The story of Balloon boy Falcon Keene was played live all over the country thanks to the real-time web. Ten years ago, would this story have gotten as big as it did today? I don’t think so. Sure it would have been played (to a limited mid-day audience) on live television and the radio, but the web and it’s real-time sharing capabilities, really propelled this story into the limelight. Then the social Web took over with #balloonboy hashtags, and now it’s become the latest meme, with people joking about taking off in a balloon to get doughnuts, or hiding in the attic.
Here’s how the story unfolded for me. I came home from walking the dog and saw a couple tweets (from the Denver Post and CBS channel 4's Misty Montano), I checked out the Post’s site and saw a link to live video from Channel 9’s helicopter that was tracking the balloon. At the same time, two friends IMed me with the story. I watched as the balloon floated across Northern Colorado farmland, and witnessed the dramatic landing live.
The story ended when they cut to a live press conference with the Larimer County Sheriff. As he was answering questions, the Sheriff’s pager went off. He ignored it, but one of the deputies behind him said, “They found him.” The sheriff walked back and talked to his people, came back and gave the thumbs up sign.
But there are some problems inherit with the real-time web coverage of news events. First off, there’s lots of speculation. At one point after the balloon landed, one of the helicopter reporters (or pilot) on CBS 4’s live coverage said that he heard that the boy was found in the balloon and was safe. In fact, he wasn’t in the balloon at all. There was confusion that couldn’t be edited out since this was all live. Then there was suspense about what happened to the boy, did he fall out, was he never in the balloon to begin with?
The media picked up on reports of something falling off the balloon, even highlighting a blurry dark spot below the balloon in an amateur photo. Stories were posted about searches in fields and retracing the flight path of the balloon. It started to get pretty grim.
Another thing I noticed was that in order to fill the time, stations brought on experts to talk about hot air balloons and things like that. One of these experts brought up the possibility that if they boy was inside the balloon, which was filled with helium, he’d probably be dead. This conjecture caught the TV anchors totally off guard and at that point, you could tell that they had become enveloped in the story just as the viewers had.
Back in the days prior to live streaming video shot from a helicopter chasing a balloon across the sky, these problems wouldn’t have been as extreme. We’d wake up and read about the story in the paper. The story probably would have mentioned that at first, the authorities thought Falcon was on the balloon and would have given some quotes from worried parents and police.
The Denver Post, CBS 4 and 9News all did a great job covering this story and using the real-time Web to do it. Here’s a few things I noticed. Denverpost.com sent me to 9news.com, therefore losing me (and my pageviews) for the rest of the story. The livestream on 9news.com opened in a new window, with no room for advertising. I bet that livestream got crazy traffic, but it was not monetized.
The Post’s twitter stream was a great source of information, sharing the latest developments, and also sharing links to a YouTube Video of the family and archival stories that were written about the family’s Wife Swap appearances and amateur storm chasing. They also utilized the balloonboy and boyinabaloon hashtags, helping to spread the story.
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