I didn’t start off today to do this experiment it just sort of happened. I was heading out to cut the grass at the farm when I heard a call for “all available manpower” on the Lafayette volunteer fire channel. There was a big warehouse fire out in Scott. About the same time it started to rain so that got me out of grass cutting.
I drove by the fire along with several dozen other spectators. They all had their phones out taking photos and video. That is when I remembered loading the ustream broadcaster app on the phone. Now I never used the app but I was lucky enough to remember my ustream credentials and in short order I was logged in.
I sent a text to Adam Melancon to check out the stream. He twittered it to the local tv station who in turn twittered it. I watched the numbers go from 1-3 to 60 people watching in a matter of minutes.
There was nothing special about the footage. Most of the time I didn’t even have a good shot. For added effect, I had my scanner next to the iPhone so the viewer got to hear the fireground audio.
After about a half hour, I decided to “go mobile” and took the scanner/iPhone combo and walked around. I guess I should have done some interviews but I am a geek and not a journalist. I did find it ironic however that one of the local news crews was not that familiar with ustream.
I will say that times are changing when there are 4 different media outlets represented and the only live shot is from a yokel with a camera phone.
