Thursday, April 26, 2007

Making media is hard to do

I agreed with it when I read it. Kyte.tv sent me back to quote it. A bored Kevin Drum on why v-logging kind of sucks:

...in reverse order of importance.

1. The first objection is the most obvious one: it’s so slo-o-o-o-w. A 20-minute v-log usually contains remarkably little content amidst all the interruptions, verbal tics, and hemming and hawing. I prefer my bloviating in more concentrated form. On a related note, v-logs are also almost impossible to scan, which I find endlessly annoying. I can scan a 3,000 word article in little more than a minute or so if I’m looking for a particular passage.

2. V-loggers tend not to think out their arguments very well before turning on the camera, which means that I usually have to sit and watch for 20 minutes as they slowly and painfully piece it together. On a purely selfish basis, I’d rather that they spend the time it takes to hone their argument and write it down in a form where I can read it quickly, instead of blathering aimlessly and forcing me to spend the time to pick out the wheat from the chaff.

3. Finally, I just don’t get it. There’s a reason political blogging has become popular: it’s a genuinely different medium compared to other forms of political writing. Its combination of short takes, easy hyperlinking, interactivity (with other blogs and with blog commenters), constant updating, and accessibility by ordinary writers makes it unique. You can do things with a blog that you just can’t do on an op-ed page or a magazine, and that’s inherent in the medium.

V-logging, by contrast, is just TV. It’s literally the same thing that you see on PBS or CNN or Fox, except less professional. It just doesn’t bring anything new to the table.

As good a time as ever to quote Sturgeon’s Law, “Ninety percent of everything is crud.” (Does anyone know the coinage of its corollary, “one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure?") As we slam user generated content, let’s keep in mind what the content industry has given us. I expect the ratio of good to bad from YouAndMe TV to be just as good.

Friday, April 13, 2007

1983 Fierstein: on Torch Song, Letterman & La Cage

In the early eighties I was a segment producer for one of the first gay television shows on cable, OUR TIME with Vito Russo. I reminisced about it here a couple years ago:

Our office was in the turreted northwest tower of the municipal building and we came out of WNYC (TV, sold off by Rudy Giuliani in 1997). It was great fun. I so wanted a gay network then, and confidently foresaw the day that it would come about.

Alas, now that it’s here (and it is here on my rural Georgia cable system, though I don’t subscribe) I’ve stopped wanting it.

In fact, in 1983 I talked with one of Torch Song’s producers, John Glines, about starting the gay network I envisioned (he wasn’t interested, theater was his thing). And today we’ve got two and I still don’t want one. And still don’t subscribe. But with word of Harvey’s new show I went digging up in the attic. And this is what I came down with:

Saturday, March 17, 2007

The Show is over

As promised, the last episode of The Show with Ze Frank is up.

At halfway through the one year run, he was interviewed for On The Media and asked what he had learned:

ZE FRANK: What have I concluded? I would say there’s this notion that this space is sort of a quasi-reality space, right? - and that, in a sort of different way than television, you actually, there’s this sense that you and your audience are enmeshed somehow and that they know something about you and you sort of know something about them. And I guess one of the really surprising things is the degree to which that’s true. You know [LAUGHS], the kind of emotional investment that I have gotten from this, and, [LAUGHS], you know, the degree to which a single comment in a huge comment field can pretty much ruin my day is really, really remarkable.

BOB GARFIELD: You’ve got 100,000 people a day streaming your production, which is, you know, let’s say, a bigger audience than Tucker Carlson has, and he makes a lot of money and he’s pretty famous. To what extent have you been able to cash in on the success of your show? I mean, is this a money-making proposition?

ZE FRANK: You know, the amount of time and sort of personal resource that I spend on the show [LAUGHS] makes it very, very hard to call any sort of financial gain on my part “cashing in.” One of the interesting things now is getting involved in this conversation of what exactly is the business model? But it’s not really about finding the business model that works. It’s about, you know, a few really large key players starting to invest real money into this space, you know, deciding that there’s value in this space. So in the meantime, you know, I have all this sort of requisite Web money-making tactics in place. I sell t-shirts. I have text links. And, you know, probably the most unusual thing that I do is I work with Revver, which encodes a small click-through ad on the end of my video and gives me some of the money from that.

