Wednesday, February 21, 2007

news you can use

Responding to a post from Adrian Monck's blog who writes

Monck’s Maxims® of video news online:
"No newscasters. News anchoring is a presentational trope borne of the complex organizational demands of analogue TV studios. The newscast is to online as Top of the Pops is to YouTube."

Interesting how the origins of new ideas often reside in past genus e.g. Addison and Steele. Sorry an after thought.

An intriguing operation, yet to be replicated innovatively today, stems from Channel One circa 96.

The station had a "sadie"-like news system. On air it looked live, but these were prerecorded links from the presenters.

This had a huge number of benefits. Oh and you could opt in real Live if you wanted e.g. New Years.

But the format lends itself to the future of supermarket news ie off-the-shelf.

I agree the presenter is a product of the hollywoodisation of news and that a youtube/ agency model of news consumption has a rising currency harking back to another maxim "news you can use".

However if presenter-led news stays the course, here's an idea of how to customise your own in a database driven news economy.

Click your ipod, devise your menu of news reports, then scroll through the menu for those prerecorded links from your favourite presenter.

Today, Paxmanesque, tomorrow Snow.
Each click brings revenue to the network or online station that employs the presenter.

On the other hand, if you're brand presence resides in various territorities you might just be able to live off your click rate - something I mentioned to Christiane Amanpour as a panelist at the Front Line Club. I'll post the vid soon.

Like I said the genus relating to a new idea may well have something in common with, in this case, the juke box, which is as old as the news agency.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Channel One - an idea ahead of its time. Just goes to show in business that sometimes it pays to go last...