First, the “slow” movement came for your food and your beer. Now, it’s all about ‘slow TV.’
Yes, you read that right. The AP is experimenting with a live-streaming feature for breaking news and they’re calling it “slow streaming.” Don’t worry, that doesn’t mean you have to use dial-up to watch it, but that it’s just a stream of live action, no anchors, no producers clamoring for a hook, just the live-feed.
Video offerings will now be available on their Video Hub platform, which launched in 2012. Sue Brooks, director of international products and platforms at AP, told Journalism.co.uk that:
We’ve known for a few years now that broadcasters don’t own video anymore, and they certainly don’t own live video anymore. So we created an online delivery platform to get our video to customers like the big newspapers, who want to have a big video presence and increasing video presence, who want to use video to sell their story. Video becomes another tool in the storytelling tool box.
The vision is that when something big happens, you can open up the live feed and keep an eye on it. You can leave the commentary to your Twitter feed which is probably what you do already. No cable news situation rooms or pundits thinking outloud.
Brooks continues that:
It doesn’t need the brain power to absorb all the action, it doesn’t need explaining to you. You can just have it there, keep half an eye on it and keep working.
The AP has been working Bambuster to optimize the feeds, and according to the Journalism.co.uk report it’s a “higher quality than mobile can provide.”