Time is ripe for an alternative tv network on the internet?

[dumpster_baby]

A poster named "troutfishing" on a current metafilter.com thread just made some great comments on how this presidential campaign and the events of the past 3 years have made this a special moment in time, where America is ripe for the creation of an alternative media movement based on tbe internet and perhaps using p2p networks to distribute grassroots tv news. Here are some of his comments:
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Hypothesis : There may never again be a better time than now, the summer of 2004 leading towards the 2004 Presidential Election - for all who create alternative media, and those public watchdog groups seeking to restore impartiality to a now severely compromised mainstream media - to come together to fashion an institutional counterforce/s to the major media networks - higher profile, better funded ventures leveraged (as with the creation of CNN) by - initially - volunteer/intern/low-paid talent, aided by newly available internet tools and technologies, and guided by disaffected media industry insiders seeking to reform their compromised profession.


Why? Revelations concerning the Bush Administration's numerous deceptions in justifying the invasion of Iraq, damaging testimony from the September 11 Commission, the recent and upcoming release of numerous recent documentaries challenging the official accounts told by government and mainstream media....all of these have converged in a "perfect storm" aided by a grimly fought inside the beltway power struggle, of career insiders appalled by Bush Administration actions, to ensure that George W. Bush is not reelected in November 2004.

...

For those of us who have learned to distrust the objectivity of mainstream media, this shift in American views - on the US occupation of (now nominally sovereign) Iraq and the "War on Terror" - is gratifying, an apparent lifting of an American trance which had settled in long before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and which was colored afterwards also by a paralytic and inchoate fear. The trance, for a bit now, lifts. A little fresh air blows in.

...


But, if George W. Bush is reelected in 2004, this coalition of forces may not hold together and if John Kerry is elected as the new US president, it certainly will not hold. If Kerry wins, a sort of balance will have been restored - a "moderate" balance in an overall equation which will unlikely address any of the fundamental un-addressed trends which now characterize America and threaten the World overall : regardless of John Kerry's true agenda, mainstream media, expressly right-wing media, and the right wing constellation of Washington think tanks and other such forces will tie Kerry's ability to enact meaningful change - as during the Clinton Era.
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more here:

http://metafilter.com/mefi/36022

An explanation of how such an alternative tv network might work:
http://www.hyperreal.org/~mpesce/fbm.html

[nickgutierrez]

1. A good concept

It very well could work, but I have no clue how much it would cost to run something like this, how willing contributors would be, who the contributors would be, etc.

I also confess to not having much of an idea about what this network would be, but it shouldn't be too hard to get that to work itself out.

[Tace]

2. World News Trust -- Just Such An Independent Media Collaboration

http://worldnewstrust.blogspot.com/

The election has passed. But the opportunity is here. Cheers, Tad Goodwin

[PROGRESSIVE1]

3. A great alternative!

[Tace]

4. Shameless Kick

[papau]

5. The Saturday morning kick :-)

:-)