Webcasting Profile: Media Bureau Networks
The recent Republican and Democratic National Conventions attracted streaming media journalists like flies to honey. Streaming journalists share many basic goals with their more traditional television and radio brethren. But with the broadcast and cable networks saturated with stories about governmental policies and the political process, streaming journalists were compelled to conjure up different stories – or at least new ways of telling the same stories – to distinguish themselves from the old guard.
One other key difference became clear at the Democratic National Convention: Lacking big mainstream media names, streaming journalists often must make do with minimal access to resources. Few streaming news operations boast the pull of the likes of Pseudo.com, which covered the Republican National Convention from a coveted sky-box perch; others were left scrambling for broadband connections, floor space, and in-roads to luminary interviews.
Media Bureau Networks (MBN), a Philadelphia-based new media production and webcast company, was among the floor dwellers at the Democratic National Convention. In Philadelphia, MBN enjoyed home-court advantage and a relatively high-profile presence, offering live and on-demand streaming from an elaborate 10-by-20-foot set. Interviewees such as Steven Forbes and Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA) dropped by the MBN set for a chat. Having made its point in Philly, MBN scaled back with a leaner crew, smaller booth space, and mobile webcast package (see note) for the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. However, the realization came early that the splash of Philadelphia would be difficult to match.
In addition to offering urban-youth-oriented music programming on its own site, MBN (www.mediabureau.com) provides production and streaming services to third parties ranging from the Latino News Network (www.latnn.com to the American Association for Cancer Research. While the mandate for broadcast journalists is ultimately to attract viewers to the advertisements that pay the bills, MBN’s primary challenge in covering the conventions was to demonstrate its expertise in streaming to potential customers. In that endeavor, MBN ultimately succeeded. But the webcaster faced many hurdles to communicating its message.
Jumping Through Hoops to Stream
The MBN crew arrived at the Democratic National Convention to find that its booth space had shrunk from 10 by 10 feet to 10 by 6 feet – a tight squeeze for the three-camera shoots it had planned. And the POTS phone line to the MBN booth would limit any streaming to a trickle. Securing a bigger space and the high-speed connectivity needed to effectively stream its content on-site (streaming from a DSL line in a hotel room was a less-than-attractive option) immediately became the top priority.
While Meredith Waldman, MBN’s media relations director, scheduled interviews, MBN CEO Ben Barnett and his two-man crew spent much of their time jockeying for space and access to high-speed lines. That meant engaging in one of new media companies’ favorite pastimes: partnering. Proving that streaming, too, can make strange bedfellows, MBN’s first bite came from Insight.com – a strongly conservative magazine published by the Washington Times, and a far cry from the likes of The Dime Sack, MBN’s irreverent Internet hip-hop radio show. MBN agreed to provide Insight.com with a camera and crew to shoot video interviews in exchange for high-speed connectivity. Unfortunately, however, Insight.com was set up to stream Quicktime, while MBN works exclusively with the Real platform, leaving MBN still without a fat pipe through which to stream.
MBN’s fallback position was with LATNN.com, a Philadelphia-based organization with which MBN had previously worked. In exchange for use of LATNN.com’s larger booth space and T-l line (LATNN.com received the space and line free from the Democratic Party; MBN had to pay for its space and phone line), MBN shot video interviews with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus for streaming from the LATNN.com and MBN sites.
Having secured a place from which to operate, MBN turned its attention to creating the "content" it had come to stream. MBN was looking for content of interest to its urban-youth audience. Waldman noted, "There are four major issues that we decided we want to target: Internet taxation, Internet privacy, the digital divide, and the convergence of popular culture and online politics."
However, rounding up that content proved to be more difficult in Los Angeles than in Philadelphia. Where Republican media liaisons contacted MBN six weeks before the convention, the Democrats seemed to be saying, "You’re on your own." And while MBN’s flashy booth in Philly attracted the attention of media-hungry politicians, in Los Angeles, it was, "Media Bureau who?" What MBN managed to get was a smattering of interviews and a short mini-documentary on the demonstrations at the Rage Against the Machine concert outside the convention.
But this was not discouraging to MBN. As Barnett notes, "Our motive is to sell ourselves as a communications technology company as opposed to a content developer."
Like many other streaming media companies, MBN was out to be seen flexing its streaming media muscles. While a streaming media company has to have something to stream, and content is widely proclaimed to be king, in MBN’s case, the medium really was the message.
MBN’s mobile package included little more than the minimum amount of gear required to produce a live, three-camera webcast. In addition to the ubiquitous Canon XL-1 (with a 14x1 broadcast lens), the package included a Sony PV-1 (single-chip, Mini-DV) camera, a tiny lipstick camera (video output only; no recorder), a portable Videonics digital video mixer, and a Mackie 1202 audio mixer. Accessories included portable lights, a Sony GVD-900 portable DV playback deck, and a wireless Audio Technica audio transmitter (to keep the boom operator independent of the camera). MBN's streaming post-production "facility" was a Mac G4 with 1 gigabyte of RAM and equipped with Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere for editing. Return To Story