Digital content vs television (essay, 3rd topic)

Co-existence of television and YouTube

By Samantha Miller

“We are living through the largest expansion of expressive capability in the history of the human race and it wouldn’t be a revolution if there were no losers,” stated Clay Shirky (2007), New York University professor in the graduate interactive telecommunications program. Creative skills used to produce television shows were once developed by professionals but now digital content has replaced these skills. Digital content has enabled amateurs to produce television shows similar to those produced by highly skilled professionals. Further the amateur productions are created in a shorter time-frame, with less expense. Consequently, television shows, as an area of expertise, has become a hobby, leaving professionals to lose income, employment or production as the competition between professionals and amateurs becomes fierce.

Television professionals have worked to develop their skills in production but these skills have been replaced by digital media. Professional is defined as “relating or belonging to a profession” where profession refers to “an occupation that requires extensive education or specialized training” (Macquarie, 2004, pg. 1491). Therefore, in television a professional is a person who has extensive education or training in producing television, they could be classed as anything between an actor, director, writer or even best boy electric. Television show professionals have a long history with television being introduced to the world on January 26th 1926 when John Logie Baird demonstrated the first working television (R.W. Burns, 2000, pg. xi). The first ever television show was released in America in 1928, by Mortimer Stewart titled ‘the Queen’s Messenger’ IMBD: the Queen's Messenger (IMBD, updated 2009). After this television shows evolved with digital media, even adapting to DVD’s after they originated in 1997 (Nicholas, 2009). During this time professionals have struggled with costs, time and competition yet it is digital media, such as YouTube which has created the most hardship. ‘New York times’ blogger, Melissa Lafsky (2007), refers to the crisis in a recent article, ‘Is web really hurting TV?’.

“The current conventional wisdom is that the rise of Internet video may mean the end of television as we know it... much of the TV industry’s anxiety is based on the assumption that entertainment viewership is a zero-sum game — i.e., if more people are watching programming online, then fewer are left to watch TV.”blog

With digital media still evolving predictions have been made that there might not even be a future for television shows as amateurs use digital media (teevio, 2008).

The internet has been in constant evolution since its conception in the 1960’s until the most recent unveil of Microsoft’s windows 7(Webopedia, 2007). With the internet other digital media has evolved such as phones (the iphone or the smart phone). In the evolution of all of these products it soon became possible for amateurs to record anything for it to be uploaded onto the internet. The next step for digital media is creating a format to be viewed on the wide screen television, completely replacing television shows. “If people start demanding to see these “homemade” movies in a different format, on a larger screen, I’m sure someone will figure out the means to do so” (Teevio, 2008). Previously it was the music industries turn to battle with losing customers to online music downloading but now it is television professionals turn to battle with amateurs that were once consumers of their work due to the effect of digital media upon the world.

Digital media has enabled amateurs to produce content, previously only done by professionals. An amateur, defined as somebody with limited skill or knowledge of an activity (Macquarie, 2004, pg. 53), uses digital media, such as smart phones, software or handy cams, to create television shows which can then be shown to an audience through YouTube or other such sites. An example of this is the popular storm trooper which is shown as a series on YouTube . This show, which is a play on the television show cops and star wars, has many viewers but it is shown in low quality and is cheap to produce, also YouTube is currently a free program where amateurs can upload videos without cost. Digital media, such as the smart phone, have given amateurs a cheap way to film television shows. Although the smart phone in particular is still facing some developmental issues, such as sound, videos can still be produced such as ‘mankind is no island’, filmed all from a smart phone. Due to YouTube also being free to view many consumers have moved from television shows to the alternate amateur productions.

There are two arguments regarding the ability of television show professionals and amateurs to co-exist; the first is that television will fail as it loses its audiences to amateurs and the second is that amateurs actually aid television shows. The first argument is based upon ratings. Television shows are based on ratings (Smith 2008). It is a fact that digital content has enabled amateurs to create cheap, online versions of television shows, or webisodes as shown during the television off-season, and it is believed, although not proven, that the decrease in overall television viewing is due to the online alternate. The second argument believes that being able to watch television online increases viewers. Television shows such as ‘Heroes’ or ‘Lost’ are written in a way that missing one episode could mean missing the whole season, the internet provides a way to watch that missed episode (Gahr 2007). The debate between the two will only be proven over time as either television shows dissipate or evolve.

Creative skills, once necessary to producing television shows, have become irrelevant as digital content has replaced it. Digital content has enabled amateurs to produce television shows, more efficiently then before, similar to those produced by highly skilled professionals. Consequently, television shows, as an area of expertise, has become a hobby, enjoyed by amateurs, leaving the television show industry to lose income, employment or production as the competition between professionals and amateurs becomes fierce. “Video cameras and editing software are getting less and less pricey. It won’t be long before some geeky kid can put his well-made clip next to a movie trailer and actually show it up…” (Teevio, 2008).

Reference List

Books/ Journals:

1. Shirky, C., in Carr, D., 2007, ‘the media equation: the 24 hour people’, the New York Times, New York.

2. Burns, R.W., 2000, ‘John Baird, television pioneer: volume 28 of history of technology series’, IET, Scotland.

3. Macquarie, 2004, ‘international English dictionary: complete and unabridged edition’, Pan Macmillion Australia Pty Limited, Australia.

