Reality TV

I am looking at some videos on YouTube, and how they are linked to each other to create a complete dialog between a few individuals. The videos remind me very much of the reality TV shows that you can watch on MTV. And some of these discussions have gone long enough that you could make it into a season release on DVD.

I have not seen it done yet, but I would think that there is potential for revenue in such a scheme. YouTube can print the DVDs and market them, and would share the revenue with the various participants in these discussions.

The whole thing reminds me of how Armistead Maupin book "Tales of The City" was originally released one chapter after the other as a chronicle in a Marin County newspaper. What I see on YouTube now seem very much like the same thing for videos stories. While the TV format was not really a good venue for this type of process, the web is perfect, and people are not expecting to get more than a few minutes of videos at a time, unless this is the video of a live event.

I am curious to see how long it will take before we see DVD releases of YouTube content...

Media Convergence

Meanwhile, Cinemanow and Movielink are working on services to download and burn. Media keeps converging.

The key will be to offer the appropriate level of interaction for the medium: users will want to do much more from a PC than just watching movies or burn DVDs. Fan-hood should be able to jump to another level, with forum to discuss the movies, and maybe repositories of shorts related to the movie that users can upload.

Another opportunity for YouTube for example would be to become a marketing arm for the Majors: imagine a service where you would ask fans to create their own trailer for a coming movie from carefully chosen clips that would be released to them. Guess how much they would do to spread these to their friends, and the buzz you would get around contests to figure out which one the consumers like best.

A great book on Media Convergence is "Convergence Culture" by Henry Jenkins