New Source of Information?

Cablevision is offering a new ON DEMAND channel completely dedicated to the 2008 Elections. The best part about this? It’s free. This means at any time of the day you can play, pause, and rewind any of the short programs they have available.

The Channel is split up into two categories of political trivia and political playback which documents pivotal elections, such as the Bush/Gore election of 2000. Interestingly enough, this section titled Pivotal Playback originally aired on MSNBC. These small little tidbits of election information are only each about 1 minute long.

These small and straightforward segments are hardly informative and I’m not very sure what the purpose of having them in the first place. Perhaps they are to give some sort of background to voting? It would make more sense to provide a semi-interesting blurb on the election process rather than a 1 minute insight on past elections.

The Channel does provide two very short mini documentaries on voting and how to get involved even at a local level.

The first 10 minute video is a presentation on the organization called Democracy Matters. This organization seeks to increase student participation in the voting process. Their prime goal is to promote “clean elections” which are elections based not on private funding but rather the core issues that people care about. Democracy Matters believes that removing private money from elections will increase voter turnout. Essentially, they believe people are turned off from voting because candidates are primarily focused on raising this money rather than answering the needs of the people. Once the private money is removed the average individual will not feel disenfranchised from the system.

The second, and the most interesting short documentary which was also about 10 minutes long, was about Project Vote Smart which is an organization who’s aim is to supply voters with information and to make this information easily accessible to voters. Members of this organization compile a list of canidates biographical information, voting records, campaign contributors, issue positions, a performance evaluation, and their speeches and public statements. This organization puts all of this information on a database on their website. At anytime a candidate can find out how Barack Obama, John McCain, or Hillary Clinton voted on a particular issue as well as their local congressman.

What I found to be the most interesting about this particular organization is that it was deeply commited to providing this information to voters. This information, although may appear to be easy to find, really isn’t and this organization helps to change that. So often we, as voters, are stuck watching news programs or reading news bits that fail to focus on important issues, but will not hesitate to ask what type of underwear Obama wears. It’s refreshing to see a service that supplies useful and relevant information.

It is pretty obvious that the purpose for Cablvision’s free channel is to attract young voters. Young people consistently fail to show up at the polls so this was a prime opportunity to get young people involved. The channel gives good information on being an informed voter but lacks any information about the current candidates.

It would be beneficial to give some sort on brief insight to each candidate. Perhaps Cablevision could document candidate’s views on popular issues (health care, education, the economy, etc.) Without knowing more about the candidates the channel does not achieve its purpose of getting the youth to vote. If people do not know who or what the candidates are then there isn’t a way for them to make an informed decision. Some may say that in order to get candidate information, people could/should watch the regular news. But let’s be honest here, people don’t want to do any extra research.

In fact, the major news stations don’t even cover candidate’s stance on issues either. If Cablevision is going to have a channel called Elections ‘O8 then it would be necessary for them to include something relevant to the upcoming elections and that would include candidate profiles.
Another beneficial item that the channel should include would be a brief wrap up of key debates. On major new channels, reporters do not wrap up debates they simply give their own spin on it and focus on trivial things such as body language or how “_____ connected with the audience”. Instead, the channel could focus on what the candidate said and organize it in such a way that would be beneficial to the audience. Instead of listening for a few hours on CNN or FOX News and getting different versions of what the candidate said the channel could simply make a shortened 5-10 minute video on what was said.

It’ll be interesting to see how this channel develops as the election proceeds and how many people actually take advantage of what the channel has to offer.