Copenhagen 24/7: An interactive TV livestream launched
OneClimate.net has launched a new interactive TV channel that allows people across the world to watch the Copenhagen climate conference live on their computer. The channel will feature breaking stories, an opportunity to interact with experts, as also crowd-sourced and crowd-distribution system to ease out participation from people worldwide.
The pioneering internet channel initiative has already attracted powerful global media supporters, including Skype, Justin.TV, The Guardian online, LinkTV, Yahoo! News, New American Media and Al Gore's Current TV. So what's so special about this channel?
- Logo of OneWorld TV/ Photo credit: OneWorld
“Two things,” says Anuradha Vittachi, founder of OneClimate.net, the campaigning action hub behind the new channel.
“The first is that our viewers won't just be watching the conference passively. They won't be couch potatoes. People around the world will be quizzing hand-picked climate analysts who can and will tell us what's really going on behind closed doors - who will give us straight answers, without jargon, about what the politicians' daily decisions will actually mean to people's real lives.”
“That includes the impact of their decisions on people in the global south who are already being hit grievously by climate change,” says Peter Armstrong, the BAFTA-winning originator and executive producer of the live internet channel.
“Copenhagen 24/7 will provide everyone with a free pass right to the heart of the conference. And that applies to the tens of thousands of people planning to come to Copenhagen who will find it difficult to get close to the central debates, as well as to the people who elect to stay at home, saving carbon, cash and themselves from the Copenhagen cold.”
The second unusual feature of OneClimate.net's livestream is that it has held back on broadcasting its own material, and instead opened up almost the whole of its schedule to distributing the best content from multiple sources – all day, every day. OneClimate.net has always been in the business of producing free digital spaces and tools for amplifying the voices of thousands of climate action groups around the world, and its new interactive TV channel is based on the same philosophy.
The result of this openness is that the new channel has rapidly attracted a range of partners from all over the world with compelling content: from political analysis by the most influential international NGO coalitions like the Climate Action Network, TCKTCKTCK and 350.org, to satirical content like the 'Fossil of the Day' and 'Ray of the Day' – which give the thumbs down or up each evening to the nations that have been least and most constructive in that day's negotiations – or the fun-serious 'Stupid Show', modeled on Jon Stewart's 'The Daily Show'.
In brief, viewers will be offered three kinds of content:
Breaking stories: from the press conferences to the protests, hour by hour, all day, every day, as the summit unfolds
The lowdown: a free 'virtual pass' to interact with experts bringing jargon-free analysis of each day's negotiations and their significance
Crowd-sourced video: the best pre-recorded content from the frontline of climate change - sometimes poignant, sometime satirical
This unique combination of powerful distributors, promoters and content-providers means that OneClimate's Copenhagen channel is expected to reach millions of people worldwide.
But perhaps the new channel's most unusual feature of all lies in the way it is being distributed. Although audiences can watch it on www.oneclimate.net/copenhagen and on all the media sites to which the livestream is being officially syndicated, they can also see it on their best friend's blog. The livestream's content is not just crowd-sourced but crowd-distributed.
“Everyone is welcome to embed the livestream in their own website or blog for free,” says Peter Armstrong. “We've produced this livestream collaboratively, by pulling together the best content from everyone, and it makes simple sense to us that the combined result should also be made available to everyone to use.”
“Indeed, we hope everyone will ripple this knowledge out further and further by passing it on to their friends and colleagues,” adds Anuradha Vittachi, “so that everyone, everywhere, can take informed action. OneClimate's livestream is interactive, crowd-sourced and crowd-distributed. This is people's media playing its part in tackling climate change: climate media by the people, for the people.”
