YouTube: the global TV channel

Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:22 am UK

I caught a few minutes of President Obama’s Google+ Hangout last night as it was streamed on YouTube.

If you’ve done a Google+ Hangout video chat before, you’ll be familiar with the format and this was no different. Except, of course, it was the President of the United States plus five lucky citizens chosen by +The White House to hang out live with the Pres in a carefully-controlled setting. Plus the millions of people worldwide who tuned in, as it were, to YouTube to watch and add text comments. Plus those doing the same on Google+, Facebook, Twitter… wherever they were online.

‘Tuned in’ is an apt descriptor as the immediate thought I had when I did just that on Google+ was “This is TV.”

If last year’s Royal Wedding that was broadcast live on YouTube was a demo of YouTube as a TV channel – a global one at that – that captures imaginations with a compelling event (content, in a word), then yesterday’s presidential Hangout is surely a clear sign that the channel just changed.

Why watch TV on a TV any more when you can immerse yourself, interact on the net, share your experiences and the recorded content itself, via any capable device that connects online?

Talk about disruption! No wonder the US entertainment industry – and that includes mainstream media like TV – likes things like #SOPA and #PIPA, to which +Clay Shirky‘s call to “pick up the pitchforks” is so compelling.

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Missed the Hangout with President Obama? Check out the full video here and let us know what you thought.

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Pick up the pitchforks

Posted on January 22, 2012 at 8:26 am UK

Powerful stuff from +Clay Shirky who describes the US entertainment and media industry thus in his call to ‘pick up the pitchforks’ re SOPA and PIPA:

“[...] This is an industry that demands payment from summer camps if the kids sing Happy Birthday or God Bless America, an industry that issues takedown notices for a 29-second home movie of a toddler dancing to Prince. Traditional American media firms are implacably opposed to any increase in citizens’ ability to create, copy, save, alter, or share media on our own. They fought against cassette audio tapes, and photocopiers. They swore the VCR would destroy Hollywood. They tried to kill Tivo. They tried to kill MiniDisc. They tried to kill player pianos. They do this whenever a technology increases user freedom over media. Every time. Every single time.And they don’t just want control — they want it at low cost, and high speed.”

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Pick up the pitchforks: David Pogue underestimates Hollywood « Clay Shirky
Writing in his blog on the New York Times yesterday, David Pogue, one of the Times’ tech columnists, advises toning down the alarmist rhetoric over SOPA, suggesting that opponents of the bill (and…

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Hollywood had Chris Dodd and a press release, Silicon Valley had Facebook

Posted on January 19, 2012 at 6:44 am UK

A nice sound bite in a frothy report by US entertainment industry columnist and blogger +Sharon Waxman about yesterday’s online protests against SOPA and PIPA.

If you remember the core of this issue, it’s seen by many as Hollywood and vested interests versus the rest of us. Sort of the 1% against the 99%.

I’m not sure I’d liken it to a war zone – emotional rhetoric isn’t really helpful – yet this assessment looking at the PR aspects isn’t bad at all.

The bottom line:

It seems that Hollywood still does not realize that it is in the information age. Knowledge moves in real time, and events move accordingly. The medium is the message in a fight like this.

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