Broadcast

The pace of change: the gadgets just keep on coming. The Gadget Guy shares what's new.

While most broadcast stations also have websites, very few have taken the steps to use multi-platform programming to engage their audience.

RJInnovation Week kicks off examining how various broadcast outlets use Google+ hangouts and other social media tools to enhance reporting, engagement with audience and branding.

News and commentary of interest to journalism innovators and entrepreneurs

Immediately following a live broadcast of the Missouri governor’s annual State of the State address on Jan. 17, the RJI Futures Lab, in collaboration with the news staff at NPR-affiliate station KBIA/91.3 FM, engaged the mid-Missouri public radio audience in a live multi-platform discussion right from the rotunda at the State Capitol.

As you may already know, G+ has rolled out to a limited number of users what's called an "On-air Hangout". It is essentially a broadcast tower embedded within Google Plus, the world's first face to face social network. The On-Air feature allows a Hangout to easily be broadcast (viewed) by the public anywhere in the world without having to join the Hangout. We TV News Buoys and Missouri Journalism School nerds who are using this new technology on TV on +KOMU 8 News & with the +Reynolds Journalism Institute are pretty geeked out about it. Here's why.

It's true anything can happen on live television. Of course sometimes anything can refer to an unwanted expletive from a college sports announcer, a streaker running across the tennis match, or maybe even something more profound like watching a revolution live in Egypt or mass amounts of Americans celebrating the death of a hated enemy. This all can happen and has happened on TV in the past year. But something that hasn't happened is molding all four of these random events into one conversation, and I'm not talking about one random conversation with a close friend.