Be The Media - Make Internet TV

I want to riff for a minute on the sort of unspoken subtext of Josh's blog about Imus, and the spoken text of his comment here:

I also think we all should be on TV. All the time. Seriously, have you seen what’s on TV? It’s terrible. Steward and Colbert are good, but I’m waiting waiting waiting for someone or something to break out and do high-end politics with an angle towards quality, lively presentation and real relevance. The re-invention of the TV drama should have some echo in the news/politics end of the spectrum, right? Right???

This seems like an opening. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of my friends linking to somewhat silly youtube videos that make what I could call a C+ effort at engaging the bigger picture.

He is totally right. There is no reason these jokers should so completely dominate our airwaves, and the cost of producing our own content is so minimal that there aren't really any barriers to entry anymore.

The biggest problem seems to me that Josh is implying that we need to take over the broadcast airwaves, not just narrow cast our stuff over the internet or join that Gen-X dominated media "middle class" that is developing over at Current TV. There's no quick way to do that. The number of available jobs where a young person might actually hold a position of influence to a broadcast audience just aren't there.

More after the jump.

With all the buzz around young voters, maybe we'll see some "youth correspondents" in the '08 campaign, but those folks will likely create cookie cutter pieces, heavily edited by an "experienced" Boomer to fit the current media mold. So we're really left with two options. Get good spokespeople booked on programs, or jump start something over the internet.

The first instance requires money and organization. You need to hire a booker or communications consultant of some kind to get you on mainstream media programs. This is likely to be a strategy followed by some of the more well-funded youth groups in the '08 cycle (I hope). Whether or not they are effective spokespeople armed with the right messages is in fact a crapshoot. We can try to influence their narrative (and I hope we do). With some luck, the book, and a readership spike it's not outside the realm of possibility that I might get my mug on the Tee Vee. But this is all sort of stop-gap. This is to make sure that the mainsteam media is less bad that it would otherwise be. It's not going to create anything revolutionary or improve the system in any way.

If that sort of change is the goal, then bootstrapping something on the interweb seems a far more likely option. Something like RocketBoom but a little less glib and more substantive (and no mentos and coke montages) is not all that difficult to produce if you've got the writing and acting chops, and could garner a huge audience. If you are successful and get a following online, networks/cable will come to you (Amanda Congdon works at ABCnews now, and is developing a show for HBO). If not, there is always Current TV and internet stardom, which still presents a significant audience (and would cut even further into the already declining 18- 39 audience of the networks).

On the "How To" tip, the folks at the Participatory Culture Foundation just launched a new website that teaches you exactly how to do this sort of thing - Make Internet TV.

The site is an incredibly user friendly walk-through on how to shoot, edit, and upload digital video to the web using a variety of equipment and software platforms (Mac, PC, Linux). It contains video screencasts explaining step by step how to properly edit and digital video (I watched the iMovie version), guides, and even a Wiki so that the community can delve into deeper technical questions or just offer each other support and one-on-one assistance.

The tools are all there, and as the Imus debacle shows, the need is greater than ever. It just requires some talent and willpower.

Sidenote - I added links to Make Internet TV, as well as their introductory video to the Video page in our own DIY wiki. This page is in need of some reorganizing, but there's a lot of good stuff on it now.