Winter 2003

New Channels: Evolving technology puts viewers behind the camera

(Read the article with photos on the Ford Foundation web site.)

Don't worry about the difference between the TV set and the PC. That's not fundamental, because basically a TV set is a personal computer you look at from the sofa.... In the future, we won't be pushing bits at people like we're doing today. It doesn't matter whether you call the receiver a TV or a PC. What's going to change is how those bits are delivered.... They don't have to be in real time. They can trickle in. They can come in bursts. The can come on demand.... Gone will be the days of lock-step obedience when everyone stops eating at 8 o'clock to huddle around the screen and be there on time for the bits. People are going to look back on those days as truly ridiculous.
--Nicholas Negroponte, head of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a November 1995 interview with Wired magazine.

In the 1990's, personal computers and the Internet transformed the ways people use and share information. Futurists predicted that soon, thanks to the new information technologies, all communications--visual and audio--would be delivered digitally, flashing through fiber optic cables and bouncing off satellites, opening the way to interactivity and transforming news and entertainment media. In particular, industry and government heralded digital TV as the most important change in the medium since the introduction of color TV.

By transmitting a signal in zeroes and ones, the digital code used in computers, a DTV signal can be compressed to provide four, five or more program streams and video services in the same bandwidth required for one channel of traditional analog transmission. DTV can also deliver sound over six discrete audio channels. In this way, broadcasters may offer datacasting, better known as interactive TV, that allows programmers to provide additional material to the main broadcast and viewers to download data--video, audio, text, graphics--to personal video recorders or DTV receivers. DTV also makes possible high-definition TV, which, with a picture at six times the resolution of today's standard definition TV, would bring video with movie-theater quality into viewers' living rooms.

DTV's commercial potential is heady: video-on-demand, games, weather and financial data, direct marketing and the like. But the potential is also heady for public-interest broadcasting. To its visionaries, the new technology promises not only to extend the reach of programming to new audiences, but also to engage those audiences more interactively and creatively than anything tried so far. As a result, their voices--often voices seldom heard--may join in discussion of important public issues, creating a virtual global commons.

These possibilities are greatly enhanced by the decrease in cost of digital video cameras and editing programs that allow videos to be edited on personal computers. Despite valid concerns about a "digital divide," the new technology is increasingly accessible to groups that never might have imagined an electronic media role for themselves.

In an attempt to speed the digitization process, Congress passed the 1996 Telecommunications Act requiring broadcasters to air a digital signal by 2002 and to phase out existing analog transmissions by 2006. But the digital revolution has not come as surely, or as swiftly, as many had predicted.

Only a handful of stations met the May 1, 2002, deadline for airing a digital signal, and the 2006 shutdown of analog broadcast has been moved to 2007. Even that date is in doubt, since it requires that 85 percent of the sets receiving the signal have the appropriate hardware--a huge and potentially expensive switch considering that today there are some 300 million analog sets in the United States.

As the debate continues, some public television stations have forged ahead and started preparing for the conversion that will--regardless what form it finally takes--require more in-depth, layered programming. Idaho Public Television, for instance, has increased the number of channels available through multicasting, so that people with the equipment to receive digital signals can customize program schedules from a variety of public-interest programs--educational, children's, public affairs--transmitted on the same channel at the same time. IdahoPTV also joined with Wyoming and Reno, Nev., public stations to form Focus West, a consortium that produces documentaries and televised public meetings examining topics of common concern to the three states: water resources, land use and problems of minorities. The productions are enhanced with additional information on Web pages and video clips of the programs themselves, a small step toward breaking away from appointment TV.

On the East Coast, Connecticut Public Television (CPTV) launched an exhaustive program called "Mapping the Assets," in which the station identified 900 institutions in the state--schools, universities, hospitals, museums and other organizations--that could be tapped for expertise. Following this, CPTV produced "Connecting the Assets," which, together with the partner organizations, created programs accompanied by seminars and provided Web links to other resources in the state.

