Monday, February 16, 2009

Round 1: Denver Open Media vs. YouTube, MySpace, & Facebook

Hey guys, I knwo that not everyone visited DOM last Thursday, but after the trip and over the weekend I was still thinking about the alst topic that was brought up during our visit.  Clearly DOM and public access television provides a passageway for people to communicate and connect around topics and interests that do not necessarily serve commercial interests and to help provide individuals with the tools and resources they need to speak for themselves.
However, in the age of YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook, where anyone can communicate to the entire world through words, images, and even video at almost no cost, is the alternative of public access television losing its voice and audience more and more everyday?  In my opinion and along with some of the other students it seemed like the answer was yes: the voice of public access was beginning to and might continue to diminish.  But Tony Shawcross did put up a good fight in support of DOM and public access television, and I actually found an article supporting Tony's reasoning that I thought might be of some interest to everyone else. Enjoy!

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2008/12/public-access-tv-fights-for-relevance-in-the-youtube-age352.html

1 comment:

  1. Another Perspective:
    the statement, "anyone can communicate to the entire world through words, images, and even video at almost no cost."
    is just inaccurate, and is a common misconception from the middle-class and upper-class. It rings of "let them eat cake", and on a deeper level, is a justification for Public Access. Our social dialogue and values are shaped by a media system that is designed ONLY to serve advertisers. Advertisers have little interest in reaching the low-income communities who have less disposable income to buy their products, and thus the national ethos that is carried through corporate media makes it all the more easy to assume that "Everyone" can do YouTube...
    Do you have statistics on the demographics of people using YouTube? Do you forget that low-income communities have a much lower prevalence of Computers in the home, high-speed internet access, and access to camcorders and editing equipment? I don't think that research has even been done, but your class could do it.

    You'd find that most people don't have access to these resources, and lower-income schools don't tend to have significant media & technology communications training. Should this subset of the population be excluded from our collective awareness?

    Lastly, the viewership on Cable TV is magnitudes higher than internet use, even more so in low-income neighborhoods. Across all demographics, Nielsen said in their 2008 "A2/M2 Three Screen Report" that the average person spent 140 minutes each month watching TV (the majority of which is cable). The average person spends only 25 minutes each month on the web (majority of this is away from home), and LESS THAN 10% of those 25 minutes is spent watching video on the web.
    I realize those statistics don't reflect the behavior of the average College student, but College students need to recognize that their situation is unfortunately rare.

    If we had Libraries and Community Technology Centers offering the same services that orgs like D.O.M. provide, just without the Cable TV stations, it may be a different story. But D.O.M. is more than a cable TV station, they are a community technology center, teaching, providing equipment, and providing a local community of users that will NEVER be a part of YouTube.

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