Imagine if talk radio shows had no hosts. Imagine that you would call into a local radio show, give your name and town and so on, and take a number and be given a time slot. You could then upload a 5 minute audio file to be played on that time slot, or talk live over the phone.
Imagine that we had a true democracy of speech like this. Where anyone who wanted a chance to speak to their fellow citizens in their community could do just that. Imagine also that people could vote on which people made the most sense and those 5 minute speeches would be promoted to the next levels: county, state and national. This would mean the PUBLIC would be choosing to share who THEY feel people need to hear from instead of who the ADVERTISERS of a radio show decide who the public should hear from.
Now take this idea to TV.
Imagine a system where the PUBLIC makes TV shows and everyone in their community can access these shows ON DEMAND through their cable provider. Viewers would then vote on which show they liked the best and they would be promoted to the county, state and national levels. Now imagine if HALF of all TV shows HAD to be educational. Imagine if you citizens educating other citizens for FREE. All of it being done by viewer’s choice and democracy.
Imagine creating this as a private enterprise and becoming a billionaire because everyone loves it and watches it/listens to it. Or losing your ass because no one wants it.
A society that does not distinguish between fact, crazed ramblings and propaganda? Your idea might work for entertainment, but education needs to be about the truth, not just a popularity contest.
It doesn’t work as entertainment, either, in that it doesn’t sound all that entertaining (it has a certain trainwreck value, true, but that will grow very old, very fast.)
erm… Youtube? it has quite a large amount of content and viewership rivaling that of broadcast tv. most are junk, some are educational, and a fraction of those are good. the popularity gauge needs some work, the ratio of “thumbs down” votes should be factored in. otherwise, in terms of creating content and choosing when and what you want to watch, it is better than broadcast tv and what the OP is describing already exists.
The governments we democratically elect must inevitably do some things that if we considered them in isolation, we wouldn’t like - taxation, for example.
Considered devoid of context, the answer to the question: “Do I want the government dipping in my pocket?” is a fairly obvious '“no”.
But the question “Do I want the government to fix the potholes in the street, etc?” is a “yes”.
It would be terribly easy, and extremely likely that highly granular democracy would just result in nothing useful being done, unless people took the trouble to work up the broad, long view and make decisions according to a strategy. Guess what? That’s a full time job - the job title is ‘politician’.
The system OP describes doesn’t seem too different than what we have now, with clicks on Youtube or channel changers substituting for explicit votes. OP specifies “no hosts,” but there would be charismatic Limbaugh imitators getting their 5 minutes. OP specifies that everyone gets their 5 minute speech. The few who tune into the channel at all are going to be taking frequent breaks whenever the first few seconds of a five-minute speech aren’t captivating.
Many people seem to think that our politics have become dysfunctional because the “people’s” views are ignored. I’m afraid the reality is rather the opposite.
As an aside, i kinda wish that my vote in tv watching practices didn’t go ignored. Not that i need anybody else farming me for data, but I can’t help but wonder if requirements for Nielsen boxes include a maximum IQ. I’d like to think that a true cross-section of America wouldn’t support the Jersey Shore/Real Housewives phenomena.
Or maybe that’s just my optimistically idealist view, idk.
Still, kinda sucks that the closest thing to un-spun journalism on tv are BBC News or Al-Jazeera intl., yet somehow FoxNews can get away with saying “fair and balanced.” Everytime i hear that, i throw up in my mouth a little. At least MSNBC doesn’t try to hide their slant.
I would like to see a show where our politicians interact with the public, sort of like Q&A in Australia or Question Time in the UK. C-SPAN just doesn’t cut it.
I politely disagree. Polls consistently show that this is not the case. The Beltway’s concerns don’t reflect the public’s concerns (e.g., job creation vs. immediate deficit reduction, taxes, military spending and healthcare issues). I think the problem is that we don’t have a check on Washington’s spin machine. The Press needs to serve that role, but they don’t. To quote Brad Delong, “Why oh why can’t we have a better press corps?” You really can’t fault the average Joe for being confused; not everyone has a college education and very few people can spare the time to parse through the shit from Fox News or CNN to figure out what’s right or wrong.
Ferengi, i agree with your assessment of the situation, but at the end of the day, the system of checks and balances falls to the voters. I’m amazed at how many incumbents get re-elected in this country.
I’m not sure how much of this is due to name recognition, and how much is due to apathy, but by-and-large, the candidate who spends the most on advertising wins. That’s a disturbing trend.
When i see a rash of mudslinging ads on tv, my cynical nature causes me to look more critically at the monkey flinging the most poo. I fear my response is in the vast minority, and i wonder how many even take the time to read the voter’s pamphlet, let alone the voting record.
And so, K street and Wall street carry more influence than Main street, John Q. Public drinks the kool-aid, and says “well, that coulda been worse, at least we had somebody there to stand up to that socialist ni–er”, and John Boehner gets re-elected.
Although, yes, the kool-aid should be labeled “contains artificial sweeteners”
Yeah, they have this thing where you can send in audio, video, or text files that can be played on demand. If people like what you have to say, then they tell their friends, and their friends watch or listen, sometimes millions of them.
We seem to agree that there is wide-spread ignorance due to propaganda … but then our diagnoses diverge. I’m not sure what “Beltway’s concerns” refers to. I think Congress is concerned with wealthy lobbyists and getting re-elected; i.e. they respond to Koch Brothers et al and ignorant voters like Joe Sixpack. Your inchoate dislike for “the Beltway” and “Washington’s spin machine” seems problematic.
I don’t “fault” the average voter for being confused. I wish there were a way to reduce the power of big-money propagandas and the race-is-to-the-shrillest phenomenon of Internet blogs. Campaign finance reform would help, but – thanks in part to the right-wing controlled SCOTUS – this is going in the wrong direction.
Finally, responding to the above quote, any voter trying to “parse through the shit from Fox News … to figure out” is starting from a mistaken premise.
