conor pope blogs over on the Irish Times ‘cassette death’ & I comment

long live the compact cassette (CC). while curry’s may not stock it. the glut of journalist interviews recorded via CC over the decades are still on those treasured tapes in bank vaults. think of the student (Jim Duffy) that taped Brian Lenihan Snr. that led to his fall from grace over calls to the Áras on the night a Govt. fell. Bugging scandals, radio airchecks, family sing songs, or taping Top of the Pops in a not so quite living room, all on CC somewhere. I have boxes & bag of tapes.

Alternatively I have struggled to hold archive MP3 files from hard disk to CD to website from job to job. Just because its digital does not make it all so easy. And while I do have early 1997 MP3s I can still say what is contained on a knackerd C60 AGFA from ‘83 by looking at the defacement of the cover of side B with total recall.

Its sad to see them go out of general use. But they will live on far longer than the 5.25 inch floppy disk.

Nearly 80 years ago, from a wooden hut that largely resembled a garden shed, the first ever commentary of a league football match was broadcast. 22/1/1927

20 years prior to that, radio got its first voice. Reginald Fessenden broadcast voice messages and a sound recording of ‘o holy night’ on violin to ships in the Atlantic 24/12/1906.

Now (nearly) everyone has a personal mobile phone, mp3 players, camcorders or phones that do all 3 and more. With the internet we have a channel to broadcast on, with storage for demand radio on demand, with rss and http to podcast. Now everyone can become a Peig Cunningham and their life can be recorded like Truman Burbank.

TV was better when we had 4 channels? so all the extra noise tries harder and harder to make a living off a decreasing audience share. Audience’s are bombarded with choice without the social skills or technology tools to wade thought the rubbish and find the gems.

We need new commentators, network independent, content source independent, like content analysts in differing vertical markets of content/subject/genre. Unlike politicians we elect, we need people we can trust.

While digg & youtube and others allow vote counting and hat tipping we need pillars of choice. We have content over supply with audience under supply to that content, unless there is a data recession we need a choice revolution that will see choice move away from company executives and towards content experts. Now more than ever we need those Gary Bushell types of tv critique. will you pay for it? We need new commentators.
furthermore