Media organizations (including the CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster) have invested heavily in celebrity hosts in an attempt to shoehorn their idea of personality into ever shrinking program time slots. To save money, many radio stations have replaced live bodies with Voice Tracking (pre-recorded programming). Media organizations (newspaper, radio and television) have been forced to slash budgets, and with that, headcount. That means fewer people are being asked to do a lot more with a lot less.

I met one sports columnist last spring who explained that, in addition to having to meet and interview people for his column (for which he traditionally takes handwritten notes), he’s expected to shoot some handheld video of his guest to publish on the newspaper’s website as well as write a blog post to supplement, not compete with, his column.

While on a recent evening visit to a local radio broadcast centre from which four separate radio stations transmit, I observed that only one of the four had a live host at that hour and that was only because there was a planned competition between two rock songs for which a live host would be required to take callers’ votes. Two of the four were Voice Tracked following the evening news until the morning show. The remaining station has only one on-air host for the morning show; it’s Voice Tracked for the remaining 20 or so hours of the day.

In talking with a number of Program Directors, Journalists and Producers, I’ve heard a common mantra — the media organizations are competing against portable technology (iPods, etc…) and digital downloads. Then, as if to point out the mistaken approach by the conglomerates that own them and have driven much of the homogenization, they all point out that the key to success in this industry is appealing to local interests.

To keep my posts to a reasonable length, I’m going to spread my thoughts on the mistakes made by the media organizations and some possible solutions over the next few days.

Certainly, as far as media on the web is concerned, when an interviewer is able to limit his or her focus to just managing a microphone and becoming engaged in a conversation, the results are far better (and more interesting) than trying to become engaged in a conversation while keeping someone in frame.

From my small home office in Ottawa, I felt as though I was truly a part of two major events in world history: the inauguration of the most charismatic, inspiring and deserving man as the President of the United States, and the creation of an environment that harnesses collective energy to build a collaborative and interactive news experience.  Both take an inclusive approach to building a new world.  It’s hard to say which of these have done more to define Barak Obama as a leader of the world, not just President of the United States.

In his speech, Barak Obama delivered a powerful message “to the leaders of the world”.  He said “you will be judged by what you build, not by what you destroy”.  It’s a message that applies to everyone, really; world leaders, world citizens, corporations, etc… And true to that message, the team of CNN, Facebook, Cisco and Microsoft built something new.  They used technology to propel the feeling of community in the news world. I felt as American as I’m ever going to be.  I also felt Canadian, Spanish, French, Afghan, etc… I really felt like a citizen of the world, all from my seat.

That small collection of technology companies won’t need to advertise to me any longer.  They were guests of my house, yesterday, as I was a guest of theirs.  They didn’t pontificate to me from my television screen, they invited me to participate — in text and video — with my computer.  I became addicted to that level of engagement very quickly.

Many people will argue that television news died, yesterday.  I argue that television news was redefined.  Besides, not everyone has a computer with a decent Internet connection.

It was a “Pow! Right Between the Eyes” moment if there ever was one.