TV news of the future?
Cory Bergman May 7th, 2007
Some of you may have already seen this, but Dave Winer has sketched out his vision of a futuristic MSNBC. In essense, he visualizes a bunch of checkboxes that would allow him to opt in and out of various stories as he watches a linear newscast. So if he unchecked the Virginia Tech box, those stories would no longer appear. “I think this is another form of the River of News, the checkboxes represent subscriptions,” he writes. “I could see MSNBC including stories produced by CNN, and sharing revenue with them. The goal is to get the best news experience tailored to the interests of specific users.” He even built a mock-up of what it would look like. If this were an online streaming experience, frankly, why wouldn’t I just click on the individual clips? But as a TV experience, it could be a killer feature — although it’s far from technologically feasible right now. But maybe with IPTV’s bigger pipes? Thoughts on all this?
Adds Tim in comments: “I see the checkboxes more as ‘tags’ or categories: set your filters for the tags you want, or perhaps set your filters for tags you no longer want. The tags present an issue: who decides what the “offical” tag is? ‘Virginia Tech shooting’, ‘Virginia Tech chaos’ and ‘VATech shooter’ all could refer to the same thing - so how are the tags going to be assigned to storied to allow us to filter easily?”
Adds Geoff: “The problem with Dave Winer’s model is, it assumes your choices are final. I dismissed broccoli in 1955 - was that my last choice? I have also thought about this and favor tagging stories and matching them for affinity. You would tag for geography (zip code, for instance) and substance. A story would have many tags, so Paris Hilton’s latest foray might be sent to criminology fans who wouldn’t have gotten stories about her shopping or clubbing….”
12 Comments Add your own
1. Drew Robertson | May 7th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Would 30-second ads be optional as well?
2. Ed | May 7th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
“If this were an online streaming experience, frankly, why wouldn’t I just click on the individual clips?”
In our vision of an online streaming experience, it would be because there are vastly more clips available than can be meaningfully displayed in an interface.
I’m not sure how Dave’s vision could ever work, as you would quickly outpace the flow of content in a linear newscast, and you’d be stuck staring at a black screen for most of the time.
3. Scott T. | May 7th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
During the day, while you’re at work, you check off the stories you want to see more of when you get home. Then once you get home, log in to download your own nightly newscast, filled with the stories you want to see, from either your AppleTV or your VOD provider.
I’d rather sit and watch a previously assembled block, than wade and watch clips one at a time.
4. discreet_chaos | May 7th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
In my opinion, it sounds a lot like an online viewing experience. You can watch the clips in which you are interested and skip the rest.
Perhaps as the two technologies merge, something similar would become readily available for the tv, but right now, you’re either stuck with the online experience or you could buy one of those ATI cards that reads the closed-captioning. It’s been several years since I played with the ATI card, but you set the keywords in the software and whenever it sees them in the captioning, it triggers a record of over-the-air or cable broadcasts.
Of course, either of these technologies would force you to view the clip after it aired, but so would Mr Winer’s solution. Otherwise, you’d have a lot of black screen as Ed noted, while other stories were being broadcast.
5. Ed | May 7th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
I was kidding about the black screen.
Clearly, they’d fill the intervening time with commercials. Lots and lots of forclosure and debt relief commercials.
6. discreet_chaos | May 7th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Ed - “Head-On! Apply directly to the forehead!”
(Of course their ratings might be stronger if they ran that GGW informercial on a continuous loop, but they’ve already tried to ban the commercial in Tennessee, so it probably wouldn’t take long for the other states to consider the issue)
7. Tim | May 7th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
I see the checkboxes more as “tags” or categories: set your filters for the tags you want, or perhaps set your filters for tags you no longer want. The tags present an issue: who decides what the “offical” tag is? “Virginia Tech shooting”, “Virginia Tech chaos” and “VATech shooter” all could refer to the same thing - so how are the tags going to be assigned to storied to allow us to filter easily?
8. Geoff Fox | May 7th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
The problem with Dave Winer’s model is, it assumes your choices are final. I dismissed broccoli in 1955 - was that my last choice?
I have also thought about this and favor tagging stories and matching them for affinity.
You would tag for geography (zip code, for instance) and substance. A story would have many tags, so Paris Hilton’s latest foray might be sent to criminology fans who wouldn’t have gotten stories about her shopping or clubbing.
This seems to be (reasonably) doable using current technology, like a MySQL database, php, javascript and flash encoded videos. And, I believe it’s scalable.
Google is a fine example of weighing affinity to produce satisfying results.
Over time, as a viewer watched stories, he/she would have the opportunity to de-weigh aspects, further sharpening the focus.
Where I worry, and the real shortcoming in this scenario, is the loss of serendipity which is so evident when I read a newspaper or watch TV news. I subscribe to the NY Times and read it online and always find stories in one that I’d missed in the other!
Geoff Fox
9. Cliff Etzel | May 8th, 2007 at 9:11 am
As a former web designer, the line in this article stating this model being technically unfeasible at this time is incorrect.
The technology is already in place to allow such an experience. Any scripting language like PHP, ASP, ColdFuison can make this happen right now.
All it requires is an innovative web entity to implement it.
10. Cory | May 8th, 2007 at 10:00 am
Cliff you’re right for the web, but not TV. There’s no way you can customize delivery of all these different newscasts in real-time over existing cable lines.
11. Dan | May 8th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Cory, what about doing this on a local level?
You go to “my 6pm news” on the king5.com site,
where you see the lineup of stories on your station’s server today, and you pick the ones you want to see, hit go, and the stories are streamed to you, with maybe a 10 second ad between them? Or maybe right now you hit “make show” and then you download the whole thing constructed. These ideas are if you play it back on Apple TV, but if it’s watched on a web page, maybe
instead of ads in the stream, the ads are next to the
newscast window. Any of these ideas being kicked
around out there, from a local station perspective?
Dan
12. Tim | May 8th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
I beg to differ with you Cory - there IS a way, I think.
The ATSC standards contain a piece for ‘content identification’ (57/A I think), which could be used for tagging info, although it’s been a year or so since I read it and it may need extension to allow something like tags; I can’t remember how flexible it is. This standard is for information which is included in each digital stream of data (if not in each frame, it at least brackets the content - again read te spec to be sure). If people include this information in their broadcast or cable distribution of DTV content, then smart devices can use it.
Imagine your Tivo Series 5: you tell it to record ‘Days of Our Lives’; it doesn’t need to know what time because it examines the content identifiers to select that show as the digital data comes into the “tuner” (which is really just a set of digital filters).
I really don’t know if content producers are using these fields, but I’m hopeful we’ll get there.
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