The green, world approach and local approach.
How this will work with broadband Internet TV
Profiling
In the mainstream the mantra of who, what, where is not new, though with interactive consumption it is taking on a new importance. Profiling is big on the NET, everyone is after personal information to “personalise” the alienation of blind consumption. Looking into this can of rotting worms can we find anything worth composting to enrich our garden?
Proposal for a self-directed TV channel.
A global TV channel, starting small with the current technology and skills, in stages moving into an open universal global media outlet. The experience for individuals is that each has a channel of there owen, and you can sample others’ channels by amalgamating them with your own – you meet someone, and like their outlook… merge their profile into yours. You like a pop band, merge their channel to yours. This will create overlapping virtual community channels.
In its interactive shape the channel can be made up of tasters, with a list of viewing options, or can be set to play a more traditional no-interactive schedule. Instead of reaching for the TV guide, just look at the options available on your own channel – or any other global mainstream or counterculture channel.
You choose what to whach as any interaction will bring up a new list of content – much like a real-time review engine. The system then “creates” a channel for you [these will be made up of basic templates*]
* The templates will be baced on traditional TV scheduling the differences will lie in the content. An example would be the BBC 1 schedule. News and life styeal for breakfast, daytime soups, B films, early evening???? Local and global, News then mainstream drama and documentaries, music and such. The programs would be a mixture of live streams (news and sport), new productions and seareals mixed with archives. All profiled the majority to your inclananation, with links and a minority of conflicting views. This will be mixed in with a “random” selection of the “best” that others profiles are watching and some deserving editorial “gems”.
Your profile will be adjusted in real-time by your choices of program subjects, by your choices of what is in your profile and, finally, you can go into and directly edit your profile.
The content will be freely added by anyone, from more conventional channels or archives to new community or low-budget specials. Content can consist of local issues on council flower beds to the latest Hollywood blockbusters.
The individual or corporation who adds content, fills in a basic profile for the program. When submitted, this is first sent to “reviewers”, that is people who have expressed an interest in reviewing content. They then each add to the program’s profile and when there has been a large enough consensus the program is dynamically added to the schedule, with the new consensus profile. The reviewing process is open to all. The System is open to content from all over the world.
All the profiling data is dynamic. If you give a program a good rating its whole profile will be merged with your current profile. Trashing a program will reverse this – it will subtract the profile. This process will be elastic in its effect – it will have a moderate immediate effect and a smaller long term effect. Thus if you are a sports addict and for what ever reason you trash three sports programs and chose a comedy program instead, for the rest of that day you will get comedy and “teasers” of other subjects, the next day you will get half comedy and half sport… on the third day you will get the majority of what you watched on the second, and some of any “teasers” you followed. This process works in reverse, with individual viewers’ profiles affecting the profile of the programs themselves.
The profiling system will work as a tree, with top levels and side levels branching off. The top levels will be decided by the user’s profile, and then dynamically adjusted.
Some profile categories could be:
Fixed: nationality (country/region); language (spoken/subtitles); type (film/documentary/news/sport/commercial, review; subject (searchable key words) etc.
Variable: quality (good – bad), accessibility (easy – difficult), violence (child – adult), erotic (conservative – liberal), ideology (progressive – reactionary) etc.
This approach would be modified for live streams and real-time news features which would work on a system of trust – that is on an registered profile of the organisation – which again will be adjusted by views real-time choices. Self profiling by active intention and passive consumption.
There are also interesting statistical ways of collecting and processing such information, which could be included.
User interface
The basic interface idea is simple, a single button that gives you the option of trashing content you are not interested in. Interface options vary in their level of interactivity, encouraging interactive uses rather than leaving the channel on autopilot.
1. Dumb – by trashing programs the user doesn’t like and rating those they do.
2. Basic interaction – by choosing from the cued up list of possible programming that is provided with any user interaction.
3. “What mood am I in?” Expressed by the web – sliders – the users can express an interest in certain areas by elastically/temporarily changing the sliders on their profile. (dynamically created by their profile, with one or two challenging additions)
4. Traditional key word searching (with or without the aid of their profile).
5. Directly changing their profile (this complies with data laws).
Options
1. You can make your own, or organisations’ profile public so that other people can watch it and you can watch other’s… Undercurrents, football stars, NGO’s, Channel 4 etc.
2. You can “merge” others profiles in to yours, such as an organisation, famous author’s or popstars. Which will provide an easy way of getting an interesting personal channel, and seeing the world from different points of view.
3. You can bookmark TV series and news services, so that they always appear when a new content comes out.
4. Key words can form part of your profile, such as a city, person or brand.
It is important to realise that any large “outside” change will soon be personalised by your own interactive choices reshaping your profile to represent (and challenge) your point of view. A Universal TV Channel is not about dumming down people, it is about taking away the dull bureaucratic routines needed to choose “quality” and “truth” in our heavily commercialised and consumptive world.
Funding
Is flexible and from a number of conflicting sources. It is interesting to note that the content providers and viewers can choose which revenue funds their viewing in real-time, and this will also control our revenue flow. In this the project is one of a viewer/producer workers co-operative.
Funding roots
Advertising
E-commerce’s commissions
State money (grants/regional funding)
Sponsorship
Donations (PBS)
Pay per view
Advertising is very problematic, but the money has to come from somewhere… we could accept advertising and feed this to people’s profiles – for the mainstream this is the goldmine of revenue, and just like goldmines it has the problem of wide spread pollution. The adverts would directly pay to the content providers (video makers) a commission on each viewer with a cut for us as the provider. This is the dream of mad consumptives, though we live in such a world.
Links to commercial sites – both mainstream and counterculture – the balance is decided by people’s own profiles. We take the standard Internet commission for referrals and any purchases that these create. It is important to note that adverts are profiled just like programs.
Public service? Government money? If this was possible, we could then pass this onto content providers and take a more respectable running cost commission. A good source of funding.
Donations, the old PBS projects. May work for special interest groups, again we have the opening of taking a small commission in the middle.
It is important that a proportion from each revenue stream is cross subsidised to all viewed work. Thus the mainstream movies advertising would pay for the counterculture response. Creating the liberal (and free market) ideal of “perfect knowledge”.