On Wednesday, August 20th there was a tragic shooting in Surrey. It appears that an Indo-Canadian man opened fire during a domestic dispute, killing his wife and critically injuring his daughter.

As part of the news coverage, Global TV talked with Manpreet Grewal of Abbotsford Community Services, and ran clips from the Village of Men public service announcements that we produced. Once again we are reminded of how important this issue is. If you are aware of any family that has domestic violence issues, there is help available. Visit www.villageofmen.com and get help today.

Here is a link to the story that ran on Global BC.

Over the past few weeks, I have been working hard at Global BC to implement a new system that better integrates the scripting computers that the producers and reporters use with the on-air graphics systems that create all the names, numbers, etc. that you see on the screen during the broadcast.

For example, let’s say a viewer emails in a picture that we want to put on TV. With the old system, the graphics operators would take the picture, crop it, put it into the Deko (the graphics computer), and save the page to a number they could play back later, or make a movie that could be dropped into a story. With the new system, the picture is saved and put into a template through the producer’s scripting computer, and the graphic appears in the playlist that will go on air. This will free up time for graphics operators to create more complex graphics (like maps) and make it easier to share graphics across the different Global stations across the country.

When we put together the plan of how this was going to work, I had a few important considerations…

• We had to make it so the graphics would work across 3 on-air machines, as well as dozens of far-flung producer workstations.
• We had to create a process that would seem familiar enough to everyone who used it.
• We had to make the new process really fast. Sometimes we’re making graphics literally seconds to air, and any delay in the file handling would greatly impact our ability to cover live breaking news.

By far the most important part to me was that of the end-user experience. The graphics operators are very busy all day creating special graphics that go into the shows. Anything that would slow down their day would create undue hardship. So I ended up putting together a lot of computer code that would make moving the created graphic to the on-air machines as simple as hitting a button. This also had to be done with the producers and reporters computers. Their job is producing the news, not dealing with technology. The system had to take that into account.

Often when we go about changing the way a system works, we don’t pay enough attention to the motivations of the person who has to use the system. The benefit of the new system for producers is that they can see what their graphic is going to look like before it goes to air, right from their computer. The benefit for the people in the graphics room is we’re now going to be faster at doing the job in a facility that will be handing the news in 4 different markets and Global National.

When doing any kind of project, you can never go wrong when you begin with the end audience in mind.

Audiences are aware of this, and have now turned to reality TV to try to gain some of that back. The popularity of reality TV comes from that finely-tuned illusion that what we’re seeing is really happening. Reality TV production is now a fine art of maintaining the reality illusion while still putting together a show that is dramatic. We don’t see the off-screen producers, prompting the on-air personas to act and talk a certain way, and the careful editing of a show to shape a story and create the outcome that producers want. Most of it is not malicious, producers want what they think will create the best show for the best chance of ratings success. That’s true with any show on television. But that spontaneity and genuine warmth of Life with a capital L is nowhere to be found.

So at a convention of video podcasters, there was lots of talk about one of the main selling points of what they do, which is authenticity. Because it’s often just a person in front of a camera, online video is much better at cutting through that wall. It’s much easier to identify with that person on camera in an online video, because you know there’s not an army of handlers and executives vetting every word. It is what it purports to be, and cuts much closer to what is real than any reality TV show can.

In that vein, we all in many ways create a public persona, especially when we create the public face of a business. We try to put our best foot forward, say all the right things on the websites, create the most professional outward appearance we can. The problem with that is, like television, people are expecting that and can see it for what it is. Everybody tries to create that image. It’s not to say that we at upNext Media are not professional and polished, I am very confident in the videos that we create and how we serve our clients. That being said, the actual experience of working with me and my team of producers and technicians is something that isn’t being properly conveyed in our public persona. What’s behind the example videos on the website is still a mystery.

The danger in being authentic, in trying to strip some of that persona away, is that our company would then be seen as different. You may be saying that’s a good thing, but it’s still risky, or more people would be doing it. But in being different, we would then become more real, and perhaps a little more remarkable.

Your comments and thoughts would be appreciated.

read more | digg story

read more | digg story

While computers have gotten easier to use, the same can’t be said for televisions. Remember when you used to be able to pick up the remote, turn the TV on, change channel, adjust volume, all within the one control? Today my “improved” home theatre consists of a television, an audio reciever, a DVD Player, a VCR, a Cable Box, and to top it all off a Tivo. If you plug your iPod into your computer, the computer recognizes it, fires up iTunes, syncs the music, all without human intervention. My Tivo remote has no idea if the television is on or not. People now need instructions of the specific steps we need to follow just to watch a movie, as there is no feedback between the controls and any of the components, and those components don’t talk to each other. Makes the simple act of watching TV a pain to figure out. We haven’t even gone into the horror that is hooking all this stuff up.

The article proposes that the interface people at Apple are probably the people to solve this problem.

Check it out here 

Turns out in Italy they did a study on what was most effective in helping children deal with the pain of giving blood samples. Some kids were distracted by their mothers, some were given no distraction, and some were distracted by cartoons. Guess which one won the day. That’s right, apparently Mother’s love and concern is no match for the pain numbing abilities of the television set. So the next time someone tries to tell you that television is the root of all that is evil in our society, just tell them about the magical healing powers of the tube.

Check out the story here 

CBS

You can read all about it here 

It’s nice to see some network shows come up with some fun promo ideas that are simple and easy to execute. Instead of creating a ‘walled garden’ of trying to direct all fans to the official NBC.com site, going where the people already are makes a lot of sense.

Read the Mediaweek article here

MTV has been blamed for ruining the attention span of an entire generation, and making music more about the photogenic quality of the artist then their ability to carry a tune. Today the influence of the music video has changed the way we advertise products, produce television, and tell stories. We consume media in bite size chunks (a la YouTube), and much of the catalyst for that came from a cable network that nobody thought would ever fly. Music, on television? Doesn’t sound so crazy 25 years later.

Read the NPR Story Here