TV & Film

Fans of Japanese game shows, such as Human Tetris and Slip ’n’ Slide bowling, will be happy to know that American producers are planning on emulating them for US TV audiences. The New York Times reports that shows such as “I Survived a Japanese Game Show” and “Wipeout” recently made their debut on ABC.

Ones of the producers interviewed describes a particularly unique challenge from the show “Baby Go Boom”

Wearing baby bonnets and diapers, the competitors spin around in cribs until they’re dizzy. Then they try to cross a teeter-totter, get past spinning plates and overcome other obstacles without spilling a jug of milk that they carry. The team that manages to spill the least milk wins.

In Japan, these shows are known as batsu games, or punishment and humiliation games, and they celebrate the spirit of embarrassment and ability to laugh at oneself. As David Goldberg, the president of Endemol USA, put it, “The whole idea of watching people crash and burn — but not get hurt — is something that people seem to be drawn to.”

NYT: Japanese-Style Game Shows: Cash for Winners, Humiliation for Losers

We’re excited to have Ezra Cooperstein, Vice President of VC2’s Development and Production at Current TV, on our “Collaboration & Co-Working” panel at PSFK Conference San Francisco 2008. Alongside Andrew Hoppin of NASA, Cooperstein will be sharing his insights on how collaboration can be utilized to engage the community.

First, who are you and what do you do?

My name is Ezra Cooperstein, and I oversee the Viewer Created Content (VC2) Team at Current TV. VC2 is the foundation of Current’s programming strategy. Since its inception, Current has been dedicated to sharing it’s TV platform with it’s viewers to create authentic, diverse, powerful, and compelling non-fiction news and information content geared toward a young-adult audience. My job is leading a talent team who facilitate the process of actualizing the vision of VC2 to bring amazing programming to air everyday.

You’ll be speaking on our “Collaboration & Co-Working” panel. Can you sum up your views on how you (and current) engage your audience and the community through co-working/collaboration?

Everything at Current is open to participation and collaboration with our viewers. While VC2 is the most prominent way that we collaborate with our consumers to create content, we continue to expand the opportunities for user participation. We recently re-launched Current.com as a social news site that puts the control of our hourly news headlines franchise in the hands of our community. Thus, the offering on TV more accurately reflects what our users think is newsworthy. The VC2 group relies on a vast network of producer relationships all over the world to help us bring compelling content to Current TV. While the door at Current is always open for anyone to submit a story, we have found that we are only as strong as the network of creators we build. Our internal producers spend lots of time cultivating connections with potential or existing VC2 Producers, and work closely with them to ensure they deliver the highest quality and most compelling content.

Five sites that provide you with inspiration:

Rotten Tomatoes
YouTube
Saatchi Gallery
YTMND-Another Blue Ball Factory
Mashable

Thanks, Ezra!

If you’d like to learn more from Ezra, why not join us on July 17 at PSFK Conference San Francisco 2008?

In the first of a three part series, the Teen Lab at Alcatel-Lucent has revealed that time shifting is the new rule for today’s youth in terms of TV consumption. Apparently, parents are no longer making the decisions about what their kids do or don’t watch, nor when they watch it. In the research, more than half of the ‘lab members’ were watching TV on their computers or storing it for later viewing – at a time that suited them. On top of this, nearly two-thirds were using a DVR to store their shows.

Social networking sites, proved not to be a mode through which teens felt apt to discuss television; instead, old-fashioned face-to-face conversation was found to be what informed them overall, with 80% of respondents learning about shows from either friends or adverts, and 90% sharing opinions via word of mouth on what they had watched. Conversely, only 14% were sharing opinions about TV shows and series online.

Read the full article here.

Futurist James Cascio has written a timely essay about an emerging problem he calls the “Participatory Decepticon”. He explains that there’s a dark side to the proliferation of ubiquitous media capturing devices and easy to use editing software. Cascio says we’ll see a rise in participatory deception: purposeful manipulation of media to discredit individuals and groups. An early iteration of this trend can be seen in the political arena, where the propagation of defamatory memes is only the beginning. Coming next is doctored video that could do far more harm than a rumor.

