His article begins with a disagreement with Amanda Congdon - a daunting experience no doubt.
The video blog Rocketboom.com made Amanda Congdon a star on the internet. It earned her a guest slot on the TV series CSI. It got her considerable publicity in the major American media when she left the vlog. And it just plopped her into a hybrid car with her name emblazoned on the side for an internet-video tour of the US. That was what brought her to my den in New Jersey with three friends wielding cameras for an interview that is now online at AmandaAcrossAmerica.com.I have no trouble with this idea except that there is huge market inertia.
Amanda and I got into a tussle over television. I said she was creating the new TV. She dismissed the label "television" and insisted she was making something else, a video blog. But I argued that the definition of television is up for grabs. What is TV now? We don't know yet, for every time I think I've spotted all the sticks of dynamite set to explode under old, linear television, I discover new fuses sizzling.Apple has just announced iTV, a box that will wirelessly transport internet video on to our televisions. Thus, the line between broadcast and online - like the line between terrestrial and cable or satellite - is erased.
In the meantime, the success of Sixty Second View in its niche is an example of how powerful this new for of TV can and will be.
I agree in one sense David that niche means you can get a regular audience and they will come to you regularly in this new form of TV if you keep "giving them what they want" so to speak. However, the ability to search and the viral or social marketing that happens in the web 2.0 era as evidenced by YouTube links that are shared on myspace or just emailed as a link means that the definition of TV did just get shattered I think. I saw the interview that Jeff was talking about on Amanda's new show and she kept using the word TV to mean being sat in front of a 'TV' - - rather than the viewing of moving images and sound on any device.
ReplyDeleteI accept the point. My comment about inertia was 'sat in front of' then I saw a rendering of Ajax that gives a very good very fast TV look alike web solution. Comming on a big screen near you, a million TV shows - phew!
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