Yesterday, the Chronicle‘s Matt Stiles posted a nice profile of Fred Fichman, the new executive director of Houston MediaSource.
This excerpt seems worth highlighting:
[Fichman] said he sees MediaSource as a training ground, where budding producers and nonprofit groups can show their work.
He wants them to have better equipment and hopes to upgrade the channel’s existing system to a video server, which would allow on-demand access to shows online.
“Because the technology is marching so quickly to improve the image, people really do have some power in their hands to be able to contribute,” he said.
Fichman, who’ll be paid $65,000 a year, said he doesn’t know much about the controversy last year over a few shows among the scores of others on politics, neighborhoods and religion that don’t raise concerns.
He doesn’t think racy programs should be on a public channel.
“Somebody has to take responsibility for this,” he said. “Somebody has to be the determination point if something comes close to crossing the line.”
By the end of the Patti Garlinghouse/Garth Jowett era at MediaSource, the channel seemed to be more about the contempt of those two figures for anyone on Council who might criticize and attempt to regulate vulgarity on the channel than actually running a quality organization that could serve as a training ground for amateur A/V buffs and a respected community forum of sorts (we’ll leave aside the question of whether user fees ought to support such entities in the first place). Fichman sounds a little different.
Fichman’s comment about video-on-demand is interesting. Given the popularity of YouTube and podcasting, perhaps MediaSource (if it’s going to exist at all) does need to consider using the web as well as its cable channel to promote the work of local audio/video (and maybe even blogging) buffs. Perhaps under the right leadership, MediaSource could even eventually serve as the local “web” hub that some local bloggers/podcasters have suggested would benefit the Houston web scene.
