Think of a television studio. Got the picture? Tall ceiling, shadowy cameras on meaty tripods, hot lights, phony sets, suits, hairspray and anchors aging with more foundation than grace. Cables and assistants run everywhere and everything run by the few networks with enough money to afford that tall room filled with pricey gear and temperamental talent.

Now, picture a different kind of television studio. This one lives inside a web browser. The cameras are webcams, so small they can stare at you from a tiny hole in the top edge of a laptop screen. There is no tall room, just coffee shops, church basements and living rooms across Canada. No lights, except what comes in through a window or spills from desk lamps or the stage lights of small theatres. The talent is volunteers from coast to coast. The network is rabbletv.

For the past couple of months a team of us at rabble.ca have been working towards the launch of this new type of collaborative video network. We want rabbletv to turn television from a carefully guarded broadcast medium into a collaborative video conversation with a diversity of voices.

rabbletv is a natural step for rabble.ca. We began as a text, pictures and discussion site back in 2001. In 2005 we introduced the rabble podcast network (rpn) that aggregates progressive left audio shows from across Canada. rabbletv is the rpn for video – and more. We’re working with a variety of video partners in North America (including Working TV, The Real News and Democracy Now!) to bring you a rotating playlist of great alternative video. But, we can also go live from anywhere in Canada, with multiple cameras at diverse locations to bring you breaking news and real time coverage of important events that would be either ignored or only lightly sampled by mainstream media. And, during those live broadcasts, you’ll be able to talk with other viewers and ask real time questions in a dynamic chat window we’ll monitor live, right below the rabbletv player.

rabbletv’s been made possible through a remarkable Web 2.0 application called mogulus. Mogulus is really a television studio in a browser. The Flash-based interface allows users to login with their webcams and see themselves and other contributors’ video feeds. We can then go live with those feeds, easily switching from one webcam to another, adding “lower-third” graphics identifying speakers etc. We can even mix in “over the shoulder” stills, branding bugs and a text ticker with breaking news along the bottom of the player window. That player window will be embedded on the rabble.ca (often on the home page for live events). But, it can also be embedded on viewers’ blogs, websites or facebook pages. We want you to share the show.

rabbletv is a 100 percent volunteer effort. The team has come together across Canada to learn the tools, cover “dry run” events and build up playlists. We’ve stumbled and bumbled and have sussed out a ton together, and now we think we’re ready for prime time, to use a phrase that will soon be meaningless.

This Saturday, March 15 from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. EST, we’ll be covering the World Against War rally in Toronto and elsewhere in Canada, live. We’ll be using multiple webcams (our current fave is the Logitech Pro 9000) on multiple computers all tied together via an ad hoc wireless network we’ll setup at the event’s venue, the Trinity-St. Paul’s church on Bloor Street in Toronto. We’ll also be piggybacking on some coffee shops’ Wifi for some person-on-the-street interviews. You’ll be able to watch it at rabble.ca on Saturday – god willin’ and the crick don’t rise.

It is amazing we can do this. The mogulus software is free, so is the bandwidth. We’re using our own laptops and a ragtag collection of cables and microphones we’ve used for podcasting. It is early days. Every time out is an adventure with its own special challenges. It’s like an Andy Hardy movie with Ethernet cables. But we will learn and grow and together with an audience who can contribute clips, file features or just join in on the live chat, we will craft a new video conversation for Canadians. We want rabbletv to bring people together, show diverse faces and tell great stories in new ways.

If you want to start using mogulus for your organization, drop by the mogulus site and set up a free account. If you need any help, drop me a line at [email protected]. Happy to help.

Watch for us on Saturday, and wish us luck. Last week I mentioned that video is the new conversation. Let’s start talking. Television is ours for the taking.

wayne

Wayne MacPhail

Wayne MacPhail has been a print and online journalist for 25 years. He was the managing editor of Hamilton Magazine and was a reporter and editor at The Hamilton Spectator until he founded Southam InfoLab,...