Blog Discussion| Factual Content: Conglomerates & Independents

The big difference I perceive between independent news and broadcast television is like the contrast between narrative and non-narrative storytelling. In true form narrative will have a cause and effect chain of events building to a conclusion, whereas non-narrative storytelling has no constraints, telling stories through scenes that can be completely unrelated but still make a point.

Broadcast news television is the narrative; a controlled series of events chosen to tell a particular story with a finite for or against opinion, whereas the independent can tell any story they feel the need to get out. Often the independent can tell the story the corporate, government, broadcaster don’t want the public to hear, see or experience.


In the same way, factual content can be manipulated by both parties but in broadcast television - in a news sense - they are bound by litigation to actually offer some ‘truth’ to the viewer, whereas an independent can offer his or her opinion about anything society has to offer. One is bound by chains and forced to give the viewer a construct of truth, the other is without boundary to tell it like it is, or however they chose to depict it. In this way the conventions of modern television have been blown wide apart, user generated content is paving the way for the future, society is demanding WYSWIG content when we want it over high speed broadband. This is forcing the networks to sit up and listen. A proliferation of reality TV has taken over and as discussed in the lecture has spawned such a wide range of hybrid genres where potentially anybody is a reporter and the lines between fact and fiction are blurred.


Social Media has also spawned its own phenomena – YouTube, Facebook & Myspace have online populations larger than small countries. What you want, when you want it content, opinion stripped of commercial intervention. Big corporates trying to get in on the act make fatal errors in judgement misrepresenting themselves with viral marketing campaigns that are struck down by the savvy new age community as fakes. A recent example was the Witchery ‘Naked’ campaign whereby an attractive woman claimed be trying to get in touch with a man by the jacket that he left without contact details after their first date.


This video was posted to YouTube and purported as a genuine website of an attractive woman, but was quickly exposed as a PR exercise and hence lost on the community quickly. At first Witchery denied the claim and then found unthought-of of legal implications for the hoax and had to fess up - it exposed a need for widespread awareness by these big companies meddling in new media. Just how should online viral content by executed? What really is factual content? As soon as the video was exposed as hoax traffic to it plummeted.


Social Media communities, user generated content and independent 'convergent journalists' are able to influence the public more with an original idea, an honest opinion, a real story just as easily and viral messages can spread like wildfire. There is real power in honest representation and integrity.


There is no doubt that this new era of Digital Video is going to effect broadcast television in many ways, and as technology increases and broadband reaches 100Mmps capacity becoming truly ‘two-way’, these changes are surely only the tip of the iceberg.


Digital content over broadband poses a very real serious threat to the corporate networks and I cant wait to see where it takes us.