Hernando County Government Broadcasting has been facing difficulties keeping county meetings available online for public viewing. Often videos go down over the weekend which is problematic because there is no one available to troubleshoot the issue. Citizens who work during the week and wish to view the videos over the weekend are out of luck until the problem can be fixed on Monday. The problem has been ongoing for months.
Because the video is not available in a consistent and dependable manner. The coverage of critical issues through media outlets is prolonged because of the inconsistencies.
Rick Foti, Video Production Manager for the county explained to Hernando Sun that the company providing the software (IQM2) for the streaming video player (MediaTraq Webcast) has switched the county to a first release of a new the player. This version appears to be an unstable release of the software, which often has glitches that cause the program to crash.
The Hernando Video production staff has been helping to work around the issue by distributing DVDs of the meeting. They have been responsive when informed of the issue and have quickly responded with DVD when the video software was down.
“It does affect our reporting to some extent,” stated Julie Maglio, editor of Hernando Sun. “The online videos are important because we have multiple writers with day jobs. They use the online videos to generate their reports. The DVD’s are helpful and I really appreciate the county providing them, but it’s just another logistical thing to worry about. Our job would be much easier if we could rely on the online videos.”