Fox Chicago has just launched a site called
LiveNewsCameras.com, which has streams of more than 50 stations around the country.
I sent some questions to my old friend
Andrew Finlayson, the station's news director. Andrew has always been
a creative guy who surrounds himself with creative people. He has
served as visiting faculty with us here at Poynter.
Read how his team put together this site
using existing codes, $60 in parts from RadioShack and some other stuff lying around the newsroom.
Tompkins: Tell me, why you are launching LiveNewsCameras.com?
Finlayson:
News is live and news today can be video on the Internet. We wanted to
give people access to unedited, live feeds from news events around the
country. Our general manager Patrick Mullen challenged us to come up
with this concept about a year ago. The first version demanded so much
computing power that we thought smoke would come out of the computers
we tried it on. Now we've worked to make it live, fast, and
high-quality, but low-demand and easy to navigate. We still have a way
to go but the reaction today from around the country has been very
encouraging.
Tompkins: I see that you have a "live moderator." What is that person's function?
Finlayson:
We felt that a static page, even one that was constantly updating
images and text, would not satisfy the need for users to learn quickly
what was happening around the country. Our moderator is talking to all
of the partner stations and can be a guide to what is currently being
streamed. (Tuesday) morning they were talking to New York about the living
streaming of the Giants parade. This proved to be very popular with
ex-New Yorkers nationwide. We are talking right now to all the stations
that are streaming live election coverage. The moderators are also
answering questions, which we felt was important since no national
network that we know of has a live person on camera. It is also a form
of accountability.
Some of our sister stations have volunteered to moderate so soon we will have coverage around the clock for big news events.
Tompkins: Where will all of the signals come from?
Finlayson: We
are currently working with Fox O&O (owned and operated) stations.
They understand the importance of streaming. Stations like New York, LA
and Houston have all done Web-only broadcasts that we can now feature.
We want to link to others who stream live news. Tonight we are
dedicating an encoder to a camera at the Obama rally. While other
networks have satellite trucks parked back to back for brief live
shots, we are going to stream a live feed for anyone to watch all
evening long.
Tompkins: How in the world did you do this?
Finlayson: So
far our cash out of pocket has been about $60. We registered the name,
bought a microphone from Radio Shack and used a consumer-grade video
camera we had already. Everything else we found online or coded. Mr.
Mullen believed in this idea, kept encouraging us and telling us not to
give up, which always helps. We also have an incredibly smart Web site
manager who lost a lot of sleep. We pitched this idea about three weeks
ago and he told us to get it up for Super Tuesday.
The
moderators are all on our staff, a Web site producer, a production
assistant who has a very bright future and some very talented freelance
writers and reporters who volunteered to try this.
Tompkins: What do you see as the future of this idea?
Finlayson: We
would like to make it load more quickly. This is a true beta but with a
little polish and the continued growth in the number of the streams,
we'd like LiveNewsCameras.com be the place the world turns to for
streaming video of any important news, weather or live event.
