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Published: November 17, 2008
It may not be long before Dale Folwell, Larry Womble and the rest of the Forsyth delegation at the N.C. House of Representatives are daytime TV stars.
A House study committee has endorsed an idea long bandied about in Raleigh: Televise floor proceedings. In a sense, the state would create a C-SPAN for North Carolina.
The current economic crisis probably means that a full-scale state C-SPAN is a few years off. No network of TV or cable channels is available, and were such a network created, it would require a sizable operations budget.
But the committee has a good alternative. It suggests establishing the necessary system to televise floor proceedings and streaming the video through the Internet. The initial costs of such an abbreviated system would be $1.3 million.
When it becomes possible to actually put the proceedings on television, the House would do so, the committee decided. That might be in a year or two. It might not be for much longer.
There's real merit to this idea. Many North Carolinians know precious little about their legislature. It gets little attention on commercial television, and UNC TV reduced its coverage a decade ago and now offers only a one-hour weekly show. The state's newspapers have greatly reduced their collective coverage of the legislature over the past 20 years, and that trend is accelerating as newspapers go through financial problems.
Considering the power state government wields in North Carolina, it is essential that the public have more outlets for information on what is going on at the legislature. Streaming audio and video of floor and committee proceedings would be a big step forward.
We're not saying this will make compelling television. But C-SPAN coverage of congressional debates isn't Law and Order, either, and yet it has a loyal following. And viewers will quickly note that the General Assembly moves much more quickly than the Congress.
Even if the audio and video never end up on a legislative TV station, the abbreviated system would have value. People will watch, especially when there is a significant bill scheduled for debate. And the availability of publicly owned audio and video of the proceedings should lead the state's commercial TV stations to broadcast more stories about what is going on at the legislature.
America's news media are going through monumental change. We can only imagine the many new and creative uses that citizen journalists and bloggers would make of the video and audio stream.
In short, this sounds like an excellent idea to improve public awareness of legislative action.
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