CPTV also demonstrates that site-specific local programming can be immensely popular: Every winter the station airs 22 University of Connecticut women's basketball games. Kramer says the series receives the highest local ratings in all of public broadcasting. Digitization and an increased number of channels make it possible to offer all the games without preempting programming for Connecticut viewers who aren't hoop fans.

The fluidity of digital information streams that lends itself to local programming such as that created by CPTV and Focus West also allows producers to experiment with innovative forms of storytelling.

A coalition of groups called the National Minority Consortium is helping filmmakers and producers create programs that highlight the lives of specific minority groups. Participants include Pacific Islanders in Communications (piccom.org), Latino Public Broadcasting (lpbp.org), National Asian American Telecommunications Association (naatanet.org) and National Black Programming Consortium (nbpc.tv).

Some, like Native American Public Telecommunications, focus on radio, because that is the medium most available to the target population. Others, like ColorVision, hope for national outreach. Marc Henry Johnson, the group's executive producer, is currently at work on a series of six hourlong programs composed of 20 short narrative films by minority directors.

Two organizations--OneWorld TV, with headquarters in London, and WorldLink TV, based in San Francisco--are striking examples of new media platforms that give a broad spectrum of people access to a diverse and challenging array of opinions and information.

OneWorld TV

OneWorld TV, launched on the Internet in early 2002, harvests videos from members--typically groups with stories to tell that receive little if any space in the mainstream media. Here, one can listen to stories of child gold miners in Burkina Faso, learn how to construct "green" buildings using ecologically sound materials or join in the debate about war in Iraq, uploading one's own video alongside one of U. S. President George Bush at the United Nations.

OneWorld TV is an outgrowth of OneWorld (www.oneworld.net), a Web-based network of 1,250 NGO's dedicated to human rights and sustainable development. It was launched in 1995 by Anuradha Vittachi, a Sri Lanka-born producer of television documentaries and an expert on new media and global society, and Peter Armstrong, a 20-year veteran of the BBC. Member organizations of OneWorld range from the United Nations Development Program to Globalvision.org, a site that monitors and reports on the media, to Narmada Bachao Andolan, a women's collective originally formed to protest the building of a dam that threatened to flood 150 villages in India.

"We treat the members as media and bring them together in one place," explains Glen Tarman, OneWorld TV's publicity manager. "In this way the groups can tell their individual stories and, by linking them, we can show their global significance." The members upload text articles about their programs, providing the public with sophisticated, substantive material on 40 issues that include child rights, AIDS, international debt and climate change. Members pay dues to support the network.

OneWorld TV takes the networking and the outreach a step further. Individuals as well as groups may become contributing members so long as they are willing to abide by terms of agreement that spell out commitments to promoting human rights, sustainable development and freedom of expression. Political parties are barred from participation, and moderators of the site may also reject material they deem libelous, defamatory, discriminatory, of poor quality or irrelevant. Otherwise, contributors are encouraged to reflect diverse views.

By allowing anyone with a video cam and access to the Internet to join in this kind of video storytelling, OneWorld TV further blurs the lines between producer and viewer. That is exactly what Armstrong wanted to do. "Essentially the mainstream news organizations are no longer providing the necessary news," he says. "Documentaries on global issues were a massive fashion in the 1980's," he says. But since the late 90's, with the craze for "docusoaps" and "reality" TV, even documentaries have become more entertainment than information. "People need alternatives to get the news out, and to receive the news," Armstrong says.

The concept of Web-based documentaries evolved when Armstrong, along with Jo Hill, OneWorld TV's multimedia producer, and Will Ross, an independent developer of computer programs, spent a week trying to create the necessary software. A year of research had convinced the three that the Internet was not conducive to traditional half-hour and one-hour formats. Even five minutes of uninterrupted streaming video proved too long.

So they deconstructed the traditional documentary into one- minute and 30-second scenes. At the end of each, the viewer is presented with paths that naturally arise from the segment and can choose whichever seems most intriguing. "The idea was to watch the video the way one uses the Web--jumping from place to place," Ross says.

