Sitting in the dentist’s chair, enduring the agony of another teeth cleaning yesterday, I thought of the perfect use for the Google Fiber system coming to Raleigh.
I was being forced to watch Time Warner Cable’s News14 channel in front of me and thinking about how TWC’s local news model works. It didn’t take many minutes of watching the video (thankfully without audio, as the suction hose was often going) to realize how boilerplate it is. The TWC guys have an establishing shot, then zoom in on something dumb like police lights reflecting off the stolen car, then move on to another thing. It was obvious that the video doesn’t really tell the story – in fact, it is repetitive and dull. I could choose not to look up between rinses and feel like I didn’t really miss anything.
Then I thought about Capital Broadcasting, and how many broadcasters are able to do what they do because they ponied up decades ago for broadcast licenses and expensive studios. TWC didn’t have to compete for a license – they have all the bandwidth they need. They’re able to do what they do because most people’s television now gets routed through a coaxial cable. There is no need to build a transmitter anymore.
But TV habits are quickly changing, as I’ve written about before. People aren’t watching TV on TVs anymore. Increasingly, people watch their shows on devices, hooked to the Internet.
I thought about how Little Raleigh Radio tries harder to tell the story of Raleigh. I read earlier yesterday how Google Fiber gives free broadband to community organizations. There’s an opportunity here!
To be continued…