A new content idea, and a survey to help get it started.

ATS is moving to the next level of importance, and we need a little help from our members first. First, some background... Over the past few months, the topic of "ATS Radio" has come up over and over again. Well, it's my opinion that Radio is a dying media, even in the form of streaming Internet-based audio programs, and ATS has always looked forward, not backwards. After some research and brainstorming, we're going to begin experimenting with a new concept, that perhaps only sites like ATS can pull off successfully which has nothing to do with Radio. Community Interviews The very basic idea is to use our massive popularity and daily traffic domination to attract key people of interest for interviews and brief participation in our forums. This would involve an introductory interview by one of our ATSNN staff reporters, then a level of participation in one or more forums for a few days. The goal is to define a new form of access to public figures in politics, entertainment, science, and other area, never before experienced online or off. Imagine having the chance to interact with Chris Carter (creator of the X-Files) right here in an ATS forum. But first, we need to prepare the ground work... Please take our very first demographic survey which will help potential candidates for an interview (or their publicists) understand our members. As is the case with any other media (newspapers, radio stations, magazines, etc.), interviewees consider the possibilities based on which outlet best serves their intended goals of reaching the public. Now... I know what you're thinking... privacy. First and foremost, Our Privacy Policy, please review it. At no point will your answers ever be merged, compared, or otherwise matched against your ATS profile in any way. The answers you give to this demographic survey only serve to add to the category totals so that an accurate profile of the ATS audience can be created. The survey: www.abovetopsecret.com... Oh, and you get 500 ATS Points for completing the questions. Please help us create an interesting and compelling new content feature by giving us accurate answers. Thank you!

On the question of topics Secret Societies was notably absent, and no suitable substitute was available. I realize the last answer in the pull down was most appropriate for myself (and I would think most), but feel I should be able to plug my "home forum".

sounds great i love that idea how long till we have a Tv channel? ill can get in RATS after this survey

I've already completed the survey but admittedly what drew me here initally was the Paranormal Studies forum. I'm a little disappointed it wasn't an option since we were supposed to be as accurate as possible. So I chose the last option, there are forums that I have no interest in at all but there's certainly enough other information out there to keep one's attention.

Overall, I think idea of interviews is great and will only add to ATS's credibility.

I disagree with SO's comment on Radio dying. It's basicly just getting started online and growing fast. I don't see how doing interviews is better then an online ATS radio setup. Are you just going to record interviews and post mp3's? Why not play those interviews on an online radio setup.

No offence to the ATS reporters but these are not real reporters in the true sense of the word. Most have no education or training in actual writing or media. Most of our reporters are just normal people who got to a bit of news before anyone else did on some other web page. And as big as ATS is I don't see many people of importance giving interviews. Don't get me wrong, ATS is a great site but to most people who are told about ATS we're just another "UFO site" or "conspiracy site".


In the servey, the question "What "added feature" of ATS to you visit or use the most?" should have an answer "none of the above" or "other".

[edit on 31-8-2004 by d1k]

After participating in RPG surveys, this was so completely painless! I was expecting alot more pages than that, honestly. Personally, I felt it should have been more 'in depth'... it's like a survey for marketting, really... but I'm not really complaining by any means

Ok done with the survey.

This sounds like a good idea. Maybe we can get some famous people on here.

very nice survey, easy and simple.

Originally posted by Mirthful Me
On the question of topics Secret Societies was notably absent, and no suitable substitute was available.

I second that! I pondered for a while, then the onlty reason for this omission that I could think of - was that maybe SO deemed it unlikely that anyone could be puuled in to discuss "matters sectret"?

My feeling is that the best forum for "interviewing" people of prominence on ATS would be by using a chat room type forum. Allow for only certain interviewers to ask questions of the interviewee, and allow for the general population to have a view only access to a live chat. A limited number of inerviewers would keep the anarchy that could exist in a live chat to a minimum.

Once it has concluded a transcript of the session could be posted to allow those who couldn't "see" it live to read it after the fact.

Originally posted by phreak_of_nature
My feeling is that the best forum for "interviewing" people of prominence on ATS would be by using a chat room type forum. Allow for only certain interviewers to ask questions of the interviewee, and allow for the general population to have a view only access to a live chat. A limited number of inerviewers would keep the anarchy that could exist in a live chat to a minimum.

You can easily setup an IRC server, or even skip the server software and set up an IRC channel on an existing network and do what you have said above. You can set the channel to only allow certain people to speak while everyone else cannot. Then when the interview is done remove the moderation stopping people from talking so they can discuss what just took place. You can simply add a basic link to the ATS server/channel anywhere on the web site.

Survey done. Very easy. Don't know what you are looking for in information, but choosing only ONE topic that I like to participate in is like asking me to pick which is my favorite candy. I like a lot of topics on this site. But, I did pick one. Looking forward to being able to 'ask' important questions.

On another note, with as many members that are involved with this site, will there be a 'pecking order' as to who can ask questions? Can you imagine thousands of members wanting to ask questions to an expert in the their specific field of interest? I would LOVE to have a chance to interact with Chris Carter. How would you be able to maintain everyone wanting to ask questions at the same time.

Still like the idea though!

Excellent idea - I'm wondering if this sprung from Amuk's attempt at getting Badnarik on ATS for comments...any updates on that??

