The days of fully digital, high definition, high bandwidth television broadcast are almost here. I'm sure soon dish tv, sattelite tv and local high speed cable companies will have the ability to "host" thousands of channels on their networks. Many have dreamed of being a TV star. This is your shot. For, say, $1,000, you can have your own TV channel for a month. Just like a website, you determine content, advertising, etc. It's made available to anyone who requests the service for a modest $5 a month fee. Viewers have access to thousands of local and nationwide private stations run by folks like you or me. Stations are organized by subject and can even be found via a "search engine" style web-tv device. Because it's not broadcast over the airwaves and only available to subscribers, content wouldn't need to be regulated by the FCC. You could just set up a camera in your home to film day to day life, run the same single episode of your own TV show all day and night or even run a live news broadcast. Have a need for an all-local documentary station? Make it yourself. And for all you naysayers....the internet has thrived on this basic principal. It's time for television to go fully public as well. Regular programming could occupy the "public" channels, say 1 to 150. Public programming could occupy the "private" channels 151 to 2,151. Who knows...if the company really likes your show they could move it into the standard set of channels. It would be a gold mine for any local provider...I'm sure there are at least a thousand people in every community who would drop the $1,000 for a station of their own each month. That's $1 million in revenue each month at a conservative level. To stop other "real" stations from abusing this service and avoiding paying for their access, cable and sattelite companies could selectively limit a station who's income exceeds a certain level that would classify it as "standard" programming. Some of us would use this for just month, some would set up their own little stations. Some would do it for fun, others for a serious purpose. The only thing holding it back it the ability to broadcast the massive amount of data involved. Once that is realized, this could be a viable idea.-- rcornell, Mar 10 2001 The other thing holding this back is finding enough content.
Most of us can create or link enough html content to create an web page that's interesting for 15 minutes to an hour. Few of us can create enough video content to be interesting for more than an hour or so.
If you want to have a soundtrack or long video quotes or heavens forbid play 30's re-runs, you're going to run into a problem. The current licensing structure for music and video assumes that you are a megacorp with a houseful of lawyers and a lot of cash. I think we'll need some sort of micropayment scheme if this is going to fly.-- tenhand, Mar 13 2001 As far as public broadcast of music and tv shows, I'm not sure if this is illegal or not. If you are not profitting from it (i.e. selling advertising) I don't think there is anything against the law when it comes to playing music or video. The only exception would be sporting events that prohibit the "rebroadcast in any form without expressed written consent."-- rcornell, Mar 21 2001 rcornell, if you REALLY knew me, you'd pray to God that I don't get my own TV show-- AfroAssault, Jun 01 2001 This idea brings me to ask, why isn't this being done with webcams, where people could make a tv "station" and "tv shows" as they wish?-- pashute, Nov 10 2002 You mean, make a webcam available for a fee on television? We already have it on the internet. And did you think about the fact that it would quickly become strictly pornographic in nature?-- Ravenium, Oct 12 2003 Seems like another of my ideas came true. http://www.youtube.com-- rcornell, Jun 18 2007 random, halfbakery