roundtable: Is the problem content production or access to carriage?

roundtable: Is the problem content production or access to carriage?

Is the problem content production or access to carriage?

Michael Chui (mchui@cs.indiana.edu)
Sun, 27 Mar 1994 22:32:46 -0500 

Message-Id: <9403280332.AA24121@a.cni.org>
To: roundtable@cni.org
Subject: Is the problem content production or access to carriage?
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 27 Mar 1994 19:21:47 EST."
             <Pine.3.85.9403271343.A6186-0100000@idi.net> 
Date: Sun, 27 Mar 1994 22:32:46 -0500
From: Michael Chui <mchui@cs.indiana.edu>

"Samuel A. Simon" <ssimon@idi.net> writes:
> 
>I think the biggest challenge is to 
>get real money to real nonprofits so they have the material to put on 
>the network that people will use and need. As we move to a digital 
>environment, capacity is not going to be the problem it has been in 
>cable or traditional television; what is necessary is good , high 
>production content and means of promoting the availabilitiy of that 
>materials.

     While it's certainly true that non-profits are usually struggling
to raise funds, could you say more about why you believe the production
of high-quality content is likely to be a greater problem than obtaining
access to carriage?  From a technical and economic standpoint, it seems
to me that the means of producing high quality content have been become
increasingly available with advances in digital technology - witness
low-cost "Rodney KingCamcorders," digital audio/video editing equipment
like Video Toasters and morphing software, $500 gigabyte disk drives,
free WorldWideWeb editing/server software, etc.  However, there appears
to be real business incentive for carriers to develop "vertical 
monopolies" from content production to delivery, denying access to 
potential information providers.  It is pretty much technically and 
economically feasible for a non-profit to build a "basement video 
server," but no bidirectional point-to-point digital network exists to 
deliver the service.  I agree that non-profit funding is an important 
problem, but vis-a-vis the digital media, it seems like the more 
pressing public policy issue might be access to carriage, rather than 
funding content production (ignoring, for the moment, the previously 
discussed difficulties in prioritizing content for funding).

Michael Chui
mchui@cs.indiana.edu

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