The proliferation of Web sites devoted to politics and political candidates has brought a whole host of staffing issues. What skills are needed to work at this type of company? Should employees have a political background, a Web background or both? These are the questions that cofounders Doug Bailey and Roger Craver had to grapple with when first launching FreedomChannel.com in November 1999. As political consultants with over 20 years’ experience, Bailey and Craver know politics inside and out. The Web, however, was new territory for them.

Bailey says that the common thread from Webmasters to receptionists who work at the FreedomChannel is that they have to love politics. "The biggest challenge is making the candidates feel comfortable with what we are doing. And our staff has to have some sensitivity to the issues that candidates might have."

Nearly everyone on the FreedomChannel’s 12-person staff has been involved in politics or political journalism, and such experience is more important than a background in technology, explains Bailey. For example, the site’s online director, Russ Walker, joined the FreedomChannel after serving as editor of two online news publications and working as a press aide to a U.S. House campaign. Media Director Mike McGill produced CNN's political talk shows and worked as a package producer on the network's "Investigating the President" coverage.

Although the site has only been up since November, most of the staff started in the beginning of September. And planning for the site started way before that. "We’re about a year old from the initial game plan for the site and its prototype," notes Bailey.

While the site offers a politically savvy staff and the brainpower of two long-time political insiders, its piece-de-resistance is video-on-demand. "The reason that we’re doing what were doing is that video-on-demand is going to dominate not just the Web but our culture," observes Bailey. On the site, for instance, you can watch George W. Bush and John McCain go head-to-head discussing their priorities for cutting taxes and reforming the tax system in 90-second video statements. In addition, visitors to the site can access videos of the presidential candidates talking about specific issues, including education, healthcare and social security. Even though video-on-demand is the preferred communication method, FreedomChannel makes all of its content available in video, audio and in transcript -- in case people have a slow Internet connection.

Bailey is confident that FreedomChannel is in an ideal position to take advantage of the shift toward video-on-demand. "No matter how large or small an audience is watching TV," notes Bailey, "it’s likely to be very demographically diverse. Compare that world with video-on-demand. No one is going to come to the FreedomChannel to see a ball game; they’re coming to see and hear what the candidates have to say." The impact of video-on-demand on political campaigning is potentially enormous, says Bailey. He believes this method of communication "level[s] the playing field, because of lower costs. This is a harbinger of things to come; this is something that will dominate our culture in a few years."

As Bailey also points out, before the 2000 campaign, the Web was not really taken seriously by politicians and political consultants. But that is no longer the case. For instance, the McCain campaign has been using the Web to recruit and organize volunteer troops. "In one hour, McCain had recruited 7,000 people who agreed to make 10 phone calls each into New Hampshire," explains Bailey. McCain reached supporters quickly, cheaply, and under the radar screen. "It’s that same approach that has enabled them to find, recruit and send to the polls thousands of people in New Hampshire, many of whom were first-time voters and young people."

After the election, Bailey hopes that his not-for-profit site will continue to demonstrate the benefits of video-on-demand. He says that he wants the site to be permanent, and that the site’s value to the public is that it aims to be on the cutting edge of video-on-demand technology.

"The Boston Globe called us the ‘Cyber C-SPAN,’" boasts Bailey. "If the broadband industry could stop the war with itself long enough to form an association, then it should be sponsoring a public service, just like cable sponsors C-SPAN. The future of the channel is to find that kind of long-range sponsorship."

Now that politics has taken to the Web, who knows what will happen down the road. In the 2004 election, we may even find ourselves at polling booths in cyberspace.