Archive for December, 2007:

Can Joost Become a Sports Destination?

The NBA announced yesterday that will follow the NHL and MLB and syndicate content to Joost. Select classic games and highlight packages are now available on the peer-to-peer video service, but the content is limited and will be for the foreseeable future.

Sports programming is most valuable if current, but there is also a market for classic games, and such evergreen content is particularly suited for the web. ESPN Classic has been able to stay in business for this reason, and if the NBA can sell online ads on games and highlights that would otherwise not see TV airtime, it’s a win-win.

 

Above: NBA Content on Joost

 The larger question is what long term value Joost can offer the NBA and other leagues still trying to figure out how to make money on the web. ###

While they experiment with services like Joost, they have been cautious not to cannibalize their existing audience on TV and league-run websites.

For the NHL, plagued by audience issues, partnering alternative distributiion makes a lot of sense; in addition to Joost, they have aggressively sought deals with slate of sites including YouTube and SlingMedia to distribute content everywhere fans are. MLB, on the other hand, has no domestic audience issues, but has used Joost to offer MLB playoff games on-demand to build their international audience.

Joost offers a good method for delivering content to a tough-to-reach audience, or to re-purpose otherwise unusable content.  It offers a better video viewing experience than MLB.com or NBA.com, but is no alternative to the extensive content offered on the websites. Unless Joost builds a larger audience, there’s no incentive for leagues to build a presence there.

Joost’s high profile has enabled them to sign on advertisers and content partners, but they remain a massive niche content service. Until Joost can put up the dollars necessary to get desirable content, they will remain low on the list of sites to watch sports online.

Kurt Loder on Technology and Freedom

Reason.tv is a project of the Reason Foundation which also publishes Reason Magazine to spread its libertarian ideals.  We’ve covered interesting Reason.tv pieces a few times before. 

This conversation between Reason Editor-in-Chief Nick Gillespie and Kurt Loder for the Reason in DC conference is fascinating.  Loder is best known for his work as a media and political commentator for Rolling Stone and at MTV.  This discussion on the impact of technology on music, and the looming transformation (collapse) of television to follow, is well articulated by this veteran of old media. 

Vanessa Rae – Web Host Extraordinaire

Vanessa Rae is a TV and internet-TV host, an actor, a producer, a painter, and a writer.  She’s has spent most of her career producing for traditional television, but  recently made the switch to hosting internet-TV, and since then, we’ve seen her all over the internet. So what’s Vanessa up to these days…and how does work on internet-TV compare to traditional TV?

I had the pleasure of a quick conversation with Vanessa to find out…

Vanessa hosts Dvice TV, a tech-gadget show powered by the Sci Fi Channel that’s seen a 25% increase in viewership since its recent makeover, which included a sleek new brand-name and Vanessa’s arrival as host.   She also works regularly on  RiverWired, an unpretentious take on green living, and Pandomonium Minute, the show about shows distributed by Pando, a peer-to-peer network that lets users download and share large files quickly and easily.  We covered the launch of Pandomonium Minute here

In a world with increasingly converged media, it’s nice to see a face that can so easily shift between old and new.  As Vanessa noted, it’s all about 360 degree entertainment.

Speeches Discussions and Debates on Fora.tv

Brian Gruber, a 20-year veteran of the media marketing industry, founded FORA.tv in 2006 with funding from William Hearst, III, a director of media giant the Hearst Corporation and Hearst-Argyle television. “Fora” is the plural of “forum”—a place for discussing issues of public interest. FORA.tv does just that.

Based in San Francisco, the site brings viewers conversations about timely political, social and cultural issues around the world, and through its multiple interactive tools it allows a place for visitors to become a part of the conversation. A variety of public forums are helping to build the platform, including C-SPAN, the Hoover Institution, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, Link TV, Cambridge University and Americans for Informed Democracy, among others.

This site is a library of discussions on all topics imaginable. Here you’ll find unedited, in-depth, C-SPAN-style discussions from leading figures about today’s important political and social issues. Experts and leaders speak on the topics of business, education, environment, politics, religion, science, health, technology and cover all the regions of the world.

Learn more at Fora.tv’s Tilzy.TV Page

'Alive in Baghdad' Special Correspondent Ali Shafeya Killed

It’s fourth months away from the March 19, 2008 Five Year Anniversary of the launch of the US invasion of Iraq, and over that time we’ve had to endure an unfortunate number of sobering experiences. The death of 22 year-old Alive in Baghdad correspondent Ali Shafeya is one that has hit particularly close to home.

