I don’t believe one can accurately say that today the audiences for tv and web are different. The reality is, the same person watches tv one minute and the web the next, sometimes even doing both at the same time. In fact, it is entirely conceivable that you could watch the same content live on tv and live via streaming video on a laptop while sitting in front of the tv. It is just a conceivable that the broadcaster could point their live camera at their own laptop and send the live streaming video on the laptop screen to the broadcast audience. So the broadcaster’s rather elitist view that they must be picky about the content is becoming a weaker argument by the minute.

The audience seems quite accepting of poor reproduction quality and tolerant of a wide range of quality from poor to HD. Scratchy video and audio, formerly verboten on tv, are now seen frequently, especially as news shows pick up security camera and amateur news video clips.

True, there are valid issues with respect to technical excellence and I do not mean to reject or minimize them.

Though I don’t like the closed model of Flash, I think it is a terrific medium and find it to be a good bridging technology between film, video and web.

I agree with you 100% in your definition of “broadcaster” as more than just THE broadcaster. You’ll note I put myself in that category, and I’m a TD. My point was that people who produce content for broadcast rather than web approach the actual content production in a completely different way. This is because broadcasters are content producers while online content producers are somewhat different. This makes more sense with an example:

I was approached last night by a guy who wants to hire me to make motion graphics for a show they are packaging for HGTV. The pilot has a budget of $50,000 and is set to be completed in three weeks. It’s a magazine-style show and each 25 minute episode features 3 segments with different topics. The show is formatted for TV and built on the premise of keeping the viewer interested throughout by building anticipation before the commercial breaks and so on. The main focus of the show is for it to be entertaining.

In contrast, I was approached a week ago to help produce an online video magazine with much the same type of content. This show had a $5,000 budget for the whole year (three episodes per week). Each episode can be no longer than 6 minutes and the format is directed toward the impatient internet audience so it’s an upside-down pyramid with all the interesting stuff right off the bat to keep the viewer stuck to the screen for as long as possible. The main focus of the show is for it to be educational.

There are two important distinctions here: The first one is that shows formatted for broadcast are structured differently from those formatted for the internet because the viewing audiences are vastly different in their viewing habits. A TV viewer is far less likely to change channels than an internet viewer is to click on a button and leave the video. The second distinction is that what works content wise on TV differs from what works on the web. While TV bases itself mainly on pure entertainment, the most persistently successful videos on the web are how-to or educational (though funny) videos. AskANinja and TikiBarTV are good examples of this and MetaCafe pretty much bases it’s existence on how-to content.

These two distinctions are at the forefront of the “conflict” between the two media, and they are very hard to overcome because they have to do with the end user rather than the content creator. Which is why many broadcast outlets are starting to make content targeted specifically at the web audience and released only on the web. This content is vastly different from the broadcast content and much of it would never fly on TV at all.

There was one point I completely forgot to mention in my original article: Broadcast outlets have extremely high and stringent standards for what is put on the airwaves. While you can get away with grainy, murky, blurry and badly shot video with inexcusably bad audio on the web, once it’s on TV the viewer expects it to be immaculate. And when it’s not, they complain. To the broadcast outlet. Anyone who has made a movie or worked in TV production will know that getting the content up to this standard is a pain and requires a lot of know-how and expensive equipment. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to explain to people why a graphic meant for TV can never be hard white or hard red and why your lines have to be at least 2 pixels wide if they are horizontal or vertical. These are problems web producers have no knowledge of that become huge issues once you try to migrate things to TV. I’ve worked on a couple of projects where we had to re-package the entire show to get it on the air because the graphics were designed by someone with zero TV experience and didn’t comply with even the most basic standards. Much of the blame for these problems must be taken by the so-called “democratization” of media because people think that if they can make something that looks decent on the web, there is no reason why it shouldn’t look good on TV as well. That’s just not the case. TV and film production is a science that has to be learned. Simply picking up a camera and shooting isn’t going to cut it.

Man, I sound like such a grouch. I’m not really negative, I just want to make sure people understand that these problems are far more complicated than they seem.

Enjoyed reading your thoughts here. Well written! You hit some points that I have been discussing with some other broadcasting folk that were at the event this past week, including the fact that the revenue model for both Sanctuary and Quarter Life were to both get picked up as regular series rather than remain as web-based shows. In the case of Sanctuary, with the visual effects involved it would be very difficult to finance at this stage on the web.

I whole heartedly agree with your point on the different languages that our two industries speak – as Meg and I were building we ran into this realization on a number of occasions. It is also a realization that I came to just now in reading your blog and leads into a few points that I feel I need to shed some light on.

1) The broadcast community includes filmmakers, writers, actors, directors, producers, camera men ….etc and yes, the commissioning editor (or “broadcaster” in the strictest sense of the word). Similarly the digital media community represents a wide variety of skill sets including social media experts, technology experts, bloggers, marketers ..etc. What Meg and I are intending to do here is bridge the broadcast community with the digital media community, not the “broadcaster” with the digital media community, although certainly “the broadcaster” (aka commissioning editor) is one of the people that we aim to attract to these events. Proportionately, we actually attracted a decent representation of commissioning editors to this first bridging media event, especially since in Canada most of the commissioning editors are based in Toronto. We certainly hope to see this group grow in number as we build. Overall, there were 66 people registered for the event representing the “broadcast community”, 63 from the digital community, and a few educators and others who were there out of curiosity. Certainly from both the broadcast and the digital communities, there were those of us that bridged both communities as well.

2) I was told at the end of the event by one of the broadcast decision makers that they are looking to us,the filmmakers and digital media experts for the lead on how best to approach and deliver multi-platform projects. We are the decision makers.

3) You suggest that the bridge is being built from the technology side alone. I, myself, come from the broadcast community originally, as do my fellow organizers – Carol Sill and Monica Hamburg. I personally feel that as broadcasters we have not learnt how to properly utilize multi-platforms, due to not having a clear understanding of how this marketplace works, having difficulty in identifying the people with whom to seek advice from in the digital media community, and treating that platform as a quick, dirty and cheap after thought to our projects. To use your tunnel analogy. We may have been building a tunnel, but we did not put the proper foundations in place and it is caving in.

Personally, I don’t feel that digital media is the death of traditional media, but I do feel that broadcast and digital media need to work together to build the future of media (which I believe will be multi-platform). Together we can create much stronger projects by building, learning and problem solving with one another, as opposed to separately. This goes back to the whole idea of not needing to reinvent everything ourselves, but utilizing the tools that have already been built.

4) I am glad you brought up the issue of copyright and legalities. These are issues that we wish to address in future events.

Once again really appreciate your taking the time to write down your insights from the day and greatly enjoyed reading them.

I certainly hope to see you at future events as your thoughts are sure to stimulate more discussion, which is exactly what we need in order to learn each others languages and find our own ground for communicating and building.

Erica