Nov 26 2007
Shlock tactics
Spurred on by the spectacular success of YouTube, media departments and newsrooms around the country rushed to flood the net with 3rd rate video under the banner “no-one cares about quality anymore”.
Now it seems that advertisers and viewers do care.
The web video amateur hour may be ending. An interesting article in BusinessWeek points out that as more professionally produced content comes online, user-generated video is becoming less interesting to viewers, and accordingly, advertisers…People would rather watch content that has production value than watch their neighbors in the garage…” lostremote
But as Scott Karp points out this idea of “user generated content” is a myth:
A whole mythology is emerging around the idea of “users” — consumers, fans, regular average folk — creating content that media companies and brands can leverage. It’s a compelling idea — but it’s a myth. The reality is that “average people” don’t create a lot of content — at least not the commercially viable kind. Most people are too busy. Those that do “create content” — and who do it well — are those who are predisposed to being content creators. The have some relevant skills, training, raw talent, motivation, something.
“User-generated content” sites like YouTube are much less a platform for armies of average people to create mountains of content and much more a platform for real talent to be discovered.
Viewers/advertisers don’t favor video produced by professionals over video produced by amateurs.
They favor quality video over schlok.
This isn’t so much bad news for amateur video producers - by definition they are not trying to monetize their clips - but it is bad news for organizations that thought they could climb on to the video starship with only minimal investment in training or equipment.
I thought this might be of interest to you and/or your readers.
The Concentra Award for video journalism is now open for entry.
In previous years this award has been for broadcast journalism from within Europe only. To reflect the changing news environment the award is now open to video journalism broadcast or published in any news program or on any online news site anywhere in the world.
The award also comes with a 10.000 euro prize.
The closing date for entries is Jan 7th 2008. Individuals can enter at anytime up to that point.
Details, rules and regulations can be found at www.theconcentra.org
The awards ceremony takes place on March 3rd at the DNA2008 conference, in Brussels.
The seven short-listed finalists will be invited to the event with their travel and accommodation costs paid by the organizers.
The Jury members are
Host: Willy Lenaers (CEO, Concentra, Belgium)
Chairman: Michael Rosenblum (CEO, Rosenblum TV, USA)
Sue Phillips (London, Bureau Chief, Al Jazeera, UK)
Cristian Trippe (Brussels Correspondent, Deutsche Welle, Germany)
Bas Broekhuizen (Editor, Volkskrant TV, Netherlands)
Tone Kunst (Editor in Chief, NRK Nordland, Norway)
Leif Hedman (Director, SVT, Sweden)
Vicente Partal, (Board Member ECJ, Director, Villaweb, Spain)
www.theconcentra.org