Just finished watching Atonement. Really good flick. Not sure how it got so overlooked at the academy awards - No Country for Old Men was a decent modernized western but it wasn’t picture of the year material.
First a little technology cable channel called TechTV gets taken over by Comcast-owned G4 Media and becomes G4-TechTV for a short while before finally being killed off into G4 and having it’s array of hosts dismissed and programs cancelled to be replaced with stuff like Cheaters and Cops 2.0.
Then a game review company (Gamespot, actually) fires one of it’s lead reviewers for a brutally honest review that was critical of a handicapped game because it was advertising heavily on Gamespot. That’s right - Gamespot would prefer their employees lie for financial gain rather than give good, honest reviews as a review media outlet.
Well, the plot to the story of the web these days seems to be full of people that got knocked down, picked themselves up, dusted off, & trump their previous employees.
Those geeks that used to work at TechTV? Kevin Rose, Alex Albrecth, Patricmk Norton, Sarah Lane, Martin Sargent, Dan Huard, Jessica Corbin and even past behind-the-scenes operators like segment producer David Prager are just a few of the major players you might remember from TechTV and they’re back to producing a new sort of media. It’s television for the internet and it’s getting huge. Revision3 - with twelve shows updated weekly and another five joining the set in 2008, the site is pushing out content that is, in fact, in large demand and they’re producing it for the right audience. With shows ranging from the top news stories from Kevin Rose’s Digg being dicussed over a beer with previous The Screen Saver’s cohost Alex Albrecht to a talk show with Martin Sargent where he interviews all sorts of odd personalities from the web - it’s television for a new generation.
They have the Totally Rad Show which is a mixture of reviewing new television shows, movies, and video games while also reminiscing about and comparing to older flicks and games.
But all of these shows are not just shot on hand held consumer video cameras. They’re professional shot and edited on sets in a studio. They’re actual segments ranging from daily shorts to full 30-45 minute (and occasionally longer) shows that you can stream from Revision3’s website or download in a variety of formats.
And it’s free. . .
Just like standard television, the shows are all ad-supported. Unlike standard cable, however, you don’t pay an access fee. “Commercials are typically at the beginning and end of a show and presented by the host - usually with a code that grants you discounts for things like GoDaddy.com or Netflix online movie rentals. Sponsors range from Sony’s Playstation Network to the Microsoft Zune. Even IBM and Adobe Systems understand the potential for advertising revenue and have jumped on board in the past.
So head over to Revision3 and check out the show schedule.
Oh. . . And in case you’re wondering - that reviewer from Gamespot? He’s teamed up with a buddy and formed his own review company. Look for updates on that as summer approaches.