Brian Conley, the creator of the citizen journalism effort that’s revolutionizing the way news is reported by empowering locals to report on local events, is updating the full story as he obtains information:

“Ali lived in Habibya, it’s considered as a part of the Sadr city. On Friday the 14th at 11:30pm Baghdad time, Iraqi National Guard forces raided the street where Ali’s house is, one of the neighbors heard a gun firing after 15 minutes from the arrival of the Iraqi National Guard convoy to the street, the force left at 3:00am. His neighbors kept calling Ali’s phone and it was switched off all the time, so they called his cousin Amar because he lives one block away from where Ali lives.

Amar arrived in Ali’s house and found Ali shoot dead in the living room, Amar called the Iraqi Police and told them the story as he heard it from Ali’s neighbors. At 8:30 am Baghdad time the Iraqi Police took Ali’s body to the morgue, his two uncles received the body at 10:00am and they headed to Najaf to bury him.

Amar said his neighbor who lives in the front of his house was shot dead too during that raid, the guy’s name is Hussein and he is 26 years old. He was in his place along with his brother and nephew. The brother and the nephew disappeared after the convoy left.  The morgue report says that Ali took 31 bullets between the chest and the head and died immediately. He will be missed and remembered.”

See the Alive in Baghdad blog for more updates. 

Conley is also collecting donations to cover funeral costs for Ali’s mother and sister who are displaced Iraqis living in Syria. Ali’s two brothers were killed in the Firdos Square bombing in 2005.

You can make a donation to smallworldnews AT gmail.com via Paypal.

Politics Aside

Politics aside, compare the quality of these political promotional videos.  I’ve posted them in order of good but, honestly, none of these other videos comes close to comparing to Obama’s.   Agreed?

It’s uplifting, and conveys a message of hope and positive change.  Most important, he doesn’t appear angry. 

Bush is over-the-top folksy and generally lame…even for him.  The rest are stale….

###

Was “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood”  the intended aesthetic?   It didn’t work.

Scientific Creationism – Mythological Evolution

There are some talented film students out there. The monthly output of Savannah College of Art and Design’s SCAD Shorts (Tilzy.TV page) and its associated alumni-packed production co., Dandy Dwarves are prime examples. Duelity from Vancouver Film School is another.

 

Created motion designers Ryan Uhrich and Marcos “Boca” Ceravolo, it’s a beautifully animated, side-by-side display of creationism and evolution, couched in one another’s rhetoric and symbols.

### The General Organization of Development labs (GOD) is displayed under a smart, British voiceover as a master watchmaker, grounded in analysis and empirical data, carefully constructing the universe and the devising cold calculations that led to human life. It looks like those Japanese flash games that waste my Fridays, except with a theological storyline.

Religious structures, figures, and icons portrayed through a stained glass aesthetic interact with celestial bodies to bring about the earth’s creation while a bombastic narrator with bad Elizabethan grammar narrates you along the story of Evolution. I don’t get the Birth of Venus reference, but it all looks pretty.

 

 

That could be said of the whole thing, actually. All theories of the nature of human progress aside, it’s pretty to watch.

Match Made in Heaven?

Eliza Skinner, “a producer, writer, performer, lover and fighter” recently released this video on FunnyOrDie in which she acts like the “complete asshole” we’ve all encountered. 

 Eliza, this is good.  What else you got? 

Dan Meth, from MethMinute39 of Channel Frederator, characterizes these other complete assholes we’ve all encountered or (er) hung around.

I’m curious, what happens when this girl faces these guys? Dan? Eliza?

Raw and Uncensored Stand-Up

Back in the day, if you were a struggling comedian, there wasn’t always a whole lot you could do to get your material out to the masses aside from pounding the comedy club scene. Now, with Rooftop Comedy, any comedian who’s performed in front of a live audience has the potential to reach a much bigger venue.

F

ounded in February 2006 by “one comic, a few Internet geeks, and former broadcasters,” Rooftop Comedy takes free video submissions from comedians, categorizes them into easily accessible channels, and allows site members to rate, share, and comment on their favorites. The result is an interactive media experience, with thousands of clips performed (often) by up-and-coming comics from around the country and, eventually, the world.

Chris Fairbanks tells us about his tattoo wishes.

As a site for comics by comics, Rooftop Comedy is refreshingly egalitarian in its quest for the best humor out there: “If you think your funniest material includes dressing up in a chicken suit, liberally dropping the F-bomb, and berating a live audience, OK, let’s see it. New, edgy, absurd, whatever, as long as it’s funny.”

Of course, the flip side to this free-for-all attitude is that not everything will wind up being funny. Though some duds do make their way in (thankfully most clips are less than a minute), there is enough breadth in the site’s videos to ensure at least a couple of good laughs – and more than a few gems.

