Revision3 Beta Gives Talent the Exposure it Deserves

Now that media is democratized, the only scarcity is exposure.  The common YouTuber has all avenues of distribution and tools of production necessary to create a hit entertainment product, but the power of marketing and promotion resides with the established brands.

Talent is not the most valuable commodity in the online video marketplace. Being featured is.  With millions of videos uploaded to the web every day, a quality program can linger in obscurity indefinitely.  Yes, there’s a laundry list of gems that have been discovered, but for every series picked up by a traditional TV network or online studio, there are likely tens of shows whose names we don’t know but probably should.

The cream doesn’t always organically rise to the top. Sometimes it’s scooped out and placed there.

And that’s where Revision3 Beta comes in.  It’s a “development hub,” a “farm team” for talented web personalities that have potential to make it to the big leagues of internet fame, if only given a chance.

Martin Sargent, Revision3 Director of Acquistions and host of Internet Superstar who routinely gets 15-20 show ideas a week, explained over the phone:

“We realize online video is a crowded landsacpe.  It’s getting much easier for people to make the shows, but also getting much more diffuclt to find an audience.  We find people who we think have a lot of potential and put them in our development system and build them an audience to pull them into the Major Leagues of the Revision3 lineup, if you can call Revision3 the Major Leagues.

While some of the shows are not ready for that, they’re still good and have potential, and we’re trying to shephard them along a little bit.  It’s like TV pilots – not all of thsese shows are going to take off, but a few of them will.”

It works like this: content creators who think they can make the cut sign up for a Viddler account, create and upload the first video of an ongoing series (preexisting series are okay too), and complete a simple submission form.  If the programming team at Revision3 Beta gives you the greenlight, your video gets distributed on the site, said programming team helps you make it better, and you sign a contract that pays you a flat fee per episode (Sargent didn’t disclose the amount) in addition to a “fairly sizable” revenue share on the ads that run during your show.

If your show builds enough audience, you get promoted to the regular Revision3 slate of programming and sign a new contract that’s worth enough to actually pay the bills.  If you don’t show any increase in view counts, you may get cut.

Although veteran viewers may call Revision3’s lineup “geek-centric,” Sargent’s looking for shows about anything as long as A) the host is passionate about the subject matter and B) he or she is still relatively undiscovered:

“If you’re on YouTube and have 500,000 hits, this isn’t for you.  This is really for people who don’t have that kind of exposure, but have the talent to get that kind of exposure.  We’re lucky here at Revision3 to have a little bit of muscle to thrust people onto the stage.”

So far that muscle has thrust seven shows a few steps closer to online notoriety.  Bottles, Blends and Brews (drink reviews), Your Weekly Music Lesson with Walt (Walt Ribiero brings the thunder and teaches you music), Hack College (43Folders for coeds), The Minx Mandate (Madeline Minx interviews guests on future of “science, celberity, sex, and tech”), The Slice (market analysis), That’s Awesome.TV (a techy how-to), and What Should You Know (WSYK) (Ethan Bloch makes sure you don’t look like an idiot).

Ribiero stands out amongst the inagural Beta inductees:

His Gary Vaynerchuk-inspired/admired enthusiam can’t help but get you jazzed about playing an insturment.  With a better camera, tighter production, and chracteristic Revision3 effects, this kid could go places.

Check out Your Weekly Music Lesson with Walt and other possible hit shows of the internet’s future that are getting the eposure they deserve at www.Revision3Beta.com.