I like to say that media is the love of my life. When I was a kid, I produced my own magazine, neurotically manipulating the capacity of my mom's Brother word processor to make my impact on the national trade of ideas, trends, and cool advertisements. It still remains easier for me to follow reading that is paired with images than the kind that stands alone, and the thing about the internet is that you can read next a movie or an animation or a 3D billboard.
When I came to New York to be in publishing, I really was trying to get a head-start on my now foggy ideal of men's handheld magazine. I wanted to do men's because the space gets better editors and no limits. It would have interactive cover shoots, top five convo starters for the most likely life scenario of the moment ("top five ways to make a lunch hour a happy half-day," "top five ways to make a dates out of one"), and improved news delivery. All on the cell phone. The problem was that only Asia and a bit of Europe was on the smart phone.
Now I've moved on to thinking about how to get 200 hours of video content on a thumb drive and convince people to pay 89.99 for it. I think its the best way to get more profits into independent productions and more love behind cult classic programming. It's exciting because while MTV has coined the term vee-jay, no one's really ran with it.
If you love deejays, which is to say, if you love music, you know that a good one will start you off where you want to be and take you were you never could have imagined finding love. For instance, I'm Beyonce lover.
As the deejay, you start me off with "Baby Boy," then you mix in some classic Biggie, an allusion to the label Bad Boy, with Junior Mafia's "Player's Anthem," (you know the iconic lead-in 'duh duh-duh-duh duh-duh-duh duh'), then more 90s hip-hop/R&B, to Prince's "Starfish & Coffee," which rolls into Mary J. Blige's "Real Love," and on the fade out do the big spook, Nine Inch Nail's "Closer." You have to throw your hands up because it was sick, and from there, the deejay's got you rocking out to Ray Charles, Hendrix, the Ronettes, John Mayer, Chubby Checker, Dolly Parton, Bo Diddley, and then dropping you back where thought you were going, Rihanna and Lady Gaga.
That's a good deejay. I paid $30 to go to Stevie Wonderful over the summer, because I've been meaning to for years, because the word is that the deejays are so nice...and I NEVER pay to dance. But I will if the programming is beyond what I can do with my own iTunes. It was unbelievable. It's so good that the man himself crashed two years ago because what they do to his music is for lovers only.
But to my point, imagine if someone could start you off with "Arrested Development," follow it up with some "Family Guy," put in some old "Chappelle Show" followed by "The Daily Show," then some "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," then an old school "MTV News Alert," then the classic film "Trading Places," followed by some "24," "Cities of the Underworld," "Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations," the classic Eddie Murphy in a tight red leather suit stand up, "Diddy's Making the Band 12," two hours of music videos while news and finance tickers ran atop the screen, "Wendy Williams Show," and a classic episode of "Fresh Prince" or a series of best of Sesame Street sing-a-longs, before the morning edition of "Anderson Cooper 360."
I want to bundle the most arousing video content experiences and sell them on key cards because while you can get on the internet at anytime, I don't think that people will want to need to be connected to the internet or reliant on the traffic.
Someone suggested to me that this is what the iPad can do, but I'm for no knew appliances. Maybe the key-card lets you sign in to the video content web, and you can be your own programmer. But I'd rather become the world's best veejay, broadening the audiences the exhibitors at Sundance and Tribeca and exploiting the profit capabilities of niche markets. (Note: while niche is a horrible idea for social networking, i.e. the non-difference between BlackPlanet and Facebook, I know it is a hit with television, i.e. "Arrested Development" should not have been canceled and could have been a hit if it we're expected to serve everyday and was expected to serve the optimal amount of people who be obsessed and pay to feed their fanaticism.
But I'll end my rant with this: I used to believe that my real friends are gchat, while my public is Facebook. I'm not sure how I feel about Google Buzz, or why I signed on to be taken there, but I expect that, paired with the Google label internet, I will be a citizen of the Googlobe and I will begin to participate in the annoyances of citizenship that I never expected. I will pay Google taxes and perform Google service. I will sell myself, or at least my name, for money. I will send my kids to college based on how many ads my private email sells. My husband with be insecure about the fact I refuse to comment on my relationship status before people I do not really know how I feel about knowing. I will live life like its an old school television program or "The Truman Show," holding up a bottle of Coke in the middle of my work day to profess via video chat that it is, in fact, always refreshing, always Coca-Cola. And the rainbow flag will no longer be synonymous with gay rights; it will be the right to Google.
Back in 1994 , I thought I'd be (@AIM) starfishur forever. I'm smarter now; I'll be IP address until my computer breaks, buying 8 inch laptops that I can pull out the attached 3D glasses to talk to my mom because I really want to relive the myriad of time spent not having my own life. That was sarcasm. That was to say, I kind of don't mind losing my privacy as long as my mom is the one watching me.
In a move that could spell even lower value perception by consumers for online media content, Mashable reports that CBS's Les Moonves is hinting that the price point for television programs may be lowered to $0.99 saying, "There are certain shows that will be sold on Apple for 99 cents."
