Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Netflix for reaching the People
Via doc, via Lessig:- Greenwald’s style for distributing documentaries may be the beginning of something new — political criticism, using interviews and clips, making a strong political point, distributed through DVDs and political action groups.
Consider the costs - rumor has it that netflix gets charged about 70 cents per movie (round-trip) it distributes via dvd. Consider the cost of manufacture of a CD with 5 minutes of video clips as 5 cents, or a dvd as a buck.... call it two bucks a pop. Say you want to get your message out, unaltered by the media magnet's conciousness-stream - for 100k you could distribute a pep talk video to 50,000 groups on dvd (to be shared - multiple times!, reburned, and distributed back into the streets) - far less than what it would cost for a single ad on nationwide prime-time-tv - which voters aren't watching much these days anyway....
Ah... bypassing the fifth estate to get the message out. I long for the death of the 30 second sound bite and for actual discussion of the issues - how many people would view entire speeches of their favorite (and also, most hated) political candidates, if mailed to their door?
I would. Well, at least once. ¶ 10:31 PM
