Social Television?

Where social networks meet television

Yesterday, The Guardian ran one of their ‘predictions’ for 2010 in their Media Section. I It predicted the rise of something they called Social Television.

Social Television  is the inevitable marriage of watching TV and being on the web at the same time.

The Guardian predicts we will see many Social TV experiments in 2010.

Of course, we have already done the Social TV work with our series 5Takes for The Travel Channel.

The series ran  in 2004/5 for The Travel Channel, before there was a term Social Television, and before there was Twitter.

5Takes ran for four season, so I am not complaining.  One renewal is pretty good in cable. Four is four times better.

But the show never gained the kind of traction I hoped it would.

The idea was that people went online and talked to the participants while the show was happening, in real time.

In those days, we had to send our participants to Internet Cafes so that they could log in and read the emails. It just shows you how quickly technology moves.

Today, they could tweet all day long, back and forth, with the viewers.

The show gained a limited cult following, but now with Twitter, I think the model is really ready to try again.

The secret to the show, besides the social networking, is the fast turn.

But taking the edit into the field, and editing on laptops in real time, as we shot, we were able to turn each hour in only 6 days, as it happened.

Probably, one day we will look at that as archaic as having to go to the Internet cafe to read your emails.

But for now, a 6-day turn around for a weekly hour reality show is still pretty good.

Married to Twitter, it could be … well, let’s call it Social Television.


Michael Rosenblum

For more than 35 years, Michael Rosenblum has been on the cutting edge of the digital video journalism revolution. During this time, he has lead a drive for video literacy, and the complete rethinking of how television is made and controlled. His work has included: The complete transitioning of The BBC's national network (UK) to a VJ-driven model, starting in 2002. The complete conversion of The Voice of America, the United State's Government's broadcasting agency, (and the largest broadcaster in the world), from short wave radio to television broadcasting and webcasting using the VJ paradigm (1998-present). The construction of NYT Television, a New York Times Company, and the largest producer of non-fiction television in the US. Rosenblum was both the founder and President of NYT TV, (all based on this paradigm (1996-1998). The President and Founder of Video News International, a global VJ-driven newsgathering company, with more than 100 journalists around the world. (1993-1996). Other clients include Spectrum News, Verizon and CBS News.

4 Comments

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  • Rachelle January 06, 2010

    Funny you should mention that. I’ve already been noodling at the concept of how to use what I learned in video with my Twitter account @Travelblggr.

    People love to follow along on a trip in real time and give feedback and I’ve been able to tell a good story on twitter with photos and 140 characters for each trip I’ve taken. (Including shooting the Oklahoma City and Tampa video for TCA). It’s been fun to get instant feedback on places to see.

    http://www.twitpic.com/photos/travelblggr

    As far as video and Twitter, so far, I just joined the “Mile High Video Tweet” club when I was able to record a video message from the camera in my Mac while flying on Delta and tweet it in real time. Audio was TERRIBLE with the jet engine noise background. But it was a fun experiment … to tweet video instantly from 30,000 feet.

    http://www.twitvid.com/46C86

    –Rachelle
    aka @Travelblggr
    http://www.InnTheKitchen.com

    • kenny January 06, 2010

      I love Rachelle’s travel blog! And, heck, she’s got more followers than Samantha Brown!

  • Vanessa January 05, 2010

    Are there plans to try and take another version of 5 Takes to this “Social Television” level. It definitely was working when twitter didn’t exist…and now with all the iPhones, and 3G capabilities, along with twitter, facebook and everything else, would you consider trying it again???