TV Disintermediated

I imagine Anne Eisenberg's article in the NY Times today brought a smile to Steve Garfield's face. She writes about the phenomenon of video enabled cell phone owners using Kyte and Qik to live stream events unfolding in front of them.

Steve has been using Qik for a while now, as you can see on his Qik page. So there's no question that the technology works, and there's no question what a blogger like Steve wants to do with it. The question the article raises is what it means for old media organizations.

Eisenberg's article mentions KCRW's live Democratic Convention coverage, which they streamed through Kyte. She quotes KCRW's Director of New Media, Anil Dewan saying that the station's 67 convention clips got over 124,000 views. An average of 1850 views apiece, which is not bad going. And perhaps most exciting is that those KCRW viewers were watching life unfold in real time without any editorial intervention from the station.

Kudos to KCRW for having a plan and carrying it out.

But a word of warning. I'm sure news organizations will read this article and jump right into what Beth Kanter would call "shiny object" mode. That's when you buy the technology without having a plan about how you're going to use it. Like anything else this needs a plan. It also needs some goals and some thought about how it's done and who's going to do it.

Start by getting those pieces in place. Then order the shiny objects. Just my two cents.