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FAQ for Public Safety Reality TV

Dated and awful long and long winded but here it is.

A ton of stuff here for deep thinkers.

1. What is ChicagoWRKS (aka Chicago FIXIT)?

ChicagoWRKS is nonpartisan, depolarizing televised political discourse for the 21st century.

It's issue-centered and citizen-participatory and as such is intended to complement and co-exist with America's traditional election-centered and candidate-participatory political discourse system.
It is formatted to give all members of a community an ongoing, informed voice in government decisions that affect their lives
Its is structure to mak citizens and leaders responsive and accountable to each other in addressing the issues affecting their community's future.
It is scalabe to connect citizens and politicians in all three communities, local, state and national, of which every American is a member.
citizen-participatory and outcome (solution) oriented. It gives all members of a community an informed voice in the political and governments decisions that affect their lives.
While prime-time Network TV and is supported by a network of other media.
It's scalable. It serves communities at local, state and national levels. Fully realized, it empowers every American in all three communities, local, state and national, of which every American is a member.
It is Its format is a blend of voter-driven reality TV and rules taken from telecasts of pro sports contests. It's Reality TV for real.
- ChicagoWRKS is reality TV for real. It's exciting and productive.
- The ChicagoWRKS format blends elements of voter-driven reality TV shows like American Idol and The Voice and a rule structure that earns for it the same level of respect and trust that viewers place in pro sports telecasts.
- Like America's voter-driven election system voter-driven ChicagoWRKS does have winners. On ChicagoWRKS, 16 talented, telegenic four-member teams comprised of Chicagoans of all ages and backgrounds get to compete and cooperate with each other in a six-month, citywide, prime-time search for best solutions, large and small, to Chicago's violence epidemic.
  - Best solutions and best teams are determined by weekly viewer votes, as happens on voter-driven reality TV shows like American Idol and The Voice.
Interactive ChicagoWRKS is designed to be seen and used by all citizens (leaders included) in all three communities - local, state and national - of which every American is a member.
- It will be pilot tested in Chicago as ChicagoWRKS and then take root in other cities before expanding to states and finally going nationwide.
- ChicagoWRKS is structured to unify all Chicagoans around the goal of addressing and resolving the city's seemingly unsolvable violence problem.
ChicagoWRKS is non-partisan and issued-centered. As such, it's an alternative to America's existing partisan, election- and candidate-centered political discourse system .
It's designed to all members of the community an informed voice in the political and government decisions that affect their lives and the future of their communities
It's designed to make citizens (including political leaders) responsive and accountable to each other in decisions affecting the health and future of a given community.
It's intended to restore unity and functionality to politics and governments in communities that are now divided or polarized by the existing political discourse system.

2. What does ChicagoWRKS look like?

It's a voter-driven, Reality TV game show, enhanced by other media, that airs prime-time and weekly over multi-month seasons comparable to Reality TV shows like The Voice and American Idol.
It is rule-governed . Its rules and policies create a level playing field that earns for its problem-solving proceedings the same level of respect and trust that sports fans place in telecasts of the games and seasons of their favorite sports teams .
It makes allies of citizens and politicians in extended, community-wide, season-long searches for solutions, large or small, to any and all problems that affect the entire community.
It also enables communities to discover and maximize projects that will most benefit a community.

2. WHO FUNDS ChicagoWRKS?

It's funded by a spectrum of sources.

Commercial Advertising
- Especially socially-responsible corporations
Foundation and Public support
- Fundraising drives
Tie-ins and product sales

ChicagoWRKS depolarizes.

It helps Chicago focus on issues (not personalities). And, on solving problems.

It restores functionality to politics and government.

It's scalable to make citizens and governments responsive and accountable

to each other in all three communities — local, state and national — of which

every American is a member. And most adults, voting members.

1. HOW can the ChicagoWRKS concept restore functionality to America's dysfunctional political discourse system?

As an issue-centered alternative to America's existing election-centered political media, scalable ChicagoWRKS exists to make all members of any size community (including public officials) responsive and accountable to each other in shaping a community's best future. Fully realized, it gives all Americans an informed voice in shaping the futures of all three communities -- local, state and national -- of which every citizen is a member.

As an alternative political discourse system, ChicagoWRKS is designed to co-exist and complement America's existing, candidate- and election-centered political discourse system. Polls show that the existing, money-driven system has lost credibility with Americans of all political persuasions. We believe that this polarizing discourse no longer responds to the informed input of the American people. This two minute video shows how alternative ChicagoWRKS would both compete and cooperate with the existing political candidate- and election-centered discourse system in ways that in time would restore to health and functionality. (Sorry for birds in background; we're gonna remake this video.)

The chart below sums up the functions of the two systems.

2. From a formal standpoint what is ChicagoWRKS?

It's three things:

It's a public-domain concept: a subgenre of Reality TV: Politically themed. Problem solving. And guess what: it's public domain. You are free to develop your own Great Game TV program.
It's also a proprietary treatment, owned by Chicago Civic Media, for a specific ChicxagoWRKS program (e.g. Chicago For America's Choice)
ChicagoWRKS is also a set of rules and procedures for governing ChicagoWRKS programs. Copywritten ChicagoWRKS rules are available for sale to producers of WRKS formatted programs. Anyone can design rules for ChicagoWRKS-like shows, and perhaps very good ones. Our ChicagoWRKS rules have the experience of 20 years of research and pilot-testing.

