Episode 39 is online, with a gnome

Screenshot from Stilgherrian Live episode 39

Episode 39 of Stilgherrian Live is now online for your post-facto viewing pleasure.

After so many fine nominations for “Cnut of the Week” it was difficult to pick a shortlist, but I applied my arbitrary judgement and narrowed it down to: Peter Costello (final score 8%) for refusing to understand that he is yesterday’s man; rugby player Brett Stewart (11%), recently accused of sexual assault; rugby players in general (36%); and our winner, Anna Bligh (44%), whose political campaign website for the Premiership of Queensland doesn’t list an email address or even a contact form, and who uses Twitter but doesn’t respond in any way.

You’d think that after the success of Barack Obama’s online campaigning, they’d get themselves some sort of clue — especially given the string of Obama advisers giving speeches here recently like Ben Self and Joe Trippi. But no.

Photograph of Stilgherrian Live on a 42-inch TV

I was disturbed to see that someone was watching Stilgherrian Live on a 42-inch TV.

The grainy 320 x 240-pixel footage must look very grubby at that size! That limit is imposed by Ustream. The iSight camera in my MacBook Pro can deliver 640 x 480, so we’ll be able to improve that one day.

But, it is lovely to be building a regular audience. Someone told me there were more than 60 viewers at one point last night?

I reckon it was the best program I’ve done so far, even if the William Shatner theme tended to dominate. What do you think?

6 Replies to “Episode 39 is online, with a gnome”

  1. Looking at the numbers for “Cnut of the week”, I thin Anna Bligh only won because we’d split the “stupid football player” vote. Did people want to vote specifically for Brett Stewart or all his compatriots?

    I said it on the program but I’ll say it here again: Mr Stewart is innocent until proven guilty of something. Yes, other footballers have in the past been guilty of sexual assault charges. But the fact that he works in the same industry… sorry, sport as convicted sex offenders doesn’t mean that he’s one himself — no more than sitting in a chicken coop makes you a chicken.

    @Snarky Platypus: That was a different episode.

  2. Stil Live is a lot of fun and appears to be a successful experiment. I look forward to watching many more.

    The only problem is that as viewer numbers grow, the side/back/whatever channel in the chat room gets really busy. It makes it hard to keep track of the often very insightful additions to the stream.

    On the other hand, it also means that smart arses like me get lost in the noise, and that’s probably for the best.

  3. @Shane: I watched Leo Laporte‘s program once, with thousands of viewers, and yes there was a very rapidly-moving chat stream — full of 15yo fanboys (or perhaps “adults” with an equivalent mental age) all trying to out-do each other with smartarsery and other attention-seeking behaviour. I soon turned it off.

    These are precisely the emerging issues that I’m interested in exploring.

    It might well be that there’s eventually a moderate to de-voice some of the more disruptive chatters. Well, if the audience ever grows to that point.

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