4. Nicholas, J., 2009, ‘from big screen to small screen’, lecture: new communication technologies, Griffith University, Gold Coast campus, Australia.

Online/ journal sources:

1. IMBD, updated 2009, ‘the Queen’s messenger’, IMBD movies, accessed 12/10/2009, from

2. Lafsky, M., 2007, ‘Is the web really hurting television’, new york times online: freakonomics, as accessed 12/10/2009, from

3. Teevio, 2008, ‘Will YouTube and friends kill television’, teevio: josh, accessed 12/10/2009, from

4. Smith, S.A., 2008, ‘How the internet has affected television viewing’, Helium: know what you want, Accessed 12/10/2009, From

5. Gahr, E., 2007, ‘how the internet has affected television viewing’, Helium: know what you want, Accessed 12/10/2009, from

6. Webopedia, 2007, ‘Brief timeline of the internet’, Webopedia, accessed 12/10/2009, from

Embeddings/Links:

1. ‘Storm troopers’, embedding taken from the online service YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MMAoOPa0Pg&feature=PlayList&p=C9F8F06D275AA19B&index=1

2. ‘Mankind is no island’, embedding taken from the online service YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrDxe9gK8Gk

3. ‘Timeline’, link to an online timeline of the history of internet: http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/timeline.asp

4. ‘the Queen’s Messenger’, link to IMBD, information on the first ever television show: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0378625/

5. ‘is the web really hurting television’, link to an online blog by new York times: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/is-web-video-really-hurting-tv/

lecture and tutorial week seven

tutorial: ireport (load a fake news report after filming it on a mobile phone onto ireport)

lecture: Jason's lecture on freeware

This lecture is really simple to explain, we learnt what freeware is, where to find it, what to look for and how to use it. Freeware is pretty much free computer software which can be downloaded (not to be confused with openware which is software that can be edited). You can find fareware many ways. One way of finding freeware is by googleing it, this shows various freeware programs but it also may show software that needs to be brought or freeware that doesnt do what you want it to do. A better way to find freeware in to go onto one of the many sites that shows freeware and search through that. What to look for is obvious, just search for the particular thing that you want your software to do for you. lastly using this software is a bit more complicated. sometimes the site where you downloaded this from shows instructions, sometimes you look for a forum to show you how, sometimes you find a tutorial and sometimes you figure it out by playing around with it.

censorship and democracy

in last week's lecture for news and politics we were shown a scale. on the left side of this political scale was left wing beliefs such as communism etc and on the right side was beliefs such as nazism (or whatever that is) etc. Australia (as a labour democracy) sat close to the center but swinging to the right side. censorship is purely a right wing belief so how can Australia be both a democracy and way over near being nazi's (do we even want to be associated with that?). so i believe no, there is no place for censorship in a democracy (well at least not a good one).

essay topics

ok, after looking over all of the topics for the online essay i chose:

3. Digital media put the tools of production into the hands of the everyday computer user making it incredibly easy to produce content. These creative skills used to be something that people worked to develop. Now it appears that amateurs can produce content of a fair standard within a relatively short period of time. Where does this leave 'professionals' and highly-skilled artists? Choose one area of creativity and discuss some of the challenges facing practitioners vs amateurs in producing digitalcontent.

the reason i chose this is because i plan to go into film (film critic) and i was brought up on moving images (even though im only 17 and havent really grown up yet). and for this topic and don't know what my opinion is. i admire people like m.night shamalon and quentin tarentino but at the same time i think its good that poor people can reach that goal as well through new communication technologies. i think i will enjoy deciding which side im on...or jsut writing the essay from no point of view but an equal one.

downloading freeware

ok i recently brought a multimedia iriver (because they are way cooler than ipods :), although i can't wait til i get a mac computer) so i decided to download a program that will convert my downloaded flv youtube videos to avi which can then be added to the iriver. this was easy because i just googled 'convert flv to imc' and it came up with a list of downloadable programs. the hard part was finding the free ones. i eventually found one that was free but i put a watermark on the videos so i kept looking til i found one that worked. i found it really easy to use and it didnt suck up the internet as some downloads do (my mum is really concious of that) so i belive it was worthwhile (ive now got a whole bunch of youtube videos on my iriver whooo). i also think i will use freeware more often now.

third video embed

ahhahaha, ok well i chose this clip of the numa numa man for my third video. I chose this one because this random guy, obviously kinda geeky, was unknown (by anyone but friends and family) but after this clip he became slightly famous. He realesed this clip of him doing a rendetion of the song by European 'o-zone' and suddenly became the famous numa numa guy and he got quite a bit of money out of it all. Not only is it funny i think it summarises what technology has become, people becoming famous for no reason and using new communication technologies to do it...watch it its funny....

Second video embed

ok for my second video i chose 'star' which is apart of the hire series. We were shown this is class and i thought it was helarious so i watched all of them, of course i found this one the funniest. The reason i have chosen to embed this video is because it is an add, filmed by a professional movie director with professional actors, but it is only an add. I think this shows new communicaiton technologies, as we have learnt this year, and shows what technologies we have had for decades can become, eg, television adds becoming online short films.