3. Why do you say that ANYONE can produce their own ChicagoWRKS-type program?

Why not? America urgently needs new, citizen-participatory, outcome-oriented uses of its print and electron media. And they should come from everywhere. We're just one source, we hope, of many. We envision the production of both terrific and terrible Great Game-like shows. But we don't think the terrible ones will last long. They won't get the good results that alone, over time, earn the support, respect and trust of citizens and governments. Why? Because they'll either be rigged from above or poorly produced.

The devil, they say, is in the details. The angel of the Great Game, we say, is in the details of its rules. We've designed them to ensure optimal outcomes for all members of a community of any size .

Remember: the Great Game stands or falls on its ability to generate viable, enduring solutions.

4. How should the Great Game be governed? Who should govern it?

Ah, now we get to the heart of the matter, to the hub of where things could go really wrong for the Great Game (and America). There's much to be said on this topic. For the time being, let's respond to this question in term of the three formal aspects of the Great Game outlined in Question 2, above:

1. The Great Game as a public domain concept: by definition, it's not governable. Only specific instances of the Great Game are governable.
2. The Great Game as a particular TV program: difficult to govern because host networks and producers will demand maximum control over what they produce. That's not to say that a governing board can't be creating to provide oversight for a specific program. When this happens, that program becomes governable.
3. The Great Game as a set of rules IS governable. A small entity can make them, brand them, sell them, and update them to keep them current. The seven Guidelines list in our "Great Game" piece are key to the set of rules we're developing at Chicago Civic Media.

Great Game Governance is 100% Transparent. There's no curtain for anyone to hide behind.

5. It what sense is the Great Game scalable?

Did we say that it operates at local, state and national levels?

Scalable ChicagoWRKS is essentially a set of rules governing constructive, inclusive, community-wide civic (or political) discourse. These rules can govern ChicagoWRKS programming in any medium. Fully realized, the Great Game connects citizens and governments in all three communities - local, state and national - of which every American is a member. Just imagine: every city and every state with its own ChicagoWRKS discourse program(s) in place, and with all of them feeding into one or more national the Great Game systems.

6. What are the risks of producing the Great Game?

A pretty good set of them can be found in Question 7 of the Great Game survey about the Great Game's feasibility (the NAYsayer's Delight).

Let's be clear: the Great Game an experiment in self-government. Its roots are in "the great experiment of democracy" that Thomas Jefferson thought of as a test to discover "if men can govern themselves".

A related set of risks attending Great Game are those that attend any disruptive and transformative innovation.

Generally speaking, the Great Game stands or falls on its ability to produce measurable solutions that earn the support of citizens and governments.
The Great Game earns respect and trust of citizens, governments and news media only by continuously getting good results.
The risks are greatest at the outset. A breakdown during a Great Game first season could spell the end of the idea. Great Game rules must anticipate the following:
- Lack of public interest, or interest coming from only one sector of the public
- An irreconciliable clash or standoff between one group of citizens and another, or between citizens and a city government
- Subversion of the Great Game process by an outside entity
- A single remark during a Great Game telecast that offends the public, city government or a Great Game sponsor

7. How could ChicagoWRKS be the future of American political discourse?

First, consider the massive evidence of all but universal citizen dissatisfaction with America's existing, election-centered political discourse system. Outrage with it as it functions at all levels of government is the only issue that Americans of all political stripes agree on these days! So why not invent a better one?

Second, consider the enormous energy that's gone into trying to correct this broken system from the inside. They include campaign finance reform, taxpayer-funded elections, efforts to correct partisan gerrymandering, term limits, attempts reschedule elections from Tuesday to weekends or voting holidays and all kinds of get out the vote drives. The list goes on and on. Have these efforts, individually or collectively, succeeded in restoring public confidence in American political process? It seems not. By most accounts, political discourse continues to disintegrate apace, spreading division and dysfunction at all levels of government and pushing the nation increasingly in the direction of chaos, oligarchy or despotism.

Third, consider an untapped alternative. It's grounded, believe it or not, in the enormous market (for advertisers) that exists today for political discourse that will actually give Americans of all ages and backgrounds an informed voice in the government decisions that affect their lives. Consider the size of the market for politicfal discourse that actually gets governments working again at local, state and national levels.

Our ChicagoWRKS Medium post shows how ChicagoWRKS can help Chicago solve violence. But the .../TV concept behind it is scalable to work in any town, city, state or nation with a violence (or other) problem. It sketches out how major advertisers can tap ChicagoWRKS' Market of the Whole of all members of a community who want an informed voice in the government decisions that affect their lives. This market is a market of all members of a community. It's the largest of all possible large markets and the so-called holy grail of advertising. The Trump/TV piece shows producers how to attract these sponsors credibly and with integrity. More than that, it shows them how this large market can only be tapped effectively, in the long run, with programming that earns the respect and trust of all members of a community by getting good results.

Key takeaway: ChicagoWRKS stands or falls on its ability to generate viable, enduring solutions.

And its ability to do this depends on the quality and impartiality of its rules and rewards.

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