Should Local TV Embrace Consumer-Created Content?

SHOULD LOCAL TV EMBRACE CONSUMER-CREATED CONTENT?
[SOURCE: AdAge, AUTHOR: Hoag Levins]
Local TV stations are missing a revolutionary opportunity by not buying into the consumer-created video-content craze, media analyst Tom Wolzien told last week's Television Bureau of Advertising conference. In his address to the annual marketing gathering, Mr. Wolzien emphasized the potential power of online business models organized around the use of amateur-generated video. He also asked, "Can consumer-created content posted by amateurs actually remain consumer-created content posted by amateurs? Or, if people start to realize that somebody's making money off of this, will the amateurs suddenly become people formerly known as amateurs?" That fact and the availability of low-cost, high-quality video cameras play heavily in Mr. Wolzien's vision for local TV stations as major players in the consumer-created content field. "There is the potential here to create the greatest local video-collection system ever known by using people with their cheap cameras ... Then moving that content through the Web -- with the best material going on to broadcast stations and the broadcast networks," he said. "It's surprising to me that so far nobody has built a system where they go into the middle schools and high schools to give cameras and cut deals to get the content out," he said. "They go to church groups and other types of civic organizations to build an infrastructure for video collection on a formalized basis." "The local broadcast industry has that capability," he said.
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