44 lucky people are spending this weekend in Washington DC at the Travel Channel Academy, where they’re making a lifelong relationship with a cable broadcasting network and learning an important new skill.
And they’re also having a heck of a lot of fun.
Maybe you should join them?
We’re out to build a trained, certified and affiliated army of video journalists.
8 Comments
rosenblumtv June 09, 2008
$250 a minute for someone who has never made video before, I think is a pretty good rate. Besides which, this is a training course. When I went to the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia, I paid a lot for tuition with no connection to any broadcaster or newspaper, no follow up on the work I did when I graduated and certainly no guarantee that anyone would buy my articles at any price. I was on my own. This is different and I think better.
$ June 09, 2008
I didn’t think I was being cranky!
Just asking a few questions.
Let’s be clear. This course only pays the rare few the grand sum of $250 a minute.
The vast majority don’t make a dime.
By the way, is that sum for a minute of work or for a minute of finished final product?
For my minute of finished final product, I make well above that $250 figure. Plus benefits!
rosenblumtv June 08, 2008
For the life of me I can not figure out what makes you so cranky. Never the less, how many training courses can you name that right away turn around and start paying you for your work? I cannot think of one. As for $250 a minute, that comes to 15k an hour. How many hours of tv have you made at fox this year? Look at your paycheck. How much are they paying you per minute? I would bet it is well south of $250 per.
$ June 08, 2008
Wow! $250 a minute!
How much did those students pay for the privilage to work for such low pay?
How many took the class and, out of that total, how many got any kind of work? Which seems to top out with one year contracts making, again, very low pay?
That kind of relationship has many names. I’m not surprised you avoided using the other definitions here.
rosenblumtv June 08, 2008
On the contrary,
the graduates of the class become certified Travel Channel TJs (or Travel Journalists). As alumni, their work is reviewed by producers at the Travel Channel and critiqued. They are instructed in ways in which they could improve. Their work is posted on the Alumni website. Many grads have already been commissioned to produce segments for Travel Channel for air (and paid for their work). The series Most Haunted is done with a very high percentage of Alumni commissioned work (and we are just getting started). We are completing the first true run of Whats Your Trip, done entirely with Grad work ($250 per minute) and this will start airing the next few months.
So no, not maybe… definitely, and already.
Oops. Nearly forgot, 4 of the grads have been hired on one year contract at full time Travel Journalists – their job, travel the world and make videos for the channel.
$ June 08, 2008
I’m still unclear about what the long term relationship is.
It sounds more like an empty sales pitch.
Claiming there is something of long term value to the customer which doesn’t really exist in tangible terms.
Harvard?
My my, that too seems like a slightly over the top comparison to me as well.
There is no partnership between the company and those that pay for the classes.
Other than an unclear offer of maybe using their material sometime somewhere down the road, maybe, maybe, maybe.
rosenblumtv June 08, 2008
Think of it more as going to Harvard. It is true you are paying something for it, but you are coming away with a skill you can use, and a realtionship with a broadcaster. Hmm, it’s probably more like going to Harvard in partnership with Goldman Sachs. So no, I don’t think it’s like paying your electric bill.
$ June 08, 2008
A lifelong relationship?
How so?
Seems to me they paid their way in. That doesn’t sound “lucky”.
That sounds like buying a service.
I guess I am “lucky” to pay my electric bill too.