It may be old news now, but I’m just starting to see how the world of entertainment is changing. Gone are the days when kids rushed inside to catch their favorite TV show or tune in to the radio to hear their favorite song. These days, it’s not only that they can download those TV shows or songs whenever they please, but those old TV shows are now competing with amateurs and their own web and video cams. The whole notion of who can produce watchable content has changed. I know this because I co-produce a show myself.
While most of YouTube’s content is banal to the extreme, it has incredible addictivity. Once you start watching, it’s likely that you will be drawn to click on any number of related videos. Before you know it, you’ve killed the good part of an hour. Or two. It could be a video of a guy falling over in a particularly comic vein, or it could be a teenager with built-up angst, venting on his webcam. Or, worse still it could be a grown man responding to aforementioned teen’s diatripe. And so it goes.
At one stage, podcasting was looking to be the latest forum for amateurs to display their creative musings, be they audible musings or video ones. But it seems that those already low barriers to entry (eg. bandwidth and hosting costs) are a little too high for the average amateur. That’s why YouTube, with it’s completely free service allows anyone to post pretty much anything for others to watch.
But who would want to watch Joe Schmoe’s video musings? If you asked that question ten or even five years ago, a reasonable response would be no-one. But now, with people around the world watching an average of 70 million YouTube videos daily, I think that question has been well and truly answered. Of course, it’s not all bad. While my show isn’t a good example of good, it’s all original programming, with talking interspersed with sketches that are hatched from mine and Keith’s brain. An example of real good is Barats and Bereta, a couple of recent college graduates who post a range of humorous videos, from white collar office work to ninja raps. Within a few days of their latest post, their video had already been watched close to a million times. Now they are good numbers. Numbers like that make Hollywood types prick up their ears. As time passes and YouTube’s popularity grows, it will serve more and more as a breeding ground for hopeful celebrities, fleeting or otherwise.
Personally I like the way it’s going. I am no longer trapped into watching my TV shows at a certain time, forced to endure commercial after commercial or wallow in despair after missing a never-to-be-repeated show. Most of all, I no longer have to shout at my TV because of a poor production. If I feel that I could do better, well I whip out my camera, call Keith and actually give it a shot.
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