BlogWhy RSS Matters for PEG Access TV
Just a quick word on why RSS (Really Simple Syndication) really matters for PEG access TV centers that are posting (or thinking about posting) their video online.
RSS feeds allow Internet video players (like Democracy) to subscribe to and deliver an access centers’ video to viewers on-demand. This is important because it provides a fairly easy distribution platform (and free as in Democracy: Internet TV) for PEG access TV centers looking to reach an audience on the web. This is also important for people like me who would like to have an easy way to find more access centers’ videos on the web.
I like Democracy because it provides a great way to search, find, and watch PEG access TV videos from centers like WCCA TV and CCTV right alongside other popular programs like NBC Meet the Press with Tim Russert. This is all made possible because these shows have made their RSS feeds available for subscribing to and watching via Internet video platforms like Democracy.
So if you’re at a PEG access TV center that is posting video on the web, please be sure to create an RSS feed for your online video so people (like me) can subscribe to them. If you don’t know how to create an RSS feed for your online video there are plenty of options. I would recommend visiting the “Publish Video” page on the Make Internet TV website. That’s a great place to start.
Posted in Community Media, Internet, PEGTV, Public Access TV, Video Distribution |
June 13th, 2007 at 11:55 am
[...] Colin Rhinesmith blogged today about why video RSS matters for public access television stations: Why RSS Matters for PEG Access TV [...]
June 13th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
[...] the “Publish Video†page on the Make Internet TV website. That’s a great place to start. http://cmediachange.net/blog/2007/06/13/why-rss-matters-for-peg-access-tv/ [...]
June 14th, 2007 at 5:00 am
I am wondering when you are a PEG Access Center and you are creating your Democracy Feed - is that feed generated from the inside out or the outside in?
“Inside Out” would be an RSS feed that came directly off of one user account in a program like Blip.tv and then that is fed into Democracy. This works well because this can coordinate content with digital server playback on a TV channel. Also, it provides some moderation.
“Outside In” would be using an agreed upon tag by the community in order to generate the feed for Democracy. Then both the station and other users could use Blip, Revver, You Tube or whatever and the use of a single tag would generate the community feed. This is more collaborative, provides less ability to moderate and presents some challenges for transferring the content from the feed to the cable channel.
I am sure there are lots of variations, too.
June 14th, 2007 at 9:47 am
Jason, great points.
Here’s how I see it, building upon the previous PEG Space discussion found here: http://pegspace.org/forum/tagging_conventions
Ideally, (if I am understanding correctly) I would think that a PEG access center would want to do both:
1. “inside out” - PEG access centers would create a tag specifically for their access center. For example CCTV in Cambridge would use “cctvcambridge”
2. “outside in” - all PEG access Centers might also tag their videos with “pegtv”.
This way there would be the option to have both “show” pages in Democracy, blip.tv (where ever) and then a PEG access TV wide tag = pegtv for an aggregator to pick up all access videos.
See also the discussion at WCCATV here: http://www.wccatv.com/node/926
June 14th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
[...] Community Media in Transition » Blog Archive » Why RSS Matters for PEG Access TV (tags: rss tv democracy media digital-video) [...]
June 22nd, 2007 at 5:39 pm
[...] Daniels set up a wiki as a place for Public Access TV stations to add their RSS feeds. See an earlier post on why this [...]
July 6th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
[...] things about RSS feeds struck me as interesting as I surfed the Web. One is a post written by Colin Rhinesmith of Community Media in Transition about the importance of RSS Feeds, in [...]