Community Digital Broadcasting
Internet Studio Community Content via Digital Broadcasting
Provides the most important community content for universal access to all with a digital “set-top box” or digital television.
Digital broadcasting is fundamentally the most important means of distribution of information that all should have access to for public safety and community involvement. It is an important step across the “digital divide” for information access by those “have nots” without a two-way Internet connection.
In the era of convergence, digital broadcasting is really just the one-way Internet with lots of bandwidth, economies of scale, and universal distribution.
This flyer is based on comments submitted to the Advisory Committee in October 1997. See: http://www.publicus.net/digital.html
Personal contribution from Steven Clift clift@publicus.net, 612-822-8667
What “1s and 0s” should everyone have access to?
Perhaps: Weather Alerts, School Lunch Menus Crime Watch and Alerts, Missing Children Reports, Environmental Disaster Warnings, Snow Emergency Details, Community Notices, Non-Partisan Election Information, Etc.
What kind of content formats?
Primarily HTML/XML text files with simple navigation scheme to files in the set-top memory or storage device. Leveraging the 24 hour stream and use of the geographic tags would allow tailored community information presentations within one signal area. Image files and audio or video streams or files would be allowed within broadcast and set top capacity limits.
Who should aggregate, broadcast?
The million dollar question. Convergence is a great disintermediating force. Stakeholders in the “Internet Studio” include every conceivable non-commercial community information and media source. A state government chartered system of locally based non-profit organizations should be considered. With broadcasting, clearly the capacity of public television is significant. The costs of aggregation of content may be more significant than the broadcast costs, so mechanisms that involve commercial broadcasters and the private sector and foundations seems essential.