Demo Explanation
It’s very hard for a small station to create daily podcasts and news programs with a limited staff, and therefore stay competitive with other news organizations. 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 pieces they create themselves. A small and under-funded news staff can rely on submissions from their audience to create content.
Currently, KRLX produces a 5 minute news piece at the start of the weekday that is broadcasted hourly and available for download on the station's website. One person typically produces each piece by themself. 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 public service if the audience has already read these sites, yet it’s too hard for one person to create anything more by themself. This news piece functions better because the lone news correspondent doesn’t have to find the news- it comes to them instead.
The idea of letting the audience shape 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 to produce 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 its early years, however, gives me hope that this is the kind of service radio fans would embrace.
In this scenario, a station like KRLX would no longer dictate what content constitutes as a public service and what doesn’t. Here, the public is providing the service through the content they’re submitting. Instead, it is the community that is 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.