A couple of days ago I was alerted (via David Ottewell’s excellent Politics blog) to something interesting going on quite close to where I live in Manchester, UK. Yes, Trafford Council have embraced web video and are using it to create a weekly news programme about goings on in the area. Great! It’s good to see local government using new technology to engage with the people in their area.

The programmes are produced by Let’s Go Global, a Trafford-based organisation (part funded by the council) who do great things to train young people in media skills so I’m not going to criticise them. The thing is though, they could be doing these programmes soooo much better for very little extra investment. That investment isn’t even necessarily money – just a little time.

1. They should stick to a few, good, presenters

If you’re going to get a council worker each week to present the show you’re going to get mixed results. Some are better than others but they’re all quite ‘flat’ in their presentation style – engage us, why don’t ya! Why not stick to a core team of three or four good presenters instead of working your way round everyone in the office who’s not too shy to appear on camera.

2. They should make it more visual

How about some pictures of what you’re talking about? All Windows and Mac computers in the last five years have shipped with free video editing software. Even if you can’t get video of the new Broomwood Centre opening, for example, you could get some photos to show while you’re talking about it! Funnily enough some of the early programmes did feature an occasional cutaway or two but recent programmes have lost that. A five minute locked-off shot just isn’t that fun to watch – you might as well be doing an audio podcast!

3. They should be using Flash video as default

Click on a video at present and you go through to separate page related to something called ‘Planet eStream’ which seems to be geared toward use in schools. The page has spaces for information such as ‘Teacher’, ‘Department’ and ‘Key Stages’. Not a very professional look for a council! Then there’s the embedded Windows Media Player for watching the video itself. It can take a frustrating amount of time to load. In the age of Youtube, everyone uses Flash video to instantly load and watch videos. why not default to that? On my connection at least, it worked a lot more smoothly.

So, Trafford are doing something good here, but with a little spit and polish it could be something great.