The best camera, as they say, is the one you have with you. The BBC seems to be embracing this fact, and so it’ll be rolling out a special app to its reporters hat will allow them to report on breaking news in the field, right from their iPhone.
The new iPhone functionality will go live to BBC employees later this month, and allow their field reporters to upload video, pictures or audio, then upload it directly to the Beeb on either 3G or WiFi.
According to the BBC’s head of news operations, Martin Turner, “Reporters have been using smart phones for a while now but it was never good quality… Now it is beginning to be a realistic possibility to use iPhones and other devices for live reporting, and in the end if you’ve got someone on the scene then you want to be able to use them.”
This is very cool, but what is slightly disappointing is that the BBC isn’t home baking a new app for this. Instead, they are just paying for a new license so their reporters can use the existing app — Lucy Live — to broadcast live footage on the air over WiFi or 3G.
How much cooler would it be if the BBC made their own app, released on the App Store for free. That would be a huge asset to the BBC: an official app encouraging and giving wider exposure to the kind of citizen journalism that can happen when everyone has an internet connected video recorder in their pocket.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
12 responses to “BBC IS Going To Start Live Broadcasting Field Reports From iPhones”
“allow their field reporters to upload video, pictures or audio, then upload it directly to the Beeb”
So are they live broadcasting or uploading twice?
I was thinking this! When the news has live broadcasts with VIP and the signal sucks I always think, hmmm FaceTime works better. Lol.
isn’t it Luci live
During the floods and cyclone in Queensland, Australia, one of the TV networks started doing this with SKYPE with an iPhone. It did work fairly well. I think they had a satellite to WiFi device in the car for when there were no working cell towers
This is a great app. Here are some other great apps you just must have! http://surreystore.com/cms/app…
http://www.GRASSROOTSNEWS.tv has been doing this stuff since they broke the cholera outbreak story after the earthquake in Haiti last year… Their student / volunteer based news service is making use of iOS apps by Vericorder (1st Video) and Vimeo. Love the concept!