Switchboard is a community broadcast switcher: many spectator phone streams come in from one event, four independent editorial gates check each one, and the single best qualifying stream goes out. When none qualify, everyone sees a blue slate instead. The slate is the product, because it is the only visible proof that the editorial bar is real. It is a prototype: a phone has published to it and reached air, and it has not run at a real venue yet.
The slate is the product
Many spectator feeds in, one standards-checked feed out, and that blue screen when none qualify. It is the only visible proof the editorial bar is real. Every other outlet's bar is invisible and therefore unfalsifiable; this one is a blue screen anyone can see on a Friday night.
One camera left, and it blows it
The sharpest version of this is not a room with nine feeds. It is a room with one. The last camera at the event, the only person who showed up with a phone, and in this window their picture drops below the bar or somebody says something the standard refuses.
Everyone gets the blue screen. There is no second-best to cut to, no graceful degradation, no editor deciding that some coverage beats none tonight. A human director cannot override it, and going dark carries no penalty here: putting something unacceptable to air is the only real failure. That is the whole product in one case, and it is the case every other system is built to avoid.
The design ancestor is public access television: community members produce, an institution sets the bar and distributes. Port 1972 is the year the FCC first required cable systems in major markets to carry public access channels. The analysis sidecar binds 1934, the year the Act created the FCC and with it the public interest standard this is an argument about.
Read the standard, which is generated from the same constants the gates apply, so it cannot drift from them.
One real ruling
Ruled 2026-08-30 under v1.1.0, on a moment from a real high school varsity basketball game, from a public access television archive, where a spectator walks in front of the camera and roughly seventy percent of the frame becomes an out-of-focus back. The frame is not shown: the footage is somebody else's and we may not republish it.
The image appears to be mostly blank with some dark areas and faint light reflections. There are no discernible objects or text that can be clearly identified due to the lack of detail and clarity.
Clause visual.not-the-event. Held off air. The camera was not doing its job in that window, which is what the clause is about. It is not a judgement about the game, the operator, or the quality of the picture the rest of the time. The full ruling, with the reviewer's reasoning.
Evidence
Windows judged: unmeasured. Broadcast hold: unmeasured. Judge reachable: unmeasured.
This prototype has never been pointed at a live venue.
What has been measured
Observed on or before 2026-08-30, on recorded footage and one hosted node. These are measurements taken on a date, not what is happening now: what is happening now is the block above, and it says unmeasured when nobody has asked a venue.
These were measured on high school basketball because that is the footage a public access archive permits us to re-publish, not because the system is for sport. A council meeting, a school concert and a game are the same shape to it. Nothing outside a gym has been measured yet, which is why that is written here rather than claimed above.
- 14 of 15
- frames ruled correctly on real varsity basketball footage from a public-access archive, the 15th a correct rejection
- 79-87%
- of frontier judge calls skipped by the local filter, with one clean ruling in eight escalated anyway to measure the miss rate
- 38 of 38
- boundary cases the frontier judge ruled correctly, each pair differing by one fact either side of a clause
- 9m23s
- longest publish from the open internet, against the two-to-three minutes this design was chosen to beat
Wherever you are standing
you run something nobody films
A council meeting, a school concert, a rec league, a season no broadcaster bought. Several people in the room already have the only cameras that will ever be there. This is the machinery for taking all of them and putting out the one that holds up, or nothing at all. There is no consent flow yet, so this should not be pointed at an event where the people in frame have not agreed to be broadcast.
you want a channel of your own
A channel is a name and a set of guidelines on top of the standard, and it may only ever be STRICTER: nobody can write a rule that relaxes the floor, add a permission, or reach a clause that protects a person. Every edit publishes a new version and freezes the old one, so a ruling made last week still resolves to the rules as they stood.
you care who decides what airs
Every outlet has an editorial bar and almost none of them will show it to you, which makes it unfalsifiable. This one is published, versioned, and frozen per version so a ruling made today still resolves after the rules change. A human director cannot put an ineligible feed to air: the refusal is the feature.
you want to check the work
The standard is served as JSON by this site and by every broadcast node, from the same constants the gates apply. Every clause has a stable id a ruling cites, so a refusal can be argued with rather than taken on trust.
What it is aiming at
One venue is the piece that is built. The idea it came out of is larger: many rooms at once, and a switch that decides which one has the floor, so that what everybody is watching is the thing most worth watching rather than the thing an algorithm guessed each of them would sit still for.
Stated as intent, not as a feature. Nothing here has run at more than one venue. Where the idea came from.
Consent, and what the standard actually says about minors
The gap here is consent, not minors. The standard already carries a clause protecting a minor from being named in a negative, accusatory, mocking or sexualised way, and nothing in it refuses a school game. What is missing is a consent flow for anybody who ends up on camera, which is as true of an adult rec league as of a school one, and until it exists this should not be pointed at an event where the people in frame have not agreed to be broadcast.
The footage the picture gate was measured on is a different matter and is why the figure can be published at all: it is public-access archive that already aired, licensed to permit adaptation, so testing against it points a camera at nobody.
Where it actually is
Switchboard was started on 28 August 2026. A phone has published to it, cleared all four gates and reached air, which is the whole chain working once. It has not run at a real venue yet, and 1 of the 17 thresholds on the standard page is measured rather than chosen ahead of a field test, which the page marks one by one. Treat anything describing it as a running service as wrong.