Monday, March 30, 2009

THE SOUND IS BACK!






On Saturday, March 28, 2008, the Media Center Studios welcomed back THE SOUND, a night for bands and students produced by Danielle Fairbairn, the Media Center's Youth Services Coordinator. The opening band was Corner Street Light featuring the music of two PALY students who happen to be brothers, Charlie and Freddie Avis. (www.cornerstreetlight.com). They gave us a great show despite the fact they were missing band members due to the holiday weekend. Sai of the band Middlefield subbed in as bass. Freddie is a convincing vocalist and their original songs stand up to anything you hear on the radio. The second band Your New Secret gave us an excellent show. I caught up with them after their set and learned they are all experienced musicians and have already been on tour. That explains why their sound was super tight and clean with great original songs delivered with impact by principal vox Mike. (www.myspace.com/yournewsecret). Now Middlefield is a great band with a promising future. Sai the lead guitar and main vox is quite an exceptional musician. And their original songs and arrangements are really ambitious and interesting to listen to (www.myspace.com/middlefield). The band is made up of local high school students including students from PALY and Gunn. We were really lucky to have so much talent in the house!

One of the features of THE SOUND is that at the end of the evening there was voting by the studio audience. The winning band will be competing against winners of future "THE SOUNDS" and then during the battle of the bands produced at THE SOUND, the winning band will be featured on AMERICAN SONGWRITER, a TV show featuring emerging bands, produced here at the Media Center by Scott Van Duyne and me. The winning band for this past Saturday was...(DRUMROLL)... Your New Secret. And this takes nothing away from the other bands. The more you play and stay together, the better you get! And Your New Secret was a more mature band with a consistently excellent performance.

On a side note, the sound board for the night was run by Youth Advisory Council member Eduordo De Armas, a high school sophomore who evinced an interest in learning audio. Eduordo is the first student trainee using the Media Center's new studio audio system.

For more information about THE SOUND or the Youth Advisory Council and other opportunities for youth at the Media Center please contact Danielle@midpenmedia.org. For questions about this blog, contact me, Becky@midpenmedia.org. For questions about training and classes we offer to hone your studio production skills, check out our website first and then telephone 650-494-8484 and speak to Dave to sign up.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Comment TODAY with the FCC to save Public Access!

Currently, Public Access TV is under threat from several fronts. One of these fronts is led by communications conglomerate, AT&T, who is attempting to circumvent federal laws and provide substandard broadcasting of Public Access nationwide. Their substandard broadcasting methods prevent schools from telecasting class materials, the deaf from viewing closed captioning, citizens from engaging in local city government, and the public from learning about local issues not addressed in mainstream media. Today is the last day to make a public comment to the FCC!

Start by going to the FCC's Electronic Filing website and file a comment as an individual with your home address.

In the form,
1. Under Proceeding #, enter: "09-13"
2. Click the "Name" button
7 - 10. fill in your personal information in the Required fields
12. Choose "Comment" from the drop down menu.

Then, go to "OR Send a brief comment to FCC (typed-in)" to enter a brief comment. Suggestions:
"Please grant all three Public, Educational and Government Access Petitions. We need easy access to important local information provided by our PEG access channels."

"PEG Channels deserve equitable treatment."

"The FCC needs to stand by the federal government's commitment to localism and diversity. Keep local channels with the broadcast channels where they are accessible to all."


To learn more about the issue, visit these links:
Annie Folger (ED) interviewed on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman (see below and jump forward to 40:19)
Realtime Demonstration of AT&T U-Verse (see below)
Petition Filed to the FCC (pdf)
Highlight video of Media Center's quality programming (see below)





Sunday, March 8, 2009

Media Center E.D. to Appear on Democracy Now! about AT&T and Public Access TV

Amy Goodman is doing a segment of the nationally distributed TV/Radio news show, Democracy Now!, about AT&T's discrimination against Public Access Television.

The Midpeninsula Community Media Center's Executive Director, Annie Folger, will make an appearance via telephone on Democracy Now! while Chicago Access Network TV's Executive Director Barbara Popovic appears on camera with Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman.

Democracy Now! is broadcast live at 8am EDT, 5am PDT. The Media Center cablecasts Democracy Now! at 9am PDT, and at several other times through the day. The program is also archived on the website of Democracy Now!

Thursday, March 5, 2009

INTEL TECH ADVISOR LANCE KOENDERS SAYS...

