Craig likes to go on about the need for actual, live broadcast. And one of the
recurring examples is news, another is sports.
Let's take sports first. I suppose that the reason actually "live" sports
coverage is demanded, by sports fans, is that they don't want anyone or
anything to be able to give them the outcome of any play, let alone the score
of a game, before they get to see it. Okay, I'll buy that excuse. So, "live" is
truly needed in sports. Anything else?
Take any news program, be it local or national, and be it a half hour newscast
or a 24 hour news station. Is "live" broadcast needed? I'd suggest no, not a
bit.
News programs are almost always, if not always, a mix of last minute content
and recycled stories. My claim is, if these news shows are distributed to the
CDN server network of a TV network, then each individual story can be updated
as needed.
So for instance, let's say some people prefer the carefully assembled 30-minute
format, rather than individual stories. No problem. Someone wanting to see a
half-hour news program calls it up on demand, at any time of day, and he will
be given the latest breaking items as well as a mix of older material, to fill
up 30 minutes of playback time. I do not think that this is a huge technical
challenge. The individual clips in the 30-minute show can be updated via
satellite, to the CDN's servers, replacing only those news items (clips) that
need to be updated. The rest stay as is. The 30 minute time frame doesn't even
need to be super precise, because there isn't any other "live" stream likely to
conflict with the schedule.
Plenty of 24 hour news "channels" already do something approaching this. They
have both individual stories, and the "live stream," on their web site. My
contention being, even that "live stream" doesn't really need to be live. The
viewer should be able to have the same experience as if watching the
by-appointment "live stream," but at any time of his choosing, and always
getting the very latest news.
Bert
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