On a recent day, people who clicked onto the OneWorld TV Web site (http://tv.oneworld.net) were encouraged to join in the debate about a possible war in Iraq. In the lead clip, Rohana Kirthisinghe of Christian Aid noted that in any such war, humanitarian rights had to be considered. After that, the viewer had several choices: One led to a spokesman from Save the Children Fund, who noted that several hundred thousand Iraqi children had already died because of United Nations sanctions in place since 1991; another showed President Bush at the U.N. warning that Iraq presents a "grave and gathering danger." In another clip, Joseph Cirincone of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argued that Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, does not have the material to make a bomb. One more click produced Professor Paul Rogers of Bradford University commenting that Hussein would use any chemical weapons he might have if the United States attacks.

Once they become members (a relatively simple operation, for which there is no fee), viewers can add to a story or create a new one by uploading their own videos and information. "Think of it in terms of Scrabble," says Armstrong. "You can add on to what others have done." In this manner, he says, it's feasible for a whole community to be part of the storytelling and investigating.

In addition to changing the story line, the process changes the storytelling process itself, making it collaborative. The whole notion of authorship--and of what constitutes a creative work--is in flux. The shift intrigues Will Ross, who devised Tapestry, the software that allows for the exchange of stories.

Ross explains that he kept the process as simple as possible so that people can add material to the site even in less than ideal circumstances--as was the case last year when some filmmakers were able to add material from the Palestinian town of Jenin in the West Bank even though Israeli troops were denying access to the international media.

To keep the story line strong, separate blocks of text lead into the segments, Ross says, "very much in the silent-movie tradition." More information, on the speaker, the situation and the author of the clip, is available by clicking on a tab.

The developer of such a community site, Ross observes, must give up any notion of artistic or ideological control. Hill, who moderates the site, says that despite such flash-point subjects as the Arab-Israeli conflict, she has, so far, had no need to delete offensive material. The 714 members of OneWorld TV represent more than 40 countries and are "a very diverse lot," Hill says.

Stories are developed around themes selected by Hill and others at OneWorld TV, with members adding to the stories at will; sometimes as many as four contributions are uploaded to the site in one day. When Hill sees a tie-in to some previously posted story, she writes the appropriate lead-in and creates a link, expanding the "tapestry."

One dedicated contributor is Amnesty International. Dan Thurley, director of its media and audio visual department, says that by uploading video material onto OneWorld TV, "we can bypass state controls and boundaries and hopefully find some airplay in countries that do not normally show our material through conventional methods such as TV news or newspaper columns… we can reach a wide audience covering a lot of countries, and so our potential audience includes members of the public, educators, potential collaborators on human rights documentaries or people who are looking for video footage on human rights."

Don't expect Hollywood-style perfection; although some of the contributors are professionals, others are just people who want to get a story out. Also, for now, the screen size for viewing video clips is small--about two inches square, or small enough so that clips can be downloaded on a standard phone line (56K). OneWorld TV opted for the small size so that any of their members could access the material.

The creators of OneWorld TV hope its reach will be extended-and a vital source of income developed-through a partnership with the BBC, which is launching BBC 3, a channel that will be devoted to news and current affairs programming.

Meanwhile, the original OneWorld site, which includes a link to OneWorld TV, continues to prosper as a source of information about its constituent groups. Traffic on it recently reached 400,000 visits per month. "That's not a lot compared with commercial Web sites," Tarman says. "But when you consider the audience, it's the people our members want to reach." Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, has said that OneWorld is one of his favorite Web sites. The BBC lists it for its editors and correspondents as a likely source for stories. Yahoo features it as one of its four international news providers, right alongside the Associated Press, Reuters and National Public Radio.

WorldLink TV is run by television documentary producers, all of whom are committed to the belief that Americans are interested in global issues and do want to hear a variety of opinions.

