I got an email from the team behind BBC News 24’s Your News show during the week, asking if I’d record a contribution as part of a piece they’re planning about – guess what – Civil Serf. So here it is, as a Puffbox first-play exclusive.
Nothing you probably don’t know already, but hey – a bit of TV exposure, for the first time in ages. Eagle-eyed viewers may recognise the location for the filming, a deliberate choice obviously. (I say filming: more a case of propping my mobile phone up against the wall of the Foreign Office building.)
Responses
Simon well said. What irritates me about this (and it is no criticism of you) is that even Your News is ersatz. It wasn’t you deciding you wanted to film something and post it to the BBC – it was a team of producers chunking through the time honoured editorial process and approaching contributors. In this case they find the stories through blogs rather than press releases or diaries of political events. Of course had this story not made it into the national press would it have made it onto their editorial radar? It may have done, it may not.
I’m sure some of Your News is genuinely offered by the audience. Even so.
Again – though – just me griping about big media habits which are hard to break. Rant over.
Congrats again.
Yes, it did seem a bit odd to be asked to contribute to a ‘user-generated‘ show. But it comes back to a point I’ve made before about video: it takes bloody ages to do. So would I have found time in my day to record this, on the off-chance they fancied an item on Civil Serf? Unlikely. But since they asked, and since there’s a fair chance of it airing now, I wasn’t going to say no. Pragmatism, my friend. 🙂
I wouldn’t have expected you to say no. It is a measure of how hard crowd sourced media is – especially when it is run to old media deadlines which say we must have x amount of material on air at exactly x o’clock.
However my rant is a little off your point.
Getting a ‘video not available’ message from your embedded one in this post, Simon.
It’s playing OK for me, across multiple browsers… anyone else having problems? Or was YouTube just having a wobble?
Thanks to my wife, by the way, for pointing out how ridiculous I must have looked to the various passers-by, ostensibly talking to a wall.
oh the glamour of it all! very animated, as you need to be. glad you didn’t have an idiot in the background. passers by must be used to animated people talking to walls :} don’t completely agree, as you know, so can I be bovverred getting out the cameras and is the beeb going to seek out a different view? hmmm …
re: ‘crowd sourcing’ – didn’t channel four used to have a video box or some such in the olden days which anyone could walk in and use?
Didn’t make it on to this week’s show, due to a bunch of schoolkids, but I’m told they’re planning a longer item for next week’s edition. Can’t help feeling the story will have gone cold by then.
Good points well put. Suspect ‘she’ won’t be outed a la belle du jour or abby lee style but a small and important contribution to the evolution of the blogging medium. The more it becomes less geekery and more a viable communication channel the better… when my mother subscribes to a blog then I’ll know its gained critical mass.
Significant amount of people ignoring that strange man talking to the wall – apathetic Londoners? Video played ok but had to pause for streaming a few times.