Television Production Firm Warns: Live Stream isn’t Always a DIY Dream
These days, it’s hard to avoid news about live streaming. Our television production crew alone has read a number of articles about Facebook Live, Twitter’s Periscope, UStream and MeerKat. Undeniably, we aren’t the only ones reading what the television industry’s pundits have to say about the current state of social media. And as the live stream medium becomes even more accessible, we suspect that a number of people will reach for their share of the world’s online stage but should they?
As with anything, we think that live streaming directly through social media platforms should be approached with caution. Yes, it is important, especially for businesses hoping to be wildly successful. But it can also be dangerous for people who don’t know what they’re doing. For example, when a company blindly relies on an app to do their live streaming for them instead of a full-service production company, who owns and controls the resulting content? Is it the company who produced the content or the app?
In some cases, it could very well be the app. As such, the app’s developers could feasibly repurpose that content in damaging ways, leaving the brand with no recourse for recovery. Full services production companies, on the other hand, recognize that brands already have owners and those owners’ rights must be respected. So we wouldn’t recommend that any company use a live stream app without first reading the fine print.
Plus, there may be other legal repercussions when working without the guidance of television production professionals. For instance, what if your company live streams from the office and someone has the radio or a music CD playing in the background. Would your firm be responsible for paying the music artist for the use of his or her content? What if the music artist happens to see the live stream and doesn’t want to be even remotely associated with said firm. What then? Can they sue or legally order the company to remove the live stream? And as we mentioned before, does the producer even have the ability to alter or remove the live stream after the fact?
They’re just a smattering of issues for companies to consider before hitting the record buttons on their own. To learn more about the pitfalls of going it alone and how working with television production firms can help companies avoid them, please contact Vistamax Productions today.