Read more at Rooftop Comedy‘s Tilzy.TV page.

What's Next for Rocketboom?

We’ve noted that “it’s not too sensational to argue that the timeline of vlogging can be delineated by words like ‘pre-Rocketboom’ and ‘post-Rocketboom.’  The break out vlog has achieved its tremendous success and attention with a singular, sustained effort on reputable, entertaining internet news.  

Despite his self-proclaimed need to “stay on the cusp” and “be a step ahead,” Rocketboom creator Andrew Baron has taken the time to consider how he can best leverage his resources in an exploding new media market. 

I sat down with Andrew to find out where he sees the future of Rocketboom, and what exactly inspired him to begin this faithful journey…

It’s exciting to consider that we’ve barely reached the beginning of a media revolution, and successes like Rocketboom are just beginning to expand.  I admire the team for taking the time to understand a developing market before jumping into it.  I have a feeling we’ll see some very interesting stuff coming very soon. 

Andrew has mentioned a few specific projects in the works, including a live show that will broadcast via BlogTV, but he was reluctant to tell us much more, citing an element of surprise. ###For those who can’t wait, he did recently share a few detailes with Andy Plesser of Beet.TV (Tizy.TV page).



There’s no exact launch date for the project as Andrew and Rocketboom team are hesitant to launch before it’s “ready,” but within the coming months you should expect a live, highly interactive show that will focus on solving problems by getting the audience-cum-community involved.  We’ll update when we have more info.

By the way, last week after I interviewed RB producer Kenyatta Cheese, he sent this episode of Rocketboom as one of his favorites. I can see why.

Hungry for Politics?

Will Coghlan and Robert Millis host Political Lunch, a newscast that airs Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and covers the 2008 presidential campaign. Launched in March 2007 by Hudson Street Media – the same production company behind Millis’ politically-minded interview show American Microphone (Tilzy.TV page) – the Lunch, as they call it, reports on both sides of the Left-Right fence and each presidential candidate, including purely speculative candidates like Fred Thompson and Mike Bloomberg. Served in three to five minute bite-sized packages, Political Lunch offers a tasty smorgasbord of the latest Beltway intrigue, served with a healthy pinch of sarcastic critique.

In political media, during the height of the runaway successes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, Political Lunch has found a niche somewhere between irreverent commentary and straight up news. 

In the way of a news cycle round-up, bearded Coghlan and bespectacled Millis deliver bipartisan coverage from behind their desk succinctly, if stiffly, gracefully and a little awkwardly (and therefore endearingly) mimicking a “professional” broadcast amidst the Lucnh’s trademark pig oinks. There are updates on candidates’ campaign management, spending practices, and public appearances, enough to keep you well informed of the trajectories of Hillary, Rudy, Obama, and Mitt toward the White House. But it still looks as if Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have cornered the market on the ironic zinger.

Read more at the Political Lunch Tilzy.TV page

The Last Days of PodTech?

Robert Scoble has been thinking a lot about his future. According to TechCrunch, PodTech isn’t in it.

Roughly 18 months after the technology evangelist left his corporate blogging gig at Microsoft to join John Furrrier’s new media startup, the tech-biz videoblogger is reportedly packing up his eponymous, self-hosted Scoble Show (Tilzy.TV page) and leaving the online video network to start the moving picture side of Fast Company magazine.

Similar to Wired’s recent announcement of its aspirations for its web video wing, Fast Company seems to be riding the inevitable trend of periodicals incorporating original programming into their online destinations. There’s no word yet on whether Scoble will continue his casual interview show with “geeks, technologists, and developers”, but considering the mag’s mission statement is to chart “the evolution of business through a unique focus on the most creative individuals sparking change in the marketplace,” it would be an easy fit.

For PodTech, the announcement is the latest in a string of misfortunes and PR mishaps that might render the company defunct in the very near future. ###

After parting ways with the female face of their network, Irina Slutsky and her poppy tech-geek web show, Geek Entertainment TV (Tilzy.TV page), and now with the imminent loss of Scoble, PodTech is lacking regular, quality content with any appeal outside of a narrow, Silicon Valley niche.

The company’s deals with Bill Streeter of LoFi St. Louis (Tilzy.TV page) and Jay Smooth of Ill Doctrine (Tilzy.TV page) have kept two great independent content producers in the business of consistently producing content for the past several months, and have helped to spread the PodTech name outside of the Valley.

For all the bad things that have been said about PodTech, their support of these two shows is commendable, though if I were Streeter or Smooth, I’d start looking for a new home.