This column published May 2, 2010 in The Davis Enterprise, http://davisenterprise.net. Hometown media are rare, and Davis has many. I think that says a lot about our community. I've written about community media and media policy for The Enterprise since Feb. 1996 and thank them for an enduring partnership and years of coverage.
By Autumn Labbé-Renault
There are thousands of hours of social-interest content being produced each day at community media centers across the country, but this content has been disproportionately absent from new media platforms such as YouTube. Challenged by dwindling funding, detrimental legislation and constantly changing technology, these typically small non-profit centers have had difficulty adapting to the significant workflow required to upload and manage large quantities of video online.
Media demographics have shifted significantly over the years. People still watch TV (consider Comcast, AT&T and Dish Network all vying for their market share), but a growing audience asks our staff at Davis Media Access (DMA) ‘’Why can’t you put this content online?” Until now, the tools available to us required encoding and uploading to outside video file sharing hosts and consumed large amounts of staff time. We’ve been uploading some content, but we’ve been limited.
All that is now changing. I’m proud to announce DMA has completed Phase 1 of our participation in the Open Media Project with the launch of a new video-sharing website for Davis Community Television (DCTV).