You can find live video feeds on many TV news Web site these days, but only one site that we know of offers more than 50 live feeds from sources all over the country. LiveNewsCameras.com was launched the day of the Super Tuesday primaries by Fox News Chicago. Most of the feeds are from Fox stations, but the site also offers raw video from ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates, as well as C-SPAN and NASA.
A lot of the content comes from tower cameras and weather radar–not exactly riveting. But on any given day, your choices might include a campaign rally, a sentencing hearing or a news conference of local interest. And there’s always a chance you’ll catch breaking news. As I watched a short time ago, the live moderator in the Fox Chicago newsroom announced that one Los Angeles feed had switched to video of an “apparent” emergency landing at LAX airport.
What’s most interesting about this experiment is its potential. While it’s still in Beta form and a little buggy (my Firefox browser crashed multiple times as I tried to navigate between feeds), the possibilities are intriguing. What if every news crew in the field could stream live video of whatever they’re covering to one central site that could organize it, promote it and share it? Now imagine every citizen armed with a camera doing the same thing. Mind-boggling, isn’t it? Stay tuned.
