Beyond Broadcast Notes: Panel II: What Emerging Participatory Web Media Services are Doing

Moderator: Peter Armstrong of oneworld.net; participants Skip Pizzi (Microsoft, and Radio World Magazine), Paul Jones (ibiblio)

Armstrong began by arguing, persuasively, that the BBC’s content initiatives (The Creative Future) is less a dialogue with the audience and more of a continuation of audience interaction that the BBC has offered before. Armstrong says that’s because the BBC’s imperative is to preserve its brand, and so a walled-garden remains.

Can public media use common spaces like YouTube or MySpace for video and other content, rather than creating their own? Would it make more sense, from an aggregation point of view, to pick a small number of platforms and tag to them?

Paul Jones explained ibiblio’s digital archiving, it’s multi-language services, as well as a project to improve BitTorrent to make it more friendly to public broadcasters and others who want to post content permanently.

Skip Pizzi noted that the digital revolution makes it easier to produce content but makes it more difficult to retain your audience. “That dilution is actually a good thing. It can be a true marketplace of ideas.