Got good videos about your higher ed institution on YouTube? Let’s promote them on Higher Ed TV!

This is probably one of my crazy Tuesday ideas, but let’s see…

This morning, I came across (via Will Richardson) TV Jersey, an initiative by a “group of writers, photographers, graphic artists and editors at The Star-Ledger in Newark.”

Their mission? To bodly go where no New Jerseyans has gone before…

“New Jersey needs a television station to call its own. Programmed by New Jerseyans, for New Jerseyans. TVJersey has no broadcast towers, no satellites. It doesn’t even have a studio. But it has you. And what you produce, we’ll promote.”

This team of newspaper folks has decided to launch an online user-generated TV channel, powered by YouTube, broadcasting videos produced by the good people of New Jersey and selected by this new brand of TV executives.

A pretty neat idea, especially because it’s very simple. To be considered for inclusion, YouTube users just need to tag their video with “tvjersey.”

I guess it could also become a good – indirect – way to pitch stories to these newspaper folks — that is if your institution is based in New Jersey (but that’s just in my twisted and evil PR mind or is it?)

Anyway, since more and more institutions have started to upload their videos (or their students’) to YouTube, I’ve just realized that this idea could be easily transferred (stolen?) to help everybody working in higher education keep up with what other institutions do in terms of web videos (or show off with your fantastic productions ;-).

So, what’s the plan for this experimental Higher Ed TV?

• Just tag your new or already-uploaded videos with higheredtv
• They will be reposted on this blog (as long as they fit the requirements — news or institutional higher ed videos) with a short analysis by yours truly
• This blog’s readers will then be able to comment the videos

If you find this service useful, the sky is the limit… (I’ve even registered the domain name)

Now, in case you don’t want to upload your videos to YouTube for copyright reasons, but would be interested in promoting them through this new initiative, we would need to work something out. A signed release allowing me to rebroadcast them from your own servers (sorry, but I can’t afford my own streaming server yet) would probably do the trick.

Anyway, just let me know if any of you are interested or if this is just one of my Tuesday crazy ideas?