Ok, so my game took a fun left turn off an Outer City random encounter table found in DitA (we're not playing DitA, they've just shown up in BG, so it's not like I need to get them back onto the main plot) and my party is now in cahoots with Jonas Goodnight, theater impresario deeply in the red to the thieves guild.  The descriptor of the Oasis Theater says Goodnight's got this plan to get out of debt by presenting the world's first adventure witnessed by a live audience.  

I know there have been games, maybe even D&D, where adventurers sort of streamed their dungeon delve to an audience as a sort of gimmick to the adventure.  So I'm planning there to be some magical or artificed devices that function as "cameras" that follow the party (or maybe have an NPC streamer who has to sort of follow them as a combat photographer) and allow the players to be kibitzed by chat spam etc.  Now I'm real good at setting up how protection rackets, extortion, and loan sharking works in BG ... but I'm sorta flying without a net for designing this sorta magical streamcast infrastructure.  Any suggestions? I'd prefer to have the the "technology" grounded in actual D&D magic rather than just handwavium "magic camera."  So again, I'm looking for some sort of magic camera crew (maybe the party has to maintain it, maybe it's autonomous/invasive) as well as some sort of magic that allows crowdspam.  

The plan is to do The Book of the Raven in Candlekeep as a sort of Blair Witch Project "spooky" episode, don't know if the cameras need to be capable to follow them into the Shadowfell, I kinda like the idea of the feed going glitchy at that point.

I love the idea of a weird NPC cameraman following the group around. I'd say the obvious choice is to have the "camera" take the form of either a crystal ball or a mirror of some kind. I think a mirror kind of makes sense to me if it's meant to be for a crowd... like someone just following them around with a big mirror, and anyone "tuned in" just sees reflected in their mirrors what would be seen in the cameraman's mirror. Maybe the camera man also carries a Sending Stone that can be used to communicate with some kind of director or something.

Anyway, I just want to pitch the idea of the cameraman as like... a bored teenager who's completely unfazed by whatever ridiculous nonsense the players get involved with and refuses to be actually helpful in any meaningful way.

I'm not sure whether I'm embracing it yet, but I'm liking the idea of the mirror being worn sandwich board style.  And PCs can see the chat spam in the mirror as well as on a backboard.  Maybe some sort of golem, but I might use a humanoid and use the surrogate character from Arrested Development as a model.  Or maybe we start with he bored teenager who then finds a better job in the economy so we then get the consummate professional.  A competent professional, until things cross a line.  Maybe imps.

I absolutely love the Sandwich Board style mirror... it's a really distinct visual that makes sense almost immediately when you see it, even though it's such a weird concept. I think the sandwich board lends itself well to the idea of combining it with the Chat Spam chalkboard idea really well. Like... the front of the Sandwich Board would be the mirror, and the back would be the magical chalkboard. Maybe the players can even write on the chalkboard themselves as a means to communicate with others. I'm imagining that the chalkboard works as a sort of "OmniChalkboard", where everyone who owns one of the chalkboards all kind of collectively draw on a single chalkboard, and anything they draw or erase appears or vanishes on all the various chalkboards. And the people who regularly use the chalkboard all agree to a general etiquette for when it's okay to erase someone else's message to make room, and could lead to some funny dumb drama if the players try to use the chalkboard tactically and just end up angering all the regular users who collectively agree on how the chalkboard is meant to be used.

But anyway, the important thing to me is that it justifies the sandwich board format, since it explains why the "cameraman" would have two separate boards, since one side is 100% the mirror and the other side is 100% the chalkboard.

As for the cameraman themselves... I think that a Golem works best if you don't want to give the camera person any sort of personality and treat them more like just a tool that's fulfilling  a function. But if you'd like to have more of a character to the camera man it's really just a question of what character you personally want to play as throughout the adventure.

What about basing it off scrying? Some kind of ritual, custom scrying that creates the sensor that follows them around. And it can be viewed by anyone who has the proper crystal ball or mirror or silver bowl of water can watch the same scry.

Yeah, I'm liking scrying but also with the sandwich board mirror, that way the director doesn't have to worry about the party resisting the scrying of the channel.  I also like the expense of a scrying focus.  1,000 gp, probably putting the director further into the hole that got him to launch this scheme in the first place.  While the wealthy are likely to have their own "pay per view" scrying focus on hand, I imagine the director going into even further debt so the "show" can be streamed for audiences at taverns and what not.