I'll be happy to participate once things get rolling - I know some well-to-do's in the medical and scientific communities that I could possibly influence on to ATS...

This would be fun if it extended into SportzTawk...I'd love to get Chris Rix on there and let people chew him out after every game

Hell of an idea.

the brilliance that this community shows on a daily basis never ceases to amaze me.

I disagree that radio is dying. I have the radio on the whole time that I surf the net and that includes my new addiction here on ATS/BTS. Maybe if there was a live ATS broadcast to listen to I might listen to it instead of the radio. Listening to a live broadcast would be alot easier for the user rather than reading lots of text messages (if the technology worked ok with tons of people trying to listen to it). You might have to warn viewers that it is live though just in case someone says something they aren't supposed to.
My two cents worth. I guess I'll take the survey now. This point system is starting to seem like a game.

I would like to see most of those ideas put into action I would love to see what some famous people will have to say

some thoughts:

radio is a pretty poor use of the internet, in my opinion, and in particular makes very poor use of the faculties of a site like ats. the great advantage of the internet is that it brings a tremendous variety of content together in an essentially random-access fashion; you can jump to what you want to read without having to wait through whatever's between where you are and where you want to go, and anything can link directly to anything else...radio's a long audio stream and although you can fast-forward or rewind, audio's essentially a linear medium and thus doesn't really take advantage of the hyperlinking the internet's capable of. so, radio's doesn't really take advantage of the internet's new features, and i'm not convinced there's any obvious way to take advantage of those features with radio....i think once broadband's widespread and cheap enough (and once the riaa's no longer harassing internet radio out of existence) the internet will wind up being a better way to "broadcast" than the traditional airwaves -- lower startup costs, no limits to the number of "stations" (unlike in real radio broadcasts, where interference issues and regulations limit the stations to certain frequency ranges and only so many stations within those ranges), and no more geographic limitations on listenership, so there's definitely a sense in which the internet's good for radio...i just don't think that radio's a medium that's set up to make any sophisticated use of the internet.

if i were organizing the ATS interviews, i'd run them like this: we'd get person X to agree to an interview, and then get a rough talley of how many people were interested in participating in the interview. once we had a rough estimate as to how many people wanted in on the interview, we'd recruit moderators for the interview, trying to maintain some kind of ratio between moderators and participants -- i'm guessing 1:10 - 1:15 would be ideal, but we'd probably have to find the right number by trial and error. then, we'd break the participants up into groups each led by a moderator -- say, groups of 10 or 15, if i'm guessing right, plus a moderator each -- and create either an individualized chatroom (for live interviews) or an individualized thread (for time-delayed interviews) for each group...we'd also need one chat room / forum for just moderators, and two all-access chat rooms or forums: one in which just the questions to the interviewee and the interviewee's responses get posted, and another "anything goes" room. the group-specific chatroom would be for people to hash out the specific questions they'd like to see get answered; if the group thinks a question is good the moderator is then supposed to take it to the moderator's room for final approval before sending it along to the interviewee...the general room is for all the audience members to talk amongst themselves. the advantage of a hierarchical system like this is that the interviewee is spared a lot of work -- all they'd have to do is answer questions. the group rooms and the moderator room would help filter out the more pointless and/or disrespectful questions while keeping the individual moderator's workload pretty low, as each moderator would only have to deal with a small number of people at a time...i can imagine that if the moderators had to sift through hundreds of questions each they'd be overwhelmed. i'd also want some kind of system in place so that a group could vote to send a question to the moderator's room even if the group moderator didn't like it, and also a way of getting the participants as a whole to vote and overrule a moderator's room veto of a question, but i'm not sure how to implement a system like that without either generating a ton of posts/chats or writing a custom chat client (which may be the best way to set this up, especially if security/privacy's a major concern).

so that's my suggestion for how i'd like to see it organized -- small groups send questions to a moderator, who sends the best questions to the other moderators, who send the questions to the interviewee, who then hopefully answers them in a place everyone can see. the big problem with this approach is that asking "followup" questions is hard in a real-time situation, because there's probably going to be a significant lag between when a question'd get suggested and when it'd finally be approved and then asked. also, although i think the approach i outlined above has a lot of merits, i also think it's too complicated, and probably can be simplified.....i'll leave that to the people with more experience running online forums and whatnot.

Just my 2 cents. I'm a media junkie but I can't abide radio and "talk radio" in particular.

There's no "scroll" "delete" or "ignore" (or a remote to flip-flip-flip for that matter)

The Pisky has taken the survey.

As for radio - it has definitely not died, neither will it die in the near future.

Think of this - Some years ago the NWO is in control. They run all TV channels, they control the newspapers and the internet. They control the mainstream radio too ... but they can't control 'pirate' radio.

Yes, we will have a few 'Anti NWO' TV transmissions but the costs will be prohibitive plus the equipment is too easy to discover. Radio, on the other hand, is relatively cheap and easier to hide.

Radio is definitely the way to go.

Shoutcast is a good net radio site and radio is staying for a long time. video net meetings are choppy and have lots of delay so I'd say a voice to text radio/chat room would be cool!

I'd like the people who canned the Dark Angel series to give thier reasoning, same with the Lone Gunmen series.