Cascio explains:

But add easy video manipulation to the mix, and another possibility emerges: the crafting of political videos documenting candidate insults and errors that never happened. Not in a clumsy, easily-detected form, but as a sufficiently-believable web video. There are more than enough audio recordings out there of most major political candidates to allow political pranksters/”dirty tricksters” to make that candidate say just about anything; the cameraphone and flash video media offer insufficient clarity to be able to see if a candidate’s mouth is truly saying the words he or she seems to be saying.

Open The Future: The Participatory Decepticon

A big step for Hulu.com; the site just added Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report to its selection of free, long-form streaming video. This is seen as another “official” stamp of approval for the site, and a dismissal of Google’s YouTube. The illegal posting of Daily Show and Colbert Report episodes has become a hotly contested issue between YouTube and Comedy Central’s owner Viacom. PBS is also reported to have struck a deal to distribute Nova and Scientific American Frontiers through Hulu.

[via Adweek]

Time for the daily iPhone post. This is a cool gadget that’s unfortunately only a concept design - at the moment. Honlai, the producers of a tiny LED projector have come up with a docking station projector for the first-gen iPhone. I could see this little device being very useful for presentations on the fly (or impromptu movies anywhere). Hopefully someone will get this into production right away.

[via Gizmodo]

In its fourth season, Top Chef, the top rated food show on cable television, is emerging as a formidable competitor to Food Network as it continues to extend its brand. Already selling an array of products (Fan Gear, Chef’s Library, Chef’s Tools) through its branded online shop, Bravo is bringing Top Chef to life by creating new touchpoints through which viewers can interact with the brand. Such as:

Top Chef: The Tour: An 18-wheel “Top Chef” truck will stop at 20 cities across the U.S., offering cooking demonstrations, gourmet tips, and of course, Top Chef gear. Former cheftestants are also expected to be present.

Top Chef Cruise: A Top Chef branded luxury cruise is in the works for May, 2009.

Top Chef Cooking Classes: Bravo has teamed up with the Culinary Institute of America to offer Top Chef branded cooking classes at New York’s Astor Center this summer.

Frances Berwick, executive VP and general manager of Bravo Media, describes the company’s strategy:

Our goal with this is to really go beyond the network with our show brands and affinity groups. Viewers are often fanatical about our shows, and many of these things are tactile versions of who the viewers are and ways to extend their experience. We’re all about being more Bravo in more places more often, and this all speaks to that.

-Contributed by Robert Hsu

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has made the bold claim that print will be extinct within the next 10 years. He says magazines, newspapers and all media will no longer exist in physical form as we know it, and will only be delivered via IP networks. His essential theory is that both producers and consumers crave the interaction that only networked communications can supply. Ballmer also sees a further blending of commerce and content which will make it increasingly difficult to distinguish between advertising, communication and entertainment.

[Washington Post via Buzzmachine]

Yvan Rodic is the Facehunter. He spends his time traveling around Europe photographing the beautiful people he finds himself at parties with. Recently he took his witty, off-beat style to his new web TV show. We wanted to ask him why he’s decided to get into the moving image.

Yvan, you’ve decided to move from still-photography to the moving image. What’s inspired you to make your own show.

After two years of chasing the elegantly strange, the aesthetically sensual and the discretely eccentric in the world-wide playground of Face Hunter, I feel like it’s high time I share more than just my photos. It became almost frustrating not to show to the world the creativity of all the people I was meeting, who happenned to be not only well dressed but for lots of them very talented as well.

The 1st episode in Mexico City is fantastic. It was loosely based around Fashion Week there - and you managed to feature the same types of exotic people we see in your photography. How do you choose who you want to feature in your shows.

My blog seems to be a good way of casting people for my show. I try to capture charismatic people who do things on their own way. I noticed that people I was photographing were not only well dressed but as well involved in creative projects and I guess most of them would inspire the world with their work and ideas.

You’re using MySpace in an era when all the buzz is about Facebook - why MySpace.TV?

I’m using both, MySpace and Facebook, to reach more people. Producing a show on MySpace was an obvious choice because I’ve gathered my community with that network. It’s true that more and more people are using Facebook as an email, but MySpace keeps being the most important hub where you can find creative profiles, like bands, photographers, filmmakers, etc.

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