Text and images are the most immediate and accessible for the widest audience. Good software will help you do all of these. You never know where the next brilliant programming idea is going to come from. If we are into a more democratic media, then we should be using democratic media tools. The specialised software used to automate webcast sites needs to continue that tradition.
Free software lets all kinds of people collaborate on programming.
It elliminates bottlenecks in terms of who has access to the software, and who can improve it. It can take advantage of a heritage of decentralised software development, with tools designed for global collaboration. Free software supports open standards so that as many people as possible can be both audience and story teller.