BOB GARFIELD: And are you making a living compared to what you were making when you were, you know, in the advertising business?

ZE FRANK: [LAUGHS] No. The answer to that question is no.

The Show may be over but Ze’s only just begun.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Salatin on cities and sustainable agriculture

In the book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, sustainable farmer Joel Salatin is quoted as saying (on page 245), “Why do we have to have a New York City? What good is it?”

The quote was no longer fresh in my mind when I met him the other evening and told him I had lived in New York City for most of my life. I asked him about it; his position has softened somewhat. It clearly wasn’t the first time he had answered the question…

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Joel Salatin @ Georgia Organics

Joel Salatin’s keynote at the Georgia Organics conference was terrific. For those who don’t know who Joel is, he is one of the nation’s most renowned sustainable farmers. I only became aware of him through reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. You can learn more about him at his Polyface Farms website.

The theme of the conference was Connecting at the Crossroads - New Directions for Farms, Foods & Communities. Today Joel was featured in a full-day on-farm field day. I missed that but did get to talk some with him last night.

Michael Pollan has taken to calling for glass walls for our slaughterhouses. In a similar vein, last night Joel Salatin called for “aesthetically and aromatically pleasing farms.” (Please note: we’re still getting the hang of our camera, the sound quality could be better):

Sunday, December 17, 2006

The Potato Peeler

Apparently profiled in Vanity Fair in April of this year - “With his hand-tailored suits and Turnbull & Asser ties, Joe Ades definitely looks the part of a Park Avenue swell. But unlike his neighbors, Ades works the streets-selling potato peelers.” - they say he’s a rich man. And a New York legend. I do love New York…

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Google Video plays catches up

I was so excited when Google Video started accepting video clips from the public; then disappointed in the offering and swept away by YouTube.

I wasn’t alone.

My assessment of how Google Video missed the boat is that they aimed their product at the video professional and had in a mind a revenue model. YouTube was for you and me and we’ll learn one day what the revenue story is.

From the Google Video Team:

We’ve been working hard to make Google Video the best way to find and play video on the web, and we hope some of our recent features are useful to you:

- Instant gratification: A web-based video uploader (http://video.google.com/videouploadform) for immediate upload and playback
- Share your video with the world, or maybe just your friends: Single-click video posting to popular blog services, including MySpace and Blogger
- Get involved!: Now add ratings, tags, and comments for all videos
- Zeit-what? Now you can see a “Top 100” list (http://video.google.com/videoranking), updated daily, that shows what people are watching
- It’s “Football”, not “Soccer”: Google Video now exists in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Canada, Poland, and the Netherlands

And there’s a lot more to come—you may have noticed that we’re also been experimenting with making “for sale” content free by sponsoring videos with ads. By doing this we’ve been able to expose a lot of great video to our users, like content from Charlie Rose (http://video.google.com/freetoday.html).

As to my own promised video blogging, I’ve got lots of footage but no time (or inclination really) to edit. I guess I’m just not a video blogger at heart.

Saturday, March 04, 2006

Smitten w/gay media

Every six months we get a story like this:

Marketers have chased this niche for years. But the trend has gained juice lately among major media companies as ventures like Brokeback attract straight consumers in a more gay-tolerant culture:

• Bravo, the cable channel owned by NBC Universal, next month is launching OutzoneTV.com, billed as the first broadband entertainment channel for gay viewers.

• Sony Music is teaming with Matt Farber, founder of MTV Networks’ gay-themed cable channel Logo, to create a label featuring singers such as Beyoncé and Melissa Etheridge popular with gays.

• Warner Books, a division of behemoth Time Warner, published a romance novel for gay men, Hot Sauce, last summer. It was written by a Boston couple: Scott Pomfret, a Securities and Exchange Commission prosecutor, and Scott Whittier, an advertising copy writer.