Stories are fed to 12 national and regional sites around the world, each of which edits its own Web page, highlighting the news important to its readers and translating the stories into one of eight languages. According to Rob Denny, program manager for the southern hemisphere who worked for 10 years on relief and development projects in Africa, OneWorld holds training sessions for partner organizations, explaining how to use the software and also how best to shape their information into solid journalism. Recent sessions were held in Zambia, Swaziland, Uganda and Namibia. "Our logic," says Denny, is that "we want better content and need the member organizations to get their information up on the Web."

For those who do not have direct access to the Web, OneWorld has devised other ways of getting the news out. In India, residents can dial a number and hear the news at one of the nation's 900,000 roadside phone booths. In Africa, stories are translated into regional languages, downloaded at central meeting points and distributed, off line, by photocopy. In one remote coastal village, for instance, the important stories are daily fish prices and weather, which affects when the farmers harvest crops. A local shopkeeper prints out the daily news from OneWorld and posts it on the door to his store. This public service generates goodwill and business, because of the number of people who come each day to read the "newspaper."

"The danger is that technology becomes an end in itself," said Miles Litvinoff, governance manager of the OneWorld International Foundation. "The important issue is how does it support disempowered people around the world?"

WorldLink TV

A film clip, clearly shot by a cameraman on the run, shows a tank grinding into a building. The body of a child is carried off on a makeshift stretcher, and children throw tomatoes at approaching soldiers; the sound of gunshots is too close for comfort.

International reporters were still barred from entering Jenin, the West Bank city, but at the headquarters of WorldLink TV in San Francisco, producers were busily preparing to broadcast news clips shot in streets and alleys of the besieged city and sent via satellite from a makeshift mobile studio.

The reports are part of "Mosaic," which allows the rest of the world a look at national news broadcasts from Arab countries and Israel; it is only a single element of WorldLink TV's ambitious programming schedule (available at www.worldlinktv.org), which includes an eclectic array of international news, special reports and documentaries, world music and live nation-to-nation call-in programs.

Four times every day, Deutsche Welle News Journal, broadcasting live from Berlin, gives international news and business reports from a European perspective. Hourlong programs from other sources bear titles like "Beyond the Veil" (a dialogue between two English teachers, one in Maryland and the other in Teheran); "Gap and Nike: No Sweat?" (an exposé of child labor in Cambodia); "River of Sand" (the desertification of West Africa), and "Calling the Ghosts" (Bosnian rape victims who pleaded their case before an international tribunal at The Hague).

WorldLink TV was started in 1999, with an annual budget of $3 million. It airs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and is carried by direct broadcast satellite systems as part of a Federal Communications Commission requirement for a 4 percent set-aside for noncommercial programming.

Kim Spencer, president and one of the founders of WorldLink TV, says surveys show that more than 1.3 million people watch at least one hour of its programming a week, and that audience is growing quickly. "The satellite services reach more than 18 million homes," he says.

The channel is run by television documentary producers, all of whom are committed to the belief that Americans are interested in global issues and do want to hear a variety of opinions. This conviction goes against the conventional wisdom that led commercial networks, prior to the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, to close most of their foreign bureaus and cut out virtually all foreign reportage.WorldLink's audience numbers soared after the attacks. "We had just launched a program called 'Arab Diaries,' and suddenly we were right on top of the news," Spencer says." Since then, some of WorldLink's programming has been made available free to PBS stations in second-tier markets, including those in Denver, Miami, Philadelphia, Spokane and Washington, D.C.

"This is a different kind of journalism, with an activist attitude," says Jack Willis, an Emmy-winning producer who worked for many years in public television and is cofounder of WorldLink TV. "I don't believe in objectivity--I think mainstream journalists hide behind that concept as a way to duck hard issues," Willis says. "What we do believe in is fairness and transparency."

In striving for fairness and transparency, news from 13 stations around the Middle East is aired on "Mosaic" 12 times every week. The programs are not edited. The two WorldLink producers, a veteran Israeli journalist and a Palestinian-American businessman, simply translate, when necessary.

