How should a Web TV be?

by Livia Iacolare on July 30, 2007

web_tv_future.jpgToday I read Tommaso Tessarolo’s blog and I found out that he has a project in the works, which is called N3TV. Basically, he wants to create a Web TV platform that will host several formats. It is an experiment and I am sure it’s going to be very important for Italian Web TV (and not only).

To many producers that are into Web TV, the most difficult thing is certainly to tell what kind of content/format works and what not. When Justin.tv launched (do you remember the freaky cyber-guy wearing a camera on his hat?) and Ustream.tv gained some more popularity (rapidly followed by Mogulus and its impressive Web-based TV studio), I saw many people starting to stream events live: some shows were (and still are) amazing, while others were (and still are) pure crap.

We are at the beginning of a revolution and I see many bloggers throwing themselves into this big Web TV pot without knowing exactly what to do: some focus on airing pre-packaged shows, others dedicate themselves exclusively to live streaming (doesn’t matter whether they are streaming a conference or themselves taking a shower).

But when the narcissistic fever of these “justins” will be over, what will remain? I bet only some of them will survive.

I think that what will really make a difference in the Web TV production world will be coherence and focus on niche audiences. Yes, because it is important that we don’t transform Web TV into a generalist TV, just like the old mainstream medium. Formats should be carefully designed around a specific type of content and audiences should be constantly stimulated to participate and contribute to the creation of new formats.

(Of course this is valid for people who want to do this job seriously: there will always be someone who just does it for fun - and this is totally acceptable!).

I like to imagine Web TV as a “tele-participation“, rather than a “tele-vision“.

What’s your take?

Bookmark and share

{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Luca Sartoni 07.30.07 at 6:27 pm

Web TV is a great opportunity to extend our exoesistence inside a typical one-to-many monodirectional media, transforming it into a many-to-many and sometimes into a one-to-one media.

2 Tommaso Tessarolo 07.30.07 at 10:21 pm

I prefer to call it tele-conversation but for sure we’re tuned on the same frequency ;)

3 salvatore ditaranto 07.31.07 at 12:42 pm

In my opinion is “linking people”…

4 Paolo / deart 07.31.07 at 9:43 pm

The creation of new formats is the big question (and trouble too). We are experimenting some different ways of tele-participation or tele-conversation with some pilot formats waiting to better understand the good way.
[flame]
It’s a little bit funny anyone never speak about money (isn’t politically correct?) when dream about Net-Tv: but which could be the business model?

5 carlo alberto 08.01.07 at 5:29 pm

Tommaso is a pretty smart guy, but here we have to put in some more ideas coming from abroad such as the project run by Bbc recenty, it’s called dmi, digital media initiative

http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/

and the other project more crossmedial called Turkish experiment
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/06/turkey_experiment_1.html

here again content is the king, what we have to discover in this new form of tv is that linkin and conversation is not enough because as Paolo correctly statesa we have to think about a business model driven by new formats and contents, in September we have to work on this subject.

6 Livia Iacolare 08.01.07 at 9:15 pm

I absolutely agree. The real issue is to elaborate new formats and create a winning business model. We can just experiment and, as carlo alberto said, keep an eye on the good examples coming from abroad.

And yes, Paolo: seems like $$$ are often a taboo in the Web 2.0 world :)

7 ianmack 08.03.07 at 3:03 am

great discussion. i’m in the midst of producing a web tv show right now, and we’re thick in the planning stages of where it fits in our niche. if that’s not enough, there are multiple platforms to distribute the content, some offering great (BlipTv) but not entirely thorough (Youtube) service.

8 hentai jade long 09.05.08 at 1:30 am

chan hentai jade hentai dragon jade

Leave a Comment

You can use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>