Last year when TVW launched its embeddable and time markable media tool, it was mostly because political bloggers griped for it. Its application by bloggers has been slow going (I hardly ever see anyone using it), but this week, something cool happened.

Both sides of the local isthmus debate went up to the Capitol to testify of house bills that would regulate development downslope of the capitol campus. Both groups used the TVW embed tool to highlight their testimony. Here is Friends of the Waterfront and a much more agressive use by Oly2012.

While the local legacy media was only able to give the hearing a short story in the paper, TVW gave local groups the tools they needed to give the issue a much more thorough airing. It took a commenter to even link to the actual TVW footage at all.

Local debates are ripe for this kind of use of media. It would be great to see if TVW would be able to export its custom flash player to local governments so they could offer the same kind of embedable and time customized media tools that the state legislature deliberations enjoy.

Actually, wouldn’t it be great if city’s like Olympia, instead of using an out of state company like Granicus, be able contract with a local non-profit whose sole purpose is to distribute public deliberations? I’m not saying that Granicus does a bad job, but they’re an out of state for profit company when we have an in-state not-for-profit that could, if they decided to, do the same thing only better.