"Ninety-five percent of what we air has never been seen in the United States," says Willis. "We bring together voices that aren't heard here."

The voices can be grating, as when Egyptian and Jordanian intellectuals speculated that American intelligence agencies planned the September 11 attacks or an imam in Syria called for violence against Americans and Jews--but that, says Willis, should not prevent the American public from hearing them. "It's important for us to know what others are seeing and hearing," he says.

WorldLink TV tests the limits of digital media, linking people in various parts of the world via phone cameras. In one 90-minute program, "Live to Tape," students from a San Francisco high school talked via satellite with Palestinian teenagers living in Jordan.

"We used the medium as a way to enable dialogue," says Stephen Olsson, one of the producers at WorldLink TV. "We got kids in San Francisco from various heritages--an Asian, a Latina, a Ukrainian and a Palestinian Jew. For them, it was a chance to talk about their perceptions of the Palestinians and of terrorism. For the Jordanians, it was a chance to talk about how they see America."

The station also aired a live trans-Atlantic discussion with women attending the Afghan Women's Summit in Belgium in December 2001. One woman, her eyes brightly shining from behind her chador, warned that reforms aren't enough. "We aren't hopeful about the results," she said. "Many people making this alliance are opposing the new government, women's rights, freedom and democracy."

Digitization allows long-distance, direct talk. For example, labor analysts in San Francisco spoke directly with activists and sweatshop workers during the World Social Forum in Brazil. Digitization has also cut the cost of producing programs. "One filmmaker came to me and wanted to go to Afghanistan to make a documentary on the plight of the women," Willis says. "She shot in Kabul, in refugee camps, and edited the film on a computer. The entire project cost $13,000 for a half-hour documentary. You could never have done that before digitization."

After three years of being on the air, the channel has 5,000 members, who contribute an average of $70 a year each. Operating costs, to date, are funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and foundations. Eventually, the channel hopes to become a provider of international programming for public television stations, which would pay for the material as they pay for programs like "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer" and "Live from Lincoln Center."

By consciously not accepting corporate sponsorship, the station has managed to avoid the pressure to avoid controversy. "We can air programs that others have sidestepped," Spencer notes. Nor does WorldLink have to worry about attracting high-profile urban audiences that corporate sponsors seek. "About 48 percent of our audience is rural," says Spencer. "They are getting news that they simply wouldn't get in their local papers, and they're hungry for it."

In general, Spencer says, WorldLink's audience is highly engaged. On a weekly show aired simultaneously in the Middle East by Abu Dhabi TV as well as in the United States, Dr. James Zogby, a news commentator and president of the Arab American Institute in Washington, D.C., fields live calls from viewers in the Middle East and the United States. "I'm consistently impressed with the level of interest and knowledge," Spencer says, noting that often the callers are themselves experts.

Professionals--teachers, journalists, medical practitioners--use the programs as source material for their work. "I am a federal agent in the Border Patrol," one viewer e-mailed. "I encourage my other agents to watch [a program called "Karachi Kops"] to help them understand why some illegal aliens are so terrified of the Border Patrol. They think that the Border Patrol is going to behave in the same way the police forces of their countries behave and are rightfully frightened."

After watching "Donka Hospital," the portrait of a public hospital in the Republic of Guinea, an American physician wrote: "As we go through the pains of shrinking resources and budgets to provide for a growing coastal rural community in Maine, it's important to gain the perspective that this fine documentary provides."

Not all WorldLink's programming is so serious. Young viewers, who have in recent years turned away from public broadcasting stations, are attracted by WorldLink's music videos and documentaries on music-a global juke box/symphony space/satellite radio all rolled into one, presenting the likes of Baaba Maal of Senegal; two Louisiana musicians, Marc and Ann, dedicated to preserving Cajun music; and Belle mou Messoud, the consummate singer of North African raï. "I like the music, and even though I don't understand what they are saying, I like to look at the way people are dressed, the type of instruments they play," wrote one fan. "They are the only videos I watch now. No more MTV.