24 hour news at an end says former Sky News boss Nick Pollard from david dunkley gyimah on Vimeo.
You have to give credit to the suits, for the primacy of video programme making as a commodity to sell invariably boils down to news.
Trouble is it's transient, often too transient. When was the last time you kept a newspaper. No wait! If you're like me, almost everyday.
Today I threw away video and design magazines and a small mountain of newspapers dating back to 1999.
But I digress, my point is the journalism in video, as in videojournalism can be a swift transaction that takes a lot of effort to sate the appetite, with not the best of returns, literally.
Fifteen years ago, we came by the same answer, so the videojournalism station I worked for diversified and some of its popular and non-transient programmes involved arts and culture (A&C).
For the Vjs we could be more creative with the form. For the listeners a chance to have us respond to ideas featured in their local newspapers or quite often sent in. Yep social programming circa 1990s
I never quite understood how important A&C was in the early phase of my broadcast career, but over the years have looked to consume much I can get my hands on, because as you likely know more than I do, everything we do is seeped in A&C.
It's an unbroken timeline, unless you count dark ages.
From the Internet, a revised version of the Victorian telegraph; to news of import captured in their own way by the artists of their time e.g. Caravaggio and Velasquez, A&C is our DNA.
Today, the Guardian newspaper featured: Culture on Television: a lost art? The article illustrates how the disappearance of a major Arts TV programme, The South Bank, is bad news, and asks whether digital channels could provide an alternative.
Arts - Videojournalism's Ratings Winner
Should media execs and newspaper proprietors be concerned? Why yes! For one thing, done right it's a ratings winner.
"When you read the annual report it's the arts programmes that create value, our content is at the heart of what we do", says Channel 4's arts commissioner Jan Younghusband.
Another quote in the article that caught my attention was how "Arts organisations are becoming producers". This indeed is nothing new. But the use of video reportage is relatively a newcomer.
Reporting the arts as a videojournlist is less about the revolution about doing all by oneself, but about relating context and providing a hmmmm insight for others. It's not news, yet can be, so calls on creative video productions and a clarity in reportage.
Somehow the more knowledgeable and worldly you sound the more we're inclined to embrace you, which is why Sister Wendy Becket could become a hit almost overnight. Er, no she's not a videojournalist.
During the summer, I have a number of ideas for the South Bank centre, our own august arts body. Out of the blue last year I produced a report about the Arts and TV and that was well received, but I also intend to illustrate how the brand of videojournalism I have been honing over the years attempts to in some way treat some news events artistically e.g interviews etc.
Why?
Because it goes back to the matter of primacy of video making as a commodity, that hopefully the it's something you're likely to come back to watch again and adds value to the quality of news.
