[Rfu-barnraising] Re: {leti} Re: the automation question

[Andrew Ó Baoill]

As I mentioned to Sascha off-list, I hadn't realized that the  
streaming issue would be raised again at last night's meeting. We had  
decided, a few weeks ago, to leave the issue of streaming to one side  
until after the barnraising - reflecting also my understanding of  
WRFU's current position - so I didn't realize it would be back on the  
agenda. [My apologies, by the way, for my absence - my students  
wanted their grades, and they wanted them NOW!] I've dropped leti  
from the extensive cc: list, as this is more of an non-techie  
internal discussion.

The WEFT case I quoted was an analysis of WEFT's decision to increase  
power, serving a larger area, so as I said it is not completely  
analogous, but some of the same arguments can be raised. The Bekken  
article, which I recommend to anyone interested in community media,  
is available online at:
http://www.infoshop.org/texts/seizing/bekken.html

My concerns with streaming are multiple, though not necessarily  
absolute, and go to the issue of what the role of a community station  
is, something on which reasonable people can differ, and how  
structures will impact content, a possible topic for many  
dissertations ;-).

Further, however, there's the question of who should decide whether  
WRFU will be a streaming operation - Prometheus staff, the  
Barnraising ad hoc group, CUWiN, or WRFU itself. To say that we'll  
set up streaming at the Barnraising and "see what happens down the  
road" seems a rather strong impingement on WRFU's autonomy and self- 
determination, though I fully realize it is not intended as such.

I'm open to persuasion on the issue of streaming, but want to make  
sure the decision is made 'right way around.' Purely on a practical  
basis, given our current funding situation, I don't think it's  
something we should embark on now.

Oh, and I'll definitely take Sascha up on that offer of grabbing a  
beer to talk these things over! :-)

Andrew

On 27 DFómh 2005, at 16:44, Sascha Meinrath wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Andrew and I should go grab a beer so I can get a better feel for  
> his concerns; but I and other folks are definitely interested in  
> setting up streaming.  I'm not sure I buy that streaming would  
> necessarily negatively impact the quality and/or community  
> grounding of the station -- at WEFT, we streamed for quite some  
> time and only stopped because the price increased.  I haven't heard  
> of any negative repercussions from streaming, and unless someone  
> can make the case the WRFU would be differentially impacted, I  
> think WEFT provides us with a fairly good (local) precedent.  Also,  
> just so it's noted somewhere, we decided at last night's  
> Barnraising meeting to do streaming during the Barnraising, that  
> part of things is a go.
>
> Either way, I think there's a core group of folks who would be very  
> interested in learning about streaming and how to set this sort of  
> system up -- so we should definitely do that.  Long-term, it could  
> be that WRFU decides not to stream their signal; however, other  
> stations (such as WEFT) may be interested and this is an  
> opportunity to demonstrate how this works.  Since we already have a  
> server infrastructure available through the IMC, I think it makes  
> all the sense in the world for us to set this up for the  
> Barnraising and see what happens down the road.
>
> --Sascha

--
Andrew Ó Baoill
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Inst. of Communications Research, U. of Illinois
Communications / Participatory media / Political action
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andrew at funferal.org / baoillo at uiuc.edu
aim: funferal at mac.com
+353-87-241-7003 / +1-(217) 384-3142
http://funferal.org / Galway, Ireland / Urbana, IL, USA