STBD as Case Study

I met Kfir Pravda, a bright young guy from Israel (who happens to also be a huge STBD fan), at Video on the Net last month. He has a lot of great ideas about the future of web video. As a marketer, he also understands that ensuring content creators get paid for their efforts is integral to the sustainability and growth of the field.

He references STBD in his most recent blog post regarding the differences in production and cost between old media and new media. Is the ability to create sustainable content on the fly a positive or a negative? Definitely worth a read, even from a non-STBD point of view.

Why Old Media Is Becoming Extinct -- And Why You Might be Next

My best friend hasn't had a raise in 3 years. That's because he works for a TV news station in a small market. He's been laboring under ever-changing workplace conditions, and frequently taking on the responsibilities of others (who have quit or been fired). That's more work for the same amount of money.

Why?

Because the station is trying to cut costs. It already has to overhaul its entire process to become HD compliant by 2009, so additional investments -- like employee morale or new market exploration -- must be postponed.

We talked last night about all the cool things his station COULD be doing, but isn't -- ways in which new media could be utilized to bring in a whole new audience AND make the station more relevant. But, as he explains, the powers that be in his company see the web as the enemy, something that steals the TV news viewers, and they see no reason to invest more money in that losing proposition.

This discussion reminds me of a video I just saw today at New Assignment -- a "MAC vs. PC"-esque debate between two Chicago newspapers that sums up exactly why old media is lumbering toward extinction.

Before you or I get too smug about being ahead of the curve, we should instead stop and ask ourselves the same question: namely, what IS that hot new thing everyone is buzzing about, and how AREN'T we using it?

For example, I don't use Twitter or Groovr. I see no reason to, based upon the way I currently live my life. But then I freeze in my tracks because that's the same kind of statement I would have expected my grandparents to make about email 10 years ago.

With the speed the world changes today, we're all one trend away from becoming our grandparents -- or worse, extinct.

The WANT Problem

Longtime viewers remember an age not so long ago -- atcually, just last season -- when Something to Be Desired was still primarily about the DJs who worked at WANT FM. Some of them have asked where the radio station went this season, and why we're spending so much time focused on Vanity Press, Affogato, etc.

The answer is simple: we lost the location.

WANT was always filmed in the WQED radio station in Oakland. Through a stroke of good fortune, they were open to our original need for a location back in 2003 and they allowed us to utilize their facilities, few questions asked, for the next 3 years -- as long as we didn't disrupt anything.

Considering some of the scenes we were able to pull off on their premises -- including Caroline and Dean's love scene in the studio that kicks off Season Three, which was accidentally witnessed in progress by one of the WQED engineers -- we think we made great use of the opportunity without making life difficult for our hosts.

But then, without warning, we were informed one July afternoon that we would need to wrap up our filming and never return to the premises again. We attempted to discern what the problem was, or if there was anything we could do to smooth things over, but the powers-that-be were not interested in negotiation. We needed to leave and that was that.

And so WANT ceased to exist.

Ironically, we'd already begun filming in that direction, with the fictional station in danger of being shut down due to the bank taking it over. Our plan involved Todd rallying the troops and making a valiant stand against inevitability, and wrangling another year of life out of the station until an even bigger problem would have beset them, but that storyline got yanked out from underneath us before the season even aired.

(Incidentally, we never did find out why we were asked to leave. But considering new management was involved, it could have been any number of things which, under previous management, might never have been noticed but which drew attention to us now.

Informally, I suspect it had something to do with one of our actresses accidentally walking into a WQED board meeting while wearing a bustiere, but I suppose we'll never know for sure.)

Life After WQED

So, we did the next best thing we could do: we shifted focus to Vanity Press and Affogato while trying to find a new radio station location for WANT.

When those other leads failed to pan out either, we realized that WANT might never ride again. It seemed a disservice to our longtime fans -- and characters -- to have their unifying location written out so incidentally, so we left ourselves open to an act of serendipity that would enable us to resuscitate the concept in the immediate future.

Enter: Rich's wild idea of taking the station online.

On one hand, we lose the physicality of the location that made the radio element so convincing. On the other hand, we're now freed to tackle the bigger issue: how we, as people, communicate -- especially when it's semi-anonymous. And, considering traditional media are still reeling from the impact of the internet, it seemed only logical that WANT's next respite might come from a bunch of tubes.

How will this plotline return to the fore? Check back when new episodes resume on March 26 and we'll all find out.

Kill Your Televison... or Just Let It Die Naturally...

Word of the new media revolution is spreading.

An STBD mention was brought to our attention in today's column from the Wilton Villager, which serves the town of Wilton, CT. In it, columnist Richard Frisch alerts people to the fact that they can start trading in their terrestrial TV equipment and go strictly computer for their entertainment.

Says Frisch:

"My recent research indicates that the traditional, major players, the U.S. over-the-air networks are behind the times when it comes to Internet television. You can bypass them for almost everything. Network television viewers are decreasing because there are so many entertainment alternatives."

Those of us who make this media for a living (and I use that term loosely at this point) have known about this for years now. But seeing these kinds of reports popping up in increasingly smaller newspapers, which traditionally target a non-early adopter audience, says something about the speed at which this medium is changing.

It also reminds me that you don't need to live in a major metropolis to connect with the medium -- either as a viewer or a creator. Perhaps the age of social networking and user-generated content will be seen as something even bigger when gazed upon by history: the tipping point in which geography ceased to be a limiting factor for the cultural evolution of the species.