I’ve been a supporter of Olelo and the community media organizations on the neighbor islands since serving on the Olelo board for a term “way back when”. But let me argue against myself for a minute.

At that time, a bit more than 20 years ago, organizations like Olelo provided the only practical way of bringing personal or community viewpoints to a broader audience via video broadcasting. It provided the semi-pro video equipment needed to achieve “broadcast quality” programs, studio facilities for productions, training in their use, and one or more channels for them to be broadcast. It then supported trained producers who qualified to use their facilities and equipment. Bravo!

Today, the media landscape is very different. Even iPhones are capable of producing independent programming, and a range of consumer-priced digital cameras now offer video quality and features that used to cost tens of thousands to achieve. Video editing can be done on relatively inexpensive home computers, and even very sophisticated editing techniques are within reach of many consumers. YouTube and other video sharing sites offer anyone access to audiences far greater than Olelo’s regular programming provides (as Romeo’s 315,000+ viewers prove).

And then there’s the elephant in the room that binds the community access organizations and their cable television partners tightly together–and that’s the migration of consumers away from television programming provided via centrally administered “channels” to the free form consumer experience of online choice. An growing share of consumers are turning their backs on television, whether the major commercial networks or the plethora of cable channels.

Here’s a short column that tells the story (“TV is broken“). The author tells the story of traveling with his young daughter and trying to explain the experience of regular television. She’s used to going online for programming at home, and is confused by things like commercials, and ads for upcoming shows that are available for viewing now.

When the commercials are over, it is some live action teen show. She is not impressed.

“Can I choose?”, Beatrix asks. She’s still confused. She thinks this is like home where one can choose from a selection of things to watch. A well organized list of suggestions and options with clear box cover shots of all of her favorites. I have to explain again that it does not work that way on television. That we have to watch whatever is on and, if there is nothing you want to watch that is on then you just have to turn it off. Which we do.

I then do what I should have simply done in the first place. I hook up the iPad to the free hotel wifi and hand it to her. She fires up the Netflix app, chooses a show, and she is happy.

This, she gets. This makes sense.

And yet when I looked at the Olelo web site this morning, it is still operating in the old model. Classes prepare you to be “certified” to use their equipment in their studios, and offer training to edit with Apple’s Final Cut Pro, which has both complexity and capabilities beyond the needs or interests of most users. What does Olelo offer to the huge numbers of regular folks, young and old, who would like just enough training to edit their many videos for sharing on YouTube, Vimeo or elsewhere?

Olelo, like the cable companies, broadcast networks, and newspapers, appears to be well behind the curve in adapting to the new potentials being opened up by technology.

What’s wrong with this picture?