Companies see big dollar signs, says Karen Haus, a software analyst at WR Hambrecht who follows PlanetOut, a conglomerate of gay-focused websites and magazines that went public in 2004. “Gay people have enormous disposable income,” Haus says.

First of all, some gay people have enormous disposal income. The income curve is an inverted one. We are over-represented at both ends of the income spectrum.

Second, I’m all for going after the gay market, but not at all convinced we want to be in a media ghetto. Here’s a clip of my interview with Carl Pritzkat of Mediapolis on the gay media marketplace today.

I think an urban contemporary, hip, gay sensibility, media property would be a broadly popular attractive proposition.

Sunday, December 11, 2005

My personal video interest

The part of the Times Rocketboom story that interests me personally is this:

The average video runs no longer than a pop song and, as with blogs, it’s easy to dip in to and back out of any site that fails to hold your interest. In the right hands, vlogs can become microdocumentaries of surprising beauty, wit and intelligence… Rocketboom’s Minneapolis correspondent, Chuck Olsen, profiles other people on his main site, Minnesota Stories, but also maintains a video diary called Secret Vlog Injection. One post there uses video that Mr. Olsen shot without permission during an indie-rock concert at a local club. The result records not only a great performance by the band but also Mr. Olsen’s argument with the club’s manager, who tried to confiscate his camera. The story evolves into a smart, funny discussion of copyright issues and the philosophical difference between the world-views of the vloggers and traditional media companies. “There’s no economic motive,” Mr. Olsen says in titles that appear on the screen like a news crawl, noting that the viewer is not being charged for the video. “The point is to capture, and share, fantastic, fleeting moments.”

I’ve got four mini-projects shot and hope to shoot a fifth over the break. There are fascinating stories here. The way I want to tell them, the idea I want to explore, is a variation on the documentary form. Instead of editing an interview with cutaways and me assembling a narrative, I put the entire interview online, one question at a time. Each is linked to a blog post with more material. As the viewer, you pick and choose what you’re interested in and wind up assembling your own documentary from the materials I collect and point you to.

To date I’ve been fumbling around learning formats and codecs and figuring out how and where to host it. I thought I’d use Google Video - where anyone can stumble upon it then dig in as far as they want to go. I still may. But I also want to get familiar with Our Media and Participatory Culture. (As it stands the few clips I’ve put up are hosted on my blog server, and the video can only be viewed with Quicktime 7. I’m still working on it...)

I’m not real worried about how long it’s taking. Documentaries have a tradition of taking years to complete. The projects I’ve got going now will build over time and may never be called “finished.” That said, I’m fairly certain that I am the past, a product of my background and training, not as quick and agile with the tech, and still bound by some old ways of thinking. Not a bad thing, that will be my voice. But I’m as eager to work with students, see what they do, and watch, encourage, applaud and learn from others.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

My brush with the bubble

This site’s promise to provide “a pre-created VC friendly Web 2.0 company just for you!” took me back to the heady days of the Dot Com Bubble. I was a close observer with an opinion then, contrary as always, but swept up in it and not so cynical as some of my colleagues. Now I can hardly recall the ridiculous jargon I had such fun with.

In this clip Carl Pritzkat, my boss through some of those years, takes us from YourPharmacy.com to GayHealt.com, a wild ride that was my brush with the internet bubble. I sometimes wonder where I’d be had I been a producer at Yahoo! rather than Mediapolis, but the boutique internet shop was the best fit for me. Yes, those were the days.

While on the topic of bubbles, I will take this opportunity to agree with John Battelle’s NYTimes opinion piece from last month.  John says it feels like a bubble again:

Let’s tick off the signs: a red-hot market for Internet stocks (Google, for example, has more than quadrupled since it went public in 2004); fawning articles celebrating entrepreneurs; a glut of venture capitalists elbowing one another to invest in companies with no plans on how to make money past some hand waving about “advertising” and plenty of vague claims about how their technology will “change the world.”

The Internet is exciting again, and once again folks are rushing in. In some categories - like search or social networking, for example - there are scores of start-ups vying for pretty much the same market, and it’s certain that, just like last time, most of them will fail.

