Slashdot Mirror
Making the Jump From Web To TV
PreacherTom writes, "No stranger to the tech-savvy, video bloggers are the next phenomenon to go from online to the mainstream. For example, Internet celebrity Amanda Congdon just finished broadcasting her cross-country relocation from New York to L.A. on the Web. The former host of Rocketboom, one of the most popular of the video blogs, with roughly 211,000 daily viewers, has a new gig as a contributor for ABC. She's not alone. In fact, major movie and TV studios are increasingly looking to the Web for new talent for both on- and offline projects."
Wow. Hot young chick does a demo tape (video blog), and a network picks her up. This is new because...?
Oh, right..it's on the Internet (TM)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
There's another way to make the jump from web to TV. I think Dateline NBC has been running shows on it.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Yes! It's my chance to become famous! After all, everyone wants to watch a geek sitting in front of a computer writing code. Man, now THAT's entertainment!
Raise your hand if you haven't heard of Amanda Congdon until now. If she's been seen by 211K people, I guess I'm not one of them. 211K people is a small # of tv viewers, and even smaller segment of web surfers. I think more people would recognize the Star Wars Kid, or that Numa Numa dork. Or, I could be completely wrong.
"Internet celebrity", uh, yeah... Just what we need, more Paris Hiltons and people who are famous for something trivial, or even nothing.
All I know is I wish I could view youtube clips on my TV without any file conversion(making it look worse), or hooking up my ipod, etc. I watch YouTube clips 100 times more often than Comcast's skimpy "On Demand" programming. I wonder if some day people will say "watch youtube" instead of "Watch tv".
The beauty of podcasts is that I can listen to them in my car - videocasts demand my full attention. It's great to be able to keep up with the latest Java news while sitting in traffic; makes that time feel less wasted. This interview wasn't too bad neither.
The Army reading list
"Amanda Congdon"
/. just met her and is smitten with her. Now he can call and say "gee, I hope we didn't [nervous laugh] slashdot your site [more nervous laughter]"
I asked the twenty people around me if they'd ever heard of this person. No one has.
I went to her site. A lot of bandwidth to tell you that she's famous and will be on TV soon. She points you to her own entry on Wikipedia (which looks suspiciously like her web site). The web site says that she's famous and will be on TV soon.
I suspect one of the editors of
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
...because until now, I've never heard of these people. And even when I did, I didn't give a rats arse...
Mostly random stuff.
> then again this is ABC (Disney) so i'm sure she'll get some stupid ass show like hanna montanna
Are you seriously blasting a show written for 6 year old girls? I would hope you don't like Hanna Montana.
... to see if I raise my hand.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
This isn't exactly new. SNL recruited one of it's latest cast members from the internet, Andy Samberg (spelling?). He's the shaggy haired one that wrote the "Chronic-cles of Narnia" skit. I hadn't heard of him before, and I definitely have not heard of this lady, but it does prove that the internet can be useful as a place to audition your skills. You can direct casting directors to your web site for a more robust showing of your skills.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
Why isn't Ze Frank being picked up? I'm surprised the Daily Show doesn't show his stuff.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
You have to wonder where the 211k viewers come from. If we subtract the slashdotting then there are probably about 5 hits.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Another success story is the people behind Consolevania (a TV show about gaming) being picked up by the BBC to create a similar (successful!) show for the Real Telly (tm).
Gas in yer face!
We need more information about the latest fads please. Is this slashdot or E exclamation point?
(In case you missed the sarcasm, it's there.)
Clearly you're not familiar with the wonder of Mademoiselle Congdon's breasts.
Ew. I mean, why "jump" backwards?
TV (I'm not talking about the art of making movies here, I'm talking about television programming) is 99.99% meaningless mindsturbation. Of all the technologies humankind has come up with, surely television is the one that has almost completely failed to reach the potential it offered.
The web, on the other hand, is able to actually be endlessly engaging and at least does contain enormous amounts of worthwhile content available at any hour of the day if you simply seek it out. We can interact, as we do here, we can study endless hours, we can create content for others to study, we can visit other places and societies, we can search out reviews and counter-opinions. The web strongly defies the pressure from commercial entities to reduce it to its least common denominator.
Television... that is not the case. Television, as near as I can tell, is constantly reaching for the least common denominator, and what's more, getting there without any trouble at all. Faux News. Lost. Survivor. Infomercials. Religious broadcasts. Medium and Psychic Detectives. Blind Date. TV is like a sewer of the mind; all decayed, toxic matter, nothing suitable for human consumption.
