DISQUS

lol...great closing sentence.

Great thread. As a TV/Web exec producer going back to the "1.0" days I completely agree with Fred that is has never been cheaper to produce and distribute video than now. Just the other day, I ran some numbers regarding live streaming and it is almost free thanks to the crop of new companies offering those services.

The problem I forsee is a lack of understanding: tech heads understand distribution and UI but don't really understand "old school" television technique. It's all about platforms and "scale" but rarely entertainment value. TV guys, on the other hand, have the discipline required to create great storytelling and so forth, but seldom understand how to leverage the cost-effective nature of "web 2.0" tech.

Lucky for us, we're in the business of bridging both and I'm sure many others are doing the same. It's just a matter of time before a bonafide hit opens up the floodgates.

MMG

First!

Don't u hate when people do that?

After following this irony-laden donnybrook, I too had to join the fray and blog about blogging: http://rapspace.tv/member/mmg/blog-entry/arring...

Thanks for the Elfin photo, Fred. :-)

MMG

I have to agree, Mathew. i started using Seesmic about a month ago and have tuned in on occasion to see what people are talking about. Unfortunately, most of the conversations aren't compelling enough to warrant regular visits whereas text blogging requires a real point of view, narrative (beginning-middle-end) and a bit of craft. Videoconferencing has been around for ages (remember CU-Seeme?) and yet I still find it difficult to get people to switch on their webcams for Skype video chats.

That said, Loic is a smart guy who will probably figure out how to boost the entertainment value of non-famous people having disjointed conversations with each other. Some folks like Christine Herron of First Round Capital definitely have enough "flavor" to generate a following but television still does a better job of delivering talking heads (i.e. CNN's "best political team in the universe.")

By the way, I'm a former TV exec producer so maybe my standards for passive, slack-jawed media are biased.

For a non-journalist, you write a heck of an clear-minded analysis, Fred. That said, I think the big losers in the campaign so far aren't the feckless Republicans; it's the media. Already they have made a huge error in declaring the death of the Clinton campaign, jumping on the post-Iowa "bounce" that showed Obama up by 13 points at one stage, according to "their' polls. The post-NH coverage of Hillary's win was equally mindless. And I'm not sure how CNN could believe referring to their pundits as "the best political team on television" is effective branding.

I'm not sure if it's because of an abbreviated primary season but so far I have been amazed at how trivial the pundits have been in their analyses. Maybe the well-worn notion of "change" should apply to the media as well!

Great post. As much as I'm a fan of Jason, that kind of sentiment is so frothy, it's downright scary (at least for anyone who still remembers the original dot bomb era).