Here's what Lance Koenders of Intel had to say when he read my blog of March 3 about the panel discussion at Cinequest at which he presented. The panel was about the coming convergence of TV and the Internet. Lance is addressing my concerns about the fate of cable access. And I quote:

"You got it pretty much right on your blog. I wouldn't worry too much about cable access stations having a role. If you think about it, it actually could make your business more profitable by enabling better reach. As a cable access station, your show's are generally limited to the local cable network. If you were to begin "broadcasting" on the Internet, your content could get recognized outside of the local footprint, much like the gentleman who is making money doing "Depression Cooking". In addition, as Tom mentioned, the Internet costs for video distribution have dropped dramatically, so it has the potential to lower costs over the long run. The truth is good localized content will always be needed, which is really the goal of a cable access station. What technology is used to distribute that content is just a means to an end. But as you mentioned in your blog, it falls to you and your fellow cable access producers to monitor the transition and adjust as time goes on!"


Thank you, Larry, for the encouragement and the vision.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

THE MARRIAGE OF TELEVISION & THE INTERNET

THE MARRIAGE OF TELEVISION & THE INTERNET

We all know it’s coming - but just when, how fast and how exactly will TV and the Internet converge? These and other questions were addressed at a Cinequest Film & Innovation Forum held at the San Jose Repertory Theatre last Saturday, February 28, 2009. I sat in on the 1.5 hour session. Cinequest founder and director Halfdan Hussey opened with a few remarks before turning the floor over to Moderator Kathleen Powell, President of Cinequest who interviewed two VERY INFORMED persons, Tom Morgan, Chief Strategy Officer of Move Networks which provides digital streaming to major networks and players in online delivery of content and Lance Koenders, an advisor to a Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Digital Home Group at Intel.

So Lance started us off with demonstration of a new chip Yahoo and Intel are developing to create a seamless conduit between your TV and the Internet. You will be able to run Yahoo widgets on your TV while streaming any content you like. The Yahoo interface will effectively turn your TV screen into a computer screen and you will be able to access anything on the web on your TV through widgets with no lag time, while still watching the TV show. The Yahoo widget framework will be rolling out this fall.

Tom then streamed an HD movie live over his laptop onto a wall-size 20' x 40' screen in the theatre. Not a single glitch in the video, truly impressive and awesome to see. Of course someone had kicked the plug out of the power supply earlier, so a theatre tech had to come up and plug it in!

Long story short, People, the technology exists to do everything we used to do on TV and traditional networks over the internet. The question that is plaguing the industry right now is how to make entertainment delivered via the Internet profitable. Traditional networks pay the bills with ad sales. But as TV and video viewership spreads itself out over the viewing options out there, what will the new model be? The experts say within 3-5 years, a monetization model for the new converged formats will be in place, and all providers of traditional TV content will have to move in that direction to survive.

What does all this mean for our world, Cable Access? Well, cable and telco companies like Comcast and AT&T that we rely on to broadcast our shows are scrambling right now to find a profit model on the Internet. Cable may in a good position to compete since they have the fat pipe for both TV and Internet, but if TV as we know it simply goes away, what will happen to Cable Access?

The forum did not address this specifically, but as I sat there listening to the future, I realized that there has to be a model for us. But we will have to drive it.

There are more eyes watching screens than ever before and they are watching them all over the world using many different platforms. How do we at Cable Access keep our shows local but also make them of interest to some of the millions of pairs of eyes that are out there looking for interesting content? What can we as content creators do now, while we wait for the "business model" to define itself over the next 3-5 years?

One of the main ideas we heard was that we as content creators need to get our videos out there everywhere we can and generate a buzz around them! Check out www.vuze.com which was mentioned at the forum. You can publish your videos and distribute them to viewers absolutely free with no ads, or if there are no strings on your content, you can choose an ad supported or sell-through approach and make some money. Also check out distribution on iTunes, working through an aggregator, of course, or videosharing site like blip.tv. Of course, if you want to sell your content (which was very important to the independent film makers at Cinequest), you should check out www.cinemanow.com. Netflix still generates a lot of interest. Their simple model of bringing content to the TV screen through the Internet via the Xbox, or dedicated Roku box on an all-you-can-eat low price subscription basis was mentioned at least 5 times at the panel discussion. And don't underestimate Youtube video with Google Adsense overlays: Christopher Cannucciari, local producer of "Depression Cooking with Clara", stood up in the audience and said he started the series on youtube with his grandmother about two years ago, and it caught on (the right content at the right time, I guess) and he is making a bundle on Adsense click-throughs now.

So whether you are trying to distribute your content as a public service, or build up a reputation to capitalize on later, or looking to make money now on ads or pay-per-view, there are a lot of low-barrier ways to break in. Then it is up to you to get your videos noticed through social networking, blogging, and online promoting. The main thing is the business is in a high growth phase despite the current economy, and the best place to be in 3-5 years, when the business models shake out, is on the Internet with lots of content and fans already.

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