Never wrong for long

Happy Birthday to an innovative force in journalism and the TV channel of insomniacs...Sky News is 20 today.

No longer the teenager and now the grown-up, the 24 Hour UK news channel pioneered by Rupert Murdoch has come of age. Its also amazing to see how much TV news has come in the last 2 decades. Previously the news was dished out like my mother's cooking (at regular times during the day, in large portions I found hard to swallow all at once and often more palettable to the server than the target audience).

But now, its news on-the-go; almost drip-fed to the masses in small morsels, delivered constantly, sometimes with little attention paid to quality and with no time to think between servings. This approach often means that mistakes were made, but they are Never Wrong For Long!

However, it works and the format & pace been copied worldwide. Even the BBC followed-suit, albeit almost 8 years later, with their impressive BBC News 24 offering.

But what about the next 20 years?
Well...I do believe the future will be televised! We'll see the gradual convergence of Internet and Broadcast technologies, along with the user/viewer/consumer taking more of an active part.

Perhaps we will eventually see the appearance of 'Gargoyles' as predicted in the book Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson. These are people permanently 'wired into the Metaverse' or in modern parlance: someone with a permanent Internet connection. They are a news agent who records everything around them and uploads this data (particularly audio/visual) for its use by agencies or other organisations. The idea being that they get paid for their news-worthy clips and therefore make their living by recording as much interesting stuff as possible.

Strange? Perhaps. But not impossible!