Making the rounds

I have to keep this thing going. I reached my limit on web sites. If I thought I could make some real money doing this I would hire employees or pay for content submissions. Right now the only currency driving this place is it's value as a showcase. Gotta go, See ya.

Jon Stewart wrings out CNN

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart totally rakes CNN over the coals. This is a clear indication that CNN reporters have been cut down so much they can barely cover individual stories.

The high cost of running a 24 hour news cycle with a skeleton crew of multi-tasking news anchors and reporters has become evident.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
CNN Leaves It There
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Sub-Woofer Woes

Sound violations are the latest in what might become a long list of violations that will have much more punitive consequences than before.

Still looking for local producers

There's nothing to it. Just write to spfldtv@gmail.com with your YouTube channel URL (To qualify you only need to live in the Central Illinois area, maybe an hour's drive from Springfield at the most.

If you don't want to email, find http://www.youtube.com/spfldtv and subscribe or leave a comment with your YouTube channel.

The reason I'm doing this is simple. The Internet has empowered video content producers to bypass the gate-keepers at the television stations. This opens up a whole new era of opportunities to be creative and I would like to pool local talent together at SPFLD.tv

The site is still under construction of course. I'm learning new enhancement techniques all the time, but don't let that stop you.

Sony Vegas Studio FAIL

If you go to my YouTube channel and look at my latest video, you'll see what appears to be Stephen Colbert in an old "Green Screen Challenge." He was in front of a green screen, which I attempted to key out with Sony Vegas Studio's Chroma key tools. Something went wrong, however. The AVI file I used as the second video source did not render. Instead, there was nothing but black.

I've been trying for months to understand why this happens. I keep updating my drivers and what-not, thinking maybe there will be a fix in it somewhere, but my hope for customer service in this area has failed. I'll have to pay Macintosh thousands of extra dollars for a Macintosh computer and Adobe Premiere.

Unless Sony can pull their heads out of their asses and send me a fix for their shit.

Sleuth TV - Get Clued In.

A new channels not yet available on my cable or satellite system. I never heard of it until I started digging deeper.

I just added a link to NBC Universal's website from SPFLD.tv

I was going to start adding individual networks but I realized it would be a waste of time since many of those networks fall under the same umbrellas. NBC Universal was easy because the links to all of their networks is right at their site.

I'm having a problem with CBS. I'm not sure where their networks are.

OUTSIDE THE BOX: The whole construct of entertainment is designed to accommodate the narrow old-style media distribution system. My goal is to collect a list of content producers who can present their material (advertising welcome of course), online.

If I could do this for a living I could devote more time and hence a better product.

WCIA Human Resources

I was looking to see what WCIA had in the way of jobs, it looks like they need an Account Executive. For Champaign a job like that would be exciting, especially in that town. I recently visited the college town and immediately fell in love with its amazing vitality. Bustling with college students, all of them on the road to brighter futures. Driven by hope, you can see in the way they walk and hold themselves in eager anticipation for the next vital bit of information that will gain them more strength in their pursuits.

Meanwhile, back on the Internet, It appears that any jobs they had available at their own facilities are mixed evenly among most other jobs available in that community.

WCIA is an affiliate of Nextar Broadcasting Group, headquartered in Irving, Texas. Their website is http://nexstar.tv and they list positions available for the multitude of television stations they own.

The advent of video capability on the Internet has rendered even these positions tenuous at best.

Bloggers are encroaching on the careers of print journalism, YouTubers are encroaching on the careers of television news network video production crews. These crews will eventually need to be self-sustaining and efficient because the first step in that evolution will be layoffs.

The pain and suffering that newspapers are experiencing right now will grow and spread into the television advertising segment.

UNLESS... The advertising is flexible enough to fit on all electronic forms of communication while maintaining a consistent perception of the brand being advertised.

This means that there will no longer be such a thing as a "Television Commercial."

Every communication will need to be a campaign. The Ad Executive must be able to produce an entire package that includes Press releases, Web banner ads, Pop-up windows, YouTube videos, websites, Facebook and MySpace identities, even a Second Life identity. You could even go as far as a WOW account, just to squeeze in a plug now and then ( if you can find someone with no life to maintain it, or pay those with no lives to slip in a plug now and then.) [by the way, WOW is "World of Warcraft."]

Some call this Guerrilla advertising. Such tactics, once recognized by the public, or someone with a keen interest in informing the public, such as myself, will find this kind of tactic very deceptive and suspicious. This form of marketing stinks of desperation.

In the end, the only tools an Advertising executive has for an honest campaign is the word of experienced consumers. Oh by the way, Don't try to create fictional identities and flood message boards with fictional endorsements of a product, because they will be balanced with equally weighted criticism by unsatisfied customers.

The only thing you can do is plainly present the product, list its benefits, and let the chips fall where they may.

Audio more important now than ever.

Local TV news audio must be recorded in stereo now because sophisticated playback technology demands it.

Too manly local news stations are using only the left channel of their microphone input on their remote cameras. Our online viewers have stereo speakers and headphones.

It's time for you engineers to go out and get extra cabling and adapters, and start hooking up that right audio channel on all your equipment.

If you need really clean sound, you will need a video camera that had an external microphone input. You will not find a camera like that at Best Buy, Target, WalMart or any similar retail outlet.

No More Broadcasting

In the near future, broadcasting will no longer be necessary. There will be no need for Station identification call letters. There will be no signal transmission requirements. There will be no need for overpriced equipment to maintain signal integrity. There will be no need for highly specialized skills.

Just like the print media, anyone can do it now. The power once held by cable and satellite companies to make demands on content producers is disappearing, but the content drives the audience, not the distributors.

The cable and satellite companies decide which television networks to carry to the customers. The television networks decide which programs to produce that will be attractive to the cable and satellite companies. This is all gone now. They have no power anymore. Everyone is online and can be viewed. There is nobody who can say "No" anymore.

WICS - Sinclair Bradcasting looking for "Weather Anchor/News Reporter"

A new slot has opened up in the late evening for talented experienced reporter on WICS in Springfield. here is the link:

http://jobs.sbgnet.com/sbghire/JobManagement.jsp?pageMode=view&jobID=4677

Introducing SPFLD.tv

This will be an interesting experiment. SPFLD.tv
The site is so new that its construction has yet to begin. There is a Ning community currently up:

http://spfldtv.ning.com/

I'll be looking into various methods of posting and organizing videos.