Honestly, the most valuable thing I've seen on television in the last few months was an HGTV show that gave tips on how to go about room renovation. The only worthwhile news show on the box is the bloody daily show, and "science" on television seems to simply mean Yet Another UFO Show For Rubes.
Jump from the web to TV? No, I think the correct phrase might be "Fall from the web to TV", or "Slip from the web to TV", or even "Television claims another victim."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
a better story would have been if that monkey that stuck his finger up his but, smelled it and fell out a tree got a movie gig. All Hail the Chimp!
this amount of stupidity usually requires a group of people
Eh. Talented people use tools available to them to develop a reputation and generate publicity. This type of thing predated blogs, and the web in fact.
What is this new "Television" everybody is talking about? Could this be the tube that I threw away 2 years ago?
Do not trust this signature.
I recently discovered that with Xbox Media Center (http://xboxmediacenter.de) I can do just this. There are certainly downsides -- the browsing interface isn't as flexible as with a web browser, and searching kind of blows because you have to type in your search terms with your remote control via an on-screen keyboard. But it is YouTube on your TV. I was surprised at how decent it looked.
Yeah cuz porn is so hard to get on the net...
...
I'm so hard up that I have to watch some b-rated barbie talk on her blog
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I'd really like to see these guys taking some money for the effort. But after ep. 12, I don't know... Even if Jeremy agrees, and Kyle finds some other TV executives, they still have to deal with FPS Doug first. I suppose Jeremy could try a micro combo right before Doug fires that nintendo pistol, though.
... seems they have all seen the show.
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
I think it's a generational thing. Lots of young people are now tuned out of TV, tuned out of newspapers. Their default space is online - chatting via MSN, reading myspace, blogs, youtube. TV is something they switch to when there's something they really want to see.
"After all, everyone wants to watch a geek sitting in front of a computer writing code. Man, now THAT's entertainment!"
Especially one handed!
Rocketboom didn't belong to her, and was more akin to a newsmagazine. She was the newsreader, so it is not surprising she's going to be doing similar on TV.
In my opinion the entire premise of this article is backwards and out of step with 21st Century
culture. The internet is the new mainstream, at least as far as myself, my family (who do not
own a TV) and many of my friends are concerned. The only meaningful way to jump is *from* the dieing
medium of television into the reality of internet culture. However, regardless of how much money
the mainstream players throw at marketing online they sem to fail because they don't understand the
culture of the internet. If you are already established in the online world why would anybody care
about television or radio these days?
your darn toot'n that i'm blasting a show for 6 year old girls cause 6 year old girls turn into 7 yearold girls, etc. so eventually they be stupid young women like paris hilton and knocked up wondering "what would montanna do ;) Not to mention that the whole premis is based on the girl lies to everyone, and that it's better to be famous than "normal". Regardless of the "on this very special episode of hanna montanna".........
with all of this fanfair recently with YouTube and stuff, I thought it was going the other way...
Here you go, thwackers!
I only started watching Rocketboom more recently.
I think Joanne Colan is fantastic!
Must watch more Rocketboom...
I believe that the minute a major network gets their hands on new talent, especially from the likes of YouTube or other vlogging community, it could very well end up in the removal of the elements that made the individual popular in the first place. Since their first priority is revenue, I'm convinced that they're likely to take whatever they get, and dumb it down to appeal to the widest possible audience. Therein lies the charm of YouTube et al. If you're not popular on YouTube, it's not YouTube's problem. YOU decide what to do about it, not the collective input of 10 managers at various levels of a corporate media company.
Personaly, I think television as it is is very primitive and even archaic compared to the web these days. Right now, we are still hearing all of this "hi-def" this and that, and people are being pushed by the media and mfgs. to buy a nice 60 inch silver colored super duper plasma High Def TV to out do the Jonses, and there seemes to be an usualy big wave of hype over TV these days (generated, suprise!, by the media mougls themselves) .
The reality is, this medium is dying, and sites like YouTube and the net in general is slowly but surely taking it's place. Most of what's on TV is insepid slop (watch enough daytime TV, and you will gleefuly remove your own eyes with an ice pick. Primetime isn't all that much better), you can't watch whenever you want, when you want it (DVRs and limited "on demand libraries" are just a kludge to fix this problem), most of the shit is one sided and you can be sure when they do allow call-ins, on spot interviews or whatever, they are very careful about what they allow on the air, and I'm not talking about swear words here, the only info you get is what they decide to pump out to you, and even the technology itself is extremely restrictive, and completely subject to the whims of corporations, politicians, and anybody who has a nice fat wallet, leaving the "regular" people out of the picture.
TV's days are numbered, and as computer and network technologies continue to improve and broadband spreads, this dinosaur will just rot more and more until it get regulated to the
history books.