IF PBS RAN THE ART WORLD

Can you make it more like South Park?

Television, despite all the billions of human labor hours that have been spent making stuff (and that is what TV is all about, making stuff..just like painting or sculpture), has produced for the most part nothing but garbage. Endless millions of hours of garbage. Day after day. Week after week. Year after year. People eating bugs. People selecting which briefcase has the money. Guess who’s coming to decorate.

It is beyond depressing. It is an embarrassment to our culture and to our civilization.

The question, of course, is why? Why do we, despite the billions of dollars spent on TV and the billions of hours devoted to it, continue to produce garbage?

Hyperlocal News

Yesterday, we held a press conference in Washington, DC to announce the launch of FiOS1, Verizon’s first local TV news and community information channel. We are fortunate to be partners with Verizon in this very exciting project, and now we can talk about it.

Advice to Students

With real writer Mark Bittman, food critic for the NY Times – trying to design a TV show – hello…. Food Network? Are you listening?

When I was 2o years old, I dreamed of being a writer.

So I bought my self an Olivetti portable typewriter (these being the days before laptops… or even computers), and I schlepped that thing to Nepal, into the Himalayas, where I ensconsced myself into the Kathmandu Guest House. Now this, I thought, is writing.

Once there, I immediately wrote to Peter Matthiessen.

I had been greatly influenced by Matthiessens’ book, The Snow Leopard, which was part of the reason I had schlepped the Olivetti 12, 000 miles. So as I sat down to write, I wrote to Matthiessen. I wrote him the kind of 20 page, single spaced letter that only a 20 year old would write. I told him how much he had influenced me, how much I wanted to write.. blah, blah, blah. And I sent it off.

A few weeks later, much to my surprise, I got an answer from Matthiessen.

Dead Man Talking

Hello? eBay?

Thomas Edison was an entrepreneur.

When he invented the phonograph in 1877 he also incorporated the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company. The idea was to sell phonographs – something which had never existed before. To create demand and push sales along, Edison listed fifty possible uses for the phonograph: dictation in business, books for the blind, a kind of primitive telephone answering machine and, of course, the ever popular ‘machine to record the last words of the dying’.

Notably not on the list was the idea of recording and playing music.

From The Guardian: Newspapers to Video

Michael Rosenblum is a former New York Times executive whose consultancy practice now provides training in video journalism all over the world for clients including the BBC. “Newspapers are very well placed to take advantage of web video – far more than local TV seems to be,” he says. “Because web 1.0 was text-oriented, it impacted far earlier on newspapers than it did on TV. TV seemed to feel that it was immune and so to a large extent was able to ignore the web. In TV news, they still believe that the ’show’ leads the website, and that the web is for ‘leftover video’.”

Which is why newspaper groups are investing heavily in video elements to their online operations. Both the Times and the Telegraph have “TV” sections on their websites, while the Sun and the Mirror sites are awash with video content – although much of it is aggregated from elsewhere. At the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger said earlier this month that £1m in investment would be earmarked for developing video projects.

The Unforseen Consequences of Innovation

Youtube started with him.

When Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1452, he was hoping for a quick kill.

He was deep in debt and his idea was to print bibles faster and cheaper than Monks could write them by hand. In the world of books, no one could conceive of much beyond bibles in the way of content, as that had been all that there was.

Were you a venture capitalist in Germany in the mid 15th Century, you might have invested in Gutenberg – faster, cheaper bibles, flood the market, drive out the Monks.

But the imact of Gutenberg’s technology was not about cheaper bibles – it instead unleashed an entirely unforseen intellectual revolution: it gave anyone with an idea the ability to publish. Anything.

VJ Academy with Travel Channel

For almost 20 years we have been running our VJ Bootcamps all over the world.

We have trained more than 5,000 people to work in this way, from London to Japan.

But now, with the web going to video, the demand for these skills is greater than ever. The ability to take a camera and a laptop and produce a good piece of video will certainly become a necessary skill for anyone who wants to participate in the 21st Century in any creative way.

Up until now, our courses have been mostly for professionals…. and admittedly very expensive.

Now, however we have entered into a partnership with The Travel Channel, part of Discovery Communcations, to run 4-day course, open to everyone.

And… The Travel Channel is looking for content – so you can not only learn how to shoot and cut, you can also sell it back to them and get on air almost immediately.

This seems like a pretty good deal!

Here’s the contact info: www.rosenblumtv.com

What’s It Worth?

The Future is Calling

New technologies can have massive disruptive impacts. When they appear whole industries, institutions or careers can collapse – seemingly overnight.

Sometimes, a new technology is so powerful that it changes the very way we think.

The invention of the steam-driven engine and the subsequent explosion of industrialization and rampant capitalism in Europe turned Dante’s “seven deadly sins” ca. 1320 (extravagance, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride) into the very foundations of a successful society. What Wall Street trader does not extoll the virtues of greed, pride, wealthy excess?)

What’s Your Trip?

Got video from that trip to Japan in your closet? Could be worth thousands….

There has been an enormous amount of buzz around User Generated Content or UGC. In 2000, hoping to catch this trend, I opened the DV DOJO, a kind of video bar/cafe in the East Village in NY. It was across the street from CBGB, so the vibe should have been right. It was a kind of Internet cafe, but instead of email I had set up FCP video editing work stations. I gave out cameras and held both classes and screening sessions. Along with the coffee, muffins and beer, you would think it would have been a smashing success.

Four years, $700,000 and one marriage later, I closed it.

$13,000 VJ Prize

Three years ago, we started to award a €10,000 ($13,200) prize for the best European VJ news piece. This year, the Concentra Company (one of the largest newspaper/media groups in Belgium) is expanding the award to include VJs from all over the world. For more information and to submit an entry contact:

www.theconcentra.org