The News Show

This program continues the idea started by the third demo, of giving more of the control over content to the viewers.

It’s very hard for a small station to compete with daily podcasts and news programs with a limited staff. Since more people have the potential to become their own producers of content through more accessible and cheaper technologies, stations like KRLX can lend their name and listenership to these individuals by publishing their advertisements and news they produce themselves. Small and under-funded news staffs can rely on submissions from their users to create content.

Currently, KRLX produces a 5 minute news piece at the start of everyday that is both broadcasted hourly and available for download on the stations website. One person typically produces these pieces by themselves; a task that is by no means easy. The program usually consists of the producer reading articles from that morning’s stories from sites like BBC World, The New York Times, and even Carleton’s daily news bulletin, The NNB. This is not a very beneficial service to the public if they have already read these sites, but it’s too hard for one person to create anything more when they’re the only person working on the piece. This news piece works because the lone news correspondent doesn’t have to find the news. Instead, it comes to them.

The principle of letting the users craft the content has worked for sites like Wikipedia and YouTube. If more devices like cell phones, computers and portable mp3 players have the technology to produce and distribute video or audio content, the capability of users producing material shouldn’t be a concern. The main obstacle that faces a program like this one is encouraging listeners to submit their ads or news stories. Reading about the excitement surrounding the democratizing and community building aspects of radio in prior years, however, gives me hope that this is the kind of service radio fans would respond well to.

The best aspect of this scenario is that a station like KRLX is no longer dictating what content constitutes as a public service and what doesn’t. Here, the public is providing the service through the content they’re submitting. Here it’s the community that’s building and viewing the content that’s meant to function as the station’s public service, and it’s done in a way that attempts to be truly democratic.

Go Back To Demo 4: The News Show

Go Ahead To Project Conclusion

Go Back to Overview of Radio Future