Going Visual: Video, Radio, and the Web

Richard Campbell – Author, Media and Culture

You can see more video on a radio station’s Web site than you can see in the 22- or 20-minute broadcast on the local TV stations.

Thom Calahan – General Manager Radio Division, Associated Press

If you’re a radio station that’s being besieged by iPods, by all sorts of entertainment options, you have to carve out something that will be universal for them, for your audience to remain your audience. We find the Web is an excellent venue for that. I think it allows people to connect on a different level with a radio station or a television station, for that matter. I mean, the medium is not so much important as what you’re trying to communicate.

[BACKGROUND VOICES]

We offer a loan right here on this service, over 50 videos a day that are shot just for the Web. Click it on and it launches the, what we call our online video network player, hosted by Microsoft. As you can see, there’s an ad running. That’s what pays for the service. And as soon as this is finished, we will launch into a series of videos. And as you can see, AP online video network. So this is an example of a converged media. The radio station Web site utilizing AP video to produce a more rich, robust environment for their audience.

The typical AP reporter of two years ago had their pad and they recorded stories and that type of thing. And they were writing it for one medium, newspaper. Well, now with everything going on in the world and the convergence, you have to be cross-trained.

[BACKGROUND VOICES]

If I’m a journalist just entering this industry, I want my video, my photo shoot, my story to be seen and heard on as many platforms as possible and in as many ways as possible because I wrote it. I produced it. I filmed it. I shot it. The Internet and our applications of it opens that up to a whole new way of viewing and absorbing information in the future. We feel that our next wave of journalists will come from the very people watching this video right now. To aspire to a role in journalism and to aspire to a career in journalism is probably one of the greatest assets of the United States and indeed a free world. If you are interested in this industry, it’s an exciting time to be in it. 

Bedford/St. Martin's Video Transcript