All screens are pretty much the same.
In 1994, The New York Times bought a videojournalism business IÂ had founded called VNI, Video News International.
I had equipped 100 journalists around the world with Hi-8 (this was a long timea ago) video cameras with the idea that they could create video for TV.
This was before the Internet did video.. or really before anyone had ever heard of the web.
I became the President of New York Time Television.
Without a web, the only destination for NYÂ Times videos would be TV. So we set about trying to get The New York Times on the air.
Joe Lelyveld, the Managing Editor the the newspaper said that we could not come into the newsroom. He also said that he did not even own a TV.
This was off to a bad start.
We made a deal with PBS and NPR to create a TV version of NPR’s All Things Considered, but with New York Times reporters doing the video stories.
NPR loved it.
The Times killed it.
“Why would we want to brand anything with NPR?”
Well, it did get us on the air, but that apparently was not enough.
Now, some 15 years later, The New York Times is finally going on air.
These things take time.
The Times does some of the best video journalism in the world.
The paper provides one platform, but frankly, once something is in video, it can transit easily from one platform (online) to another (TV) to another (iPads, for example).
“What NYTV will be doing,” said Gerald Marzorati, the former Times Magazine editor who now oversees new ventures as an assistant managing editor at the paper, in an email to The Cutline, “is assembling local segments the Times has created, shot and made available on our site into a program for a platform–television–we have no presence in right now.”
IÂ like the name NYTV.
I like the name NYTTV, or New York Times TV better, but as I own NYTTV, (and they have made no offer to buy it from me), I suppose I can learn to live with NYTV
(athough I am always open to bids).
In any event, if you live in New York, you will be able to see NYTVÂ Mondays at 8:30 p.m. on New York’s flagship local station, NYC life (that’s channel 25 in and around the five boroughs; lowercase spelling intentional), under the banner of NYC Media, the city’s official TV, radio and online network.