This post comes after my other one about the Missing Children channel.
I think we can generalize this idea and call these things dispersion channels. I think another useful one would be a local crime channel. As I understand it, police are always looking for witnesses to things, but I'd bet that those connections aren't being made. The probability is probably pretty low of my witnessing a crime or a car crash or what have you, and then also hearing on the evening news that police are desperately trying to find out more information about that particular thing.
It's not so obvious, either: Maybe you see a guy running down the street, breathless, and wondered what it was all about. Do you automatically stop him, in case he's just committed some crime? No, but if you hear a description of him later on, over a dispersion channel, then you'll remember, and maybe you can provide some other details (no one else noticed the shirt he was wearing, but you did, for example). What's neat about this is that it hijacks the "cocktail party effect" to good use. So there's one idea.
Community lost and found. For a fee, you can call a number and describe the thing you just found, and mention some escrow contact number. Alternatively, the thing you just lost. Verbal descriptions get played over the air, and maybe they add some images of what your object looked like, if at all possible. Maybe the thing you lost is REALLY important to you, in which case you could go into the studio and make a quick video clip, to describe the thing better, or show what it is if it's a found. Of course perhaps you can just upload your video, too (subject to review). All day, all this channel does is play these recordings, in the hopes of finding the match.
Perhaps just one channel called Dispersion that does this all at first, gradually splitting apart as the support infrastructure gets put into place. As the channel's entire body of programming would be "advertising", it doesn't sell advertising time, and since it directly helps people, they can pay for it.
Any others?
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Around here we have Crimestopper's for tipping the police and Amber Alert when a child goes missing. These are broadcast over the usual local channels. All of them. We have 4 local tv stations and I can't count how many radio stations.
It occurs to me this is better than having a channel dedicated to such things. I mean, it's a fine idea, but, am I going to relax watching missing persons reports or Survivor?
Question: Do you perhaps think its better because it's what's already there? :)
In defense: The core problem that I am trying to eliminate is the small probability of finding matches: If only one person saw something that would be of use, and then the Amber Alert announcement comes on only once or twice on the evening news, what are the chances that that person would happen to be watching the news? Let me preempt an answer by saying unnecessarily low. This would be an attempt fix the needle-in-a-haystack problem by constantly searching through the haystack, instead of sticking your hand in it once, giving it a good rustle, and then conceding defeat.
And as for the Crimestoppers, well, that's like asking the needle to come to you :) Not that I think that Crimestoppers is a bad idea, by all means no. Just that if you brought the magnet up closer to the haystack, you'd have a better chance of finding it. Oh, well, the magnet is there, and any needles can come to it if they want.
And for the TV watching habits: Well, apply your argument to the Weather Channel. Now that I think about it, the Weather Channel IS a dispersion channel that already exists: a channel dedicated to spouting out one type of information that can be tapped into when necessary, and could be set as a default in some places. If it weren't so Orwellian (and thus met by tons of instant fear and irrational anger by Luddites), I'd suggest dispersion boxes, that are standalone TVs that just broadcast this stuff, in airports and hospitals and whatnot. They'd be no more obnoxious than that which is already there, and they'd potentially do some good.
I agree, but it will be hard to attract viewers. Instead of regular shows with the occaisional public service ad, maybe we could run public service shows with really good bits of entertainment. Okay, I don't have it all worked out, but maybe partial nudity would help. Just kidding on the nudity thing.
That's not a bad execution of it.
What I'm envisioning is something like Craigslist meets "Have you seen me?" meets "FYI..." all being broadcast on random shuffle. Constantly.
Why not get the internet involved, too? Some of us don't watch much TV these days but do spend alot of time online. For those like me, perhaps an RSS feed could be provided? We can select which zip codes to 'listen' for. We could use our preferred application for RSS feeds or, for those of us that have a digital home theater setup, the information can be run in a ticker at the bottom of our TV show. Major news could even pause our show, if we desire it.