Calif TV station fires news staff and moves to "common carrier" model of broadcast
Poynter Online - Romenesko
Clear Channel KFTY-TV is looking to community people, including college kids, indy filmmakers, film professors and government officials to provide content as it fires all of its "news" employees. The management notes that while the focus of its coverage will change, there are many other outlets to get local information (maybe the online version of the KFTY's operation. I remember broadcasting visionary Harry Skornia, also one of "Murrow's Boys" and good friend of Marshall McLuhan telling us (in an intro broadcast class) about a model for broadcasting wherein the people that operated the pipes (let's not confuse that with tubes...) should NOT also control the content of broadcast. This is the common carrier model like the telephone system (at least as it used to be) and like trucks on the highway.
So, maybe Harry was just really ahead of his time, and we needed technology to open up many, many channels before people would adopt a more egalitarian idea about who can produce content and thus be gatekeeper.
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