But regardless of all this déjà vu, we are not in a bubble. Instead we are witnessing the Web’s second coming, and it’s even got a name, “Web 2.0” - although exactly what that moniker stands for is the topic of debate in the technology industry. For most it signifies a new way of starting and running companies - with less capital, more focus on the customer and a far more open business model when it comes to working with others. Archetypal Web 2.0 companies include Flickr, a photo sharing site; Bloglines, a blog reading service; and MySpace, a music and social networking site.

He explains that this time around the Web platform has already been built, so we don’t need as much money to start companies, and we’re not as reliant on VCs. That means the driving force this time around is the entrepreneurs and geeks, rather than the financiers. And that search emerged from Web 1.0 as the killer app.

I’m hoping that some variation on the Wiki theme emerges as the killer app of Web 2.0.  Attributes I’m particularly interested in include aggregated filtered distributed and citizen-produced.

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Video update

Months ago I promised video blogging and took off with a camera to shoot. I posted my first 2 snippets (on [deleted by request] and Gay Media), successfully got them to Google (after some frustration; and still no Mac!) and not a thing since.

Here’s what’s up…

I’ve been working hard opening a new Media Lab for the college. We opened the day after Labor Day but the official grand opening is the week after next. The Media Lab includes webcasts and podcasts so that’s another thing keeping me busy.

There have been organizational and procedural obstacles to get by, lots of hardware and software to install and learn, a student staff to train and a student body to motivate, all while doing the regular work of the labs.

On the home front we’re still putting the house together from the summer renovations. Keeping busy there too.

So I’m looking forward to getting back to my video blogging; I imagine cool winter weekends working on the video already shot, finding out more about Our Media and Participatory Culture, and shooting more.

There’s lots of interesting stuff to shoot around here, but I’m still an old school video guy, and that takes time. But maybe the students will teach me and I’ll learn to be a free and easy video guy; find a new way and do my own version of Walking in LA.

Monday, July 18, 2005

Cape Cod Chips

A foggy day on the Cape, we headed for Hyannis and the Cape Cod Potato Chip factory. We’re big fans of the chips, there’s a map on the back of the bag, at home we laughed and said let’s visit. Today we did.

I took along a small video camera and thought I’d shoot something for the blog. And the students back at school; I told them when I left that I’d shoot it.

When I got there and the sign said no videotaping I was stumped. When I had the chance--a wonderful Customer Service rep, a great character happy to talk--I hardly knew what to ask. I have three microphones here; I left all of them at the house.

I know better; I have to plan if I’m going to get something good. We’ll see if I can make something interesting from what I shot.
Or maybe I’ll get lucky and one of my whiz kid students will do it for me. 

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Grrr

My video‘s been rejected!

The cryptic message refers me to the policy guidelines that by now I know by heart:

6. What are the technical requirements for my video to be included in Google Video?

• The video must be in a format we accept; see question 5 above

• The video must contain recognizable video content (video container files that do not contain video will not be accepted)

• The frame rate should be above 12 frames per second

• The video metadata must be accurate and relevant to the content you upload (no spam)

Ok. It has to be 5. Even though I’ve uploaded this stuff a dozen times in varying formats and settings trying to meet their file format spec:

5. What file formats do you accept?

Google accepts video in a wide range of popular formats. The fastest way to get your videos into Google Video is to submit each file in MPEG4 format with MP3 audio or MPEG2 with MP3.

While we also support other digital formats such as QuickTime, Windows Media, and RealVideo, it’s important to note that submitting your files in these formats may significantly delay us from using them on Google Video. In some cases, we may not be able to add your video at all.

Here are our preferred video specs:

• NTSC (4:3) size and framerate, deinterlaced

• Video Codec: MPEG2 or MPEG4 (MPEG4 preferred)

• Video Bitrate: at least 260Kbps (750kbps preferred)

• Audio Codec: MP3 vbr

• Audio Bitrate: at least 70Kbps (128 Kbps preferred)

I know they’re in beta but a little more spcificity would be helpful. The video they rejected met that “preferred” spec and there’s no way for me to find out more on why it was rejected.

