Yesterday I spent some time thinking about Stilgherrian Live, my “live on the Internet” program. Here’s what I’ve decided…
I’ll start another series of eight “regular” programs at 9.30pm (Sydney time) next Thursday 4 September. One-hour programs, like the “extended” episode 8 of Stilgherrian Live Alpha, with some new regular segments as well as “Cnut of the Week” and other “popular” elements.
Some of these segments will be pre-recorded, because I need some brief breaks during the program and it changes the pace nicely.
There’ll also be at least one interview per program — any suggestions for people you’d like to hear from?
There’s a few other changes too…
While I won’t detail everything just now, here’s few snippets to whet your appetite:
- Some new technology should enable me to go mobile, doing the program from anywhere within range of mobile broadband.
- I’m getting a “proper” video camera so we can do 2-camera shoots, as well as better pre-recorded segments.
- Each episode I’ll reveal some vital fact from my past. It may be disturbing.
- Despite saying previously that it wouldn’t happen, maybe hand puppets do have a future.
Some people have compared what I’m doing with Rove Live or The Colbert Report. That’s delightfully flattering, thank you. While I’m not (yet) as polished as those consummate performers, there is one important point there: the “program format”.
A program’s format is its pre-arranged sequence and structure of elements. It makes it easier to produce because you already know that you’re writing a 2-minute to-camera rant, say, and the audience knows what to expect next — or is surprised when you break the rules.
What interests me is how this new medium, the Internet, can reach a smaller, more focussed audience and how that changes the format. Both Rove Live and The Colbert Report are “broadcast TV showbiz” style. Big, loud, colourful. What I’m doing is more intimate, with the camera much closer to my face if nothing else. That makes it a lot more like radio.
Apart from the regular Thursday night programs, I may do occasional live feeds at other times. Indeed, if the plans for mobile connectivity come together, that may combine with the Internet’s ability to tell people that you’re going live now to create a more time-flexible operation all round. More on that soon.
So… Anything else you’d like to know? Anything else you’d like me to do?
Each episode I’ll reveal some vital fact from my past. It may be disturbing.
Live Internet-as-public confessional? That’d be a new theme for you. I’m used to your preference for keeping your personal jewels more closely guarded, what with the handful of trinkets I’ve seen over the years. Just how vital and potentially disturbing are we talking here, chief? Light-hearted revelations from your slowly orbiting outer rings…or intense flashes from the heavy gravitational singularity within? Take care.
One other thing: I don’t know if he was just having a bad hair day last night, but comparisons with Rove might not be so flattering as they once were. He’s lost some of that charm that’s held him in the market for a decade. And he’s starting to look his actual age as well.
…And if my fiancé is to be believed, apparently I am as well.
@Stephen Stockwell: Fiancées are always to be believed, especially if you intend the relationship to progress beyond fiancée to wife. As opposed to “She doesn’t speak to me any more.”
I do like the sound of “intense flashes from the heavy gravitational singularity within”, but will they show up at webcam resolution? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how much of my personal jewels everyone gets to see…
I haven’t watched Rove Live for ages. The question I’d ask is whether it’s him tiring of the program, the program tiring of him, or whether the concept of the program itself is wearing out. I guess I’d have to watch to be able to answer.
I think you’re trying to say that fiancées are always to be trusted, if the bedrock of the relationship is to have sustainable integrity. But that differs slightly (yet crucially) from being compelled to believe and agree with all their subjective opinions… such as how old you might be looking this morning.
Anyways… back to astronomy.
If you’re going to test the threshold of webcam resolution with intense flashes from your past, then do it properly. Let rip with a millennial quasar of indigestible magnitude, with migraine-triggering gravitational lensing in glorious technicolour. And once the nova collapses and your audience begins to spaghettify into your vortex through their screens… just blame them for getting too close to the action. It could work.
Also, I really wanted to use this topic as a context to raise Grey Goo Mutations, but couldn’t make it relevant enough. So here it is on its own:
Beware of creating a Grey Goo Mutation.
Thank you.
@Stephen Stockwell: I know what I said. I said “believed”.
Then we are agreed.