could pull it off with the weight of PBS behind it, but perhaps this would be a a good application for the Street Performer Protocol (maybe slightly modified?). Of course, you'd probably want to do the entire first season and release it free (beer and speech) and then ask for contributions towards the second season, so it would be quite a while until you get any return.

For years, I've heard many on slashdot and other geek blogs talk about how they would pay for good, free (as in speech) content. Here is some proposed content for the internet, for geeks. I would like to see a really good opportunity for all those geeks (me included!) to put our money where are posts are. If the first season was good, and I enjoyed it, I would give $10 or $20 towards the second season.

And after a few seasons, if this was succesful, it would start to pave the way for other media released using the internet, and perhaps even this business model, maybe books or music or other shows. I think that eventually this could be a great concept to fund OSS development projects. Sooner or later, we're going to have to start the next generation of publishing companies. I envision it being a little like a blog, where you can see what new media is on offer, and what is waiting for funding, contribute to projects you like, and when things are released, they are released to everyone.

Cheers, Joshua