Is it too much to ask for a “How to” that suggests settings for the major popular video editing packages, say iMovie, FinalCut, Avid and Adobe Premier? Or even an advanced settings screen?

I’ve resaved with new output settings and uploaded again. And I’m open to advice if you have some to offer.

Saturday, July 09, 2005

Gay media today

Michael Demmons is disappointed with the offerings today on Logo, the new gay channel from Viacom via MTV.

In 1980-something (I can’t precisely recall anymore but it was the early 80s) I produced a weekly “Stonewall Minute” for the then “first” gay TV show in New York, “Our Times” with Vito Russo (nary a mention in his bio). It wasn’t the first and I don’t know on what grounds we called ourselves the first but we did. I recall the one that was the first, from the 70s, whose name I’ve now forgotten (something to do with Oz I think).

Our office was in the turreted northwest tower of the municipal building and we came out of WNYC (TV, sold off by Rudy Giuliani in 1997). It was great fun. I so wanted a gay network then, and confidently foresaw the day that it would come about.

Alas, now that it’s here (and it is here on my rural Georgia cable system, though I don’t subscribe) I’ve stopped wanting it. Reading about what will be on is only part of it:

Shows like “Momentum,” will focus on first-person experiences of real-life gay folk. Profiles of a gay rugby team, gay rappers, lesbian surfers, as well as gay Muslims and Latinos… Touted as a “reality series,” the channel will serve up “Open Bar,” an original series that follows one man’s coming-out process as he works to open a West Hollywood, Calif., gay bar.

My focus is really not banal shows (someone, I think it was In The Life, actually had a profile of what it was like to be a gay decorator). Rather it is that I don’t want to be ghettoized. Today what I want is for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people to be part of the accepted mainstream of American life. And if a gay show is loved by America (Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, first season) that’s even better.

So gay media today—once so important to me and those like me who left our small towns and headed for the city to find freedom and acceptance—is in a bind.

My last job in New York was with a gay internet company, Mediapolis. I interviewed one of the partners who started that company when I was there last week. Here’s Carl Pritzkat’s comment on gay media today.

NOTE: I’m still working on how to deliver the best video. When I find what I’m looking for, I’ll update links and remove this note!

1/20/06 UPDATE: Finally updated link to Google video.

User error

I don’t mean to complain, but this video thing is making me crazy!

It turned out I was uploading the wrong file type to Google. It reminds me of when I first learned graphics. Having (basically) figured out the correct file type, I got the files uploaded to Google Video, where they still sit waiting to be approved. I hope the approval process will one day be quicker.

So today, acting upon the good and valuable advice of commenter Sooki, I set up an Our Media account, which requires setting up an Internet Archive account (and a whole new set of bios, links, blogs and profiles), then downloaded the Our Media Publisher.

Having completed all of that, I went to upload my video files (more forms with required descriptive data, copied from the Google Video pending entries) and clicked “Next.” The program crashed. Did it again, got a bit further. Crash. A third time. Crash. I sent error reports.

A wannabe geek, I have several computers here. I can try it from another operating system; I can save the video in yet another format. I will try and try again and I will one day have video on my blog. But for now, much as I hate to say it (ah to be a technologically adept 20 year old!), if the future is already here, I’m oh so stuck in the past.

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Video update

Oh, to be 20 again!

I imagine if I were 20 I’d be more technologically agile. I’m still struggling with Google Video. I can’t manage to get my stuff uploaded. And Friday is bearing down on me, with the next installment of Friday Video Blogging due in just 2 days.

[Deleted by request]

My first video on the web was back in 1999, an episode or two for a SoHo venture I was all excited about. It was definitely too soon then. Last winter I did a family web site laden with video, and family struggled to see it.

I have high hopes for Google moving video forward. I just want to find the time to focus and get it to work.

UPDATE: Google progress, it’s being verified.

ANOTHER UPDATE: An upgrade to iMovie HD (I also have Final Cut but for the moment don’t want to get into that) means I can export directly to MPEG 4 and should improve future uploads. Anyone know of public domain video programs?