So, a little more on what I was saying yesterday.   

I didn’t really intend on making a big post but as I got to typing I realized that I had a lot to say on the topic.  I live in Southern California and went to High School living with a Dad who liked to act in live productions (I eventually got drawn into the technical side of it myself) so I have a lot of friends who act.  If you’ve never been around a group of actors let me tell you that they are normally insanely creative people.   So I always wondered why they didn’t strike out on their own.  With all the digital alternatives available and a friend to help them navigate through them (a.k.a. me) they could strike out on their own for pennies. In trying to convince them to do something like this I came to a couple conclusions… 

1. They’re not self motivated: These people are my friends and I care about them deeply but the reality is that most actors aren’t going to get anything done if there isn’t a director or stage manager around to push them.  Once they get the push things tend to go pretty well but they’re nothing without that push.
2. They hate technology: Anyone who has tried to teach a “creative type” how to use a computer knows what I’m talking about here.  There are exceptions but for the most part they not only don’t know how to use computers they are flat out intimidated by them.  The only people I know (in my age range or younger) who managed to make it through school without using a PC or notebook are actors.

 Those two facts made striking out on their own, even with my help, next to impossible.  But I can’t help but think things would be different if they just had someone who was willing to devote themselves to the project.  If someone could sit behind them and push them to harness the creativity they have I could almost guarantee you’d get something entertaining.     I guess what I’m trying to say here is that this is an area that is ripe for the picking if you are a VC.  A little structure and these people will perform miracles for you and, as I said yesterday, the price isn’t that high.  Most VCs I know seem embarrassed when they give less than $5 million to a company so why wouldn’t you give this a try?  If you succeed you’d be at the forefront of the digital revolution, the first web based Television Network.  The Network willing to take risks that not even HBO would take because they can. 

Now that I think about it, that’s exactly what this is…the chance to become the next HBO except you don’t have to build out an entire infrastructure because the web provides it for you.  The truth is, the web offers the same opportunity that early cable stations had at a small fraction of the price.   I think that digital content has been so bad in its early stages that people think it can’t be taken seriously.  That’s true to an extent in that people expect original web content to be “lonelygirl quality” stuff.  But it doesn’t have to be.  Invest in the right equipment, hire a professional crew and try to produce something TV quality and I’ll be you’ll succeed.  Anyone who has visited ABC.com lately can attest to the medium’s ability to deliver a quality broadcast (ABC.com currently streams shows in 720p HD).    

Anyway, file it under ideas I’d like to try some day once I finish the other 1,000 or so prospective projects that I have bouncing around my head.

Addendum: It looks like Quaterlife, the show that inspired yesterday's post, might end up on TV after all due to the writer's strike.

Meme trackers are something that I have a huge amount of interest in so when I read about a new one called Blogcosm (courtesy of Mathew Ingram) I ran over to check it out.  I actually thought Mr. Ingram was being too hard on the site…that is…until I saw the site myself.  Having actually taken a look I have to say that, in my opinion, this site is just flat out unusable.   I’m honestly not even entirely sure what it does or why I would consider it useful.  It certainly doesn’t appear to be a meme tracker.  Worse though is the fact that the terrible UI design doesn’t give any hint as to what the site’s intended purpose is.  The about page says… 

We're building a reference site about blogging and the blogosphere, one day at a time. 

What?!?  What does that mean?  Sound like it’s a wiki though clearly that isn’t what it is. 

Well, I’d hoped this would segway into a more substantial post about meme trackers but as I’m sure many new bloggers have found sometimes posts don’t go where you expect them to.   Expect a meme trackers post at some point in the future I guess…

Addendum: Scott Lawton, founder of Blogcosm, posted a response to the blog posts generated by his initial interview.  Here’s an exceprt…

But Blogcosm is neither a search engine nor a "meme tracker". We're not a new challenge for Techmeme -- I think people may have read a bit too much between the lines. Initially I thought the title was just intentionally provocative. That may play a role, but perhaps the key word is actually "parse". Our approach to analyzing blogs is different than anything we've seen. (There's no shortage of interesting software opportunities; I've never been one to create "me too" products or sites.) Because we tackle fewer blogs, we can afford to provide more information about each. Marshall's post hit Techmeme -- our first bit of blog fame. Fame is fleeting.... That's ok, we're hard at work on gathering and organizing more data, and presenting it in ways that we think people will find useful. We've only just begun.

An interesting article over on TVSquad.com about two fairly well know producers who are creating an “internet only” TV series.   I have to admit to having never seen the shows these producers are known for (“Thirtysomething” and “My So-Called Life” were before my time and “Once and Again” is just a show that I never watched) but I think they all had some degree of success (I know the names at very least). 

A lot of the article focuses on the “why” of the whole thing which basically boils down to the producers not liking all the restrictions put on TV by the FCC.  I’m sure that part of it is interesting to some people, but not really to me (at least, not when I’m in a “tech centric” mindset) 

 Here’s the part that I found the most interesting… 

According to Herskovitz, you can produce an hour or content on the internet for as little as $30,000. In contrast, it takes millions of dollars to produce content for TV. This is why many of the people I know (independent filmmakers and struggling TV and film writers) are excited about the prospect of launching our own projects on the web. If it works -- and if someone like Herskovitz and Zwick can prove it works -- then what's to stop the rest of us from following this DIY model of TV production? 

Now I’m sure this does not include the money needed to actually pay for all the viewing bandwidth but that is still pretty impressive.

If true that means a company could, in theory, create their own primetime network for $660,000 a week (3 hours per night and 4 on Sunday).  That really isn’t terribly expensive particularly when you consider the fact that one hour of Reality TV costs $700,000 and one hour of regular TV can cost up to $2 million. 

Plus, since the rules and regulations are far fewer (going back to the complaints in the TVSquad article) you’d be able to draw creative people who want to do more than TV will allow them to do.  It’s basically the long tail theory applied to the Television industry.

I certainly don’t think anything like this is going to materialize anytime soon and there are some serious quality issues to consider here (I don’t think anyone believes a show like LOST could be produced for $30,000 an episode) but it’s still an interesting thought.  If you could have 20 primetime networks instead of just 5 you’d have a lot more content to choose from. 

This is an interesting topic to me so, in lieu of a really long post, I’m going to come back to it tomorrow with some other thoughts.