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2007 Broadband Emmy Awards
NATAS + MySpace = 2007 Broadband Emmy Awards
National Television Academy press release
LOS ANGELES – January 8, 2007 – MySpace, the world’s leading lifestyle portal, and the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, presenters of the coveted Emmy® Awards, today announced they have joined forces to honor premium broadband content on the Internet. MySpace will serve as the exclusive online partner of the Broadband Emmy Award submissions, empowering video producers and filmmakers to submit self-generated content for consideration through the official MySpace Emmy profile at http://myspace.com/MyEmmy.
The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences debuted its first Emmy Award for content distributed via broadband and portable delivery last year and honored creators in four categories. This year, The Academy will triple the number, honoring creators in 12 categories in four content areas: Entertainment, Sports, News & Information, and Public & Community Service. In addition, high school students are eligible for the National Television Student Awards for Excellence for broadband-delivered content in all seven student categories. Read entire NTA press release…
Now THIS is going to be interesting. :D
[Full Disclosure: I am a NATAS Emmy Judge as well as an International Emmy Judge]
There are several ongoing debates within the community of people and groups who make videos and post their created content on the Internet. One of them is “what is and what is _not_ a video blog”. There’s another debate about videos posted in “closed” environments vs those posted in ways that make them accessible to whomever happens to be searching the net for video content. A MAJOR debate is what aggregators should and should not be doing with RSS feeds from either content creators or hosting sites.
Yet another daily debate is “what is QUALITY content?” or perhaps “what makes a show popular” or “what makes a show _good_”. The problem, IMO, with making distinctions about what constitutes a popular show is that depending on where you look and how you look at it, shows that get similar amounts of hits can be spun to look like either one is more “successful”. There is no agreed-upon site that can actually track site date consistently and accurately.
This makes sense, because there’s no bottleneck… Meda that goes to the internet goes straight out. It doesn’t have to go through EPs, producers, editors, quality control, legal, studios, stations, channels, local distribution points, cable boxes, televisions. There’s nowhere you can go and say “this show delivered 80,000 units through here and that show delivered 50,000 units, so the first show has more viewership for this period.
On top of that, there are several ways to get data from a site. If someone goes to my web site, they might view a page and then not view the video. They might open the page but not read anything on it at all. They might bypass the main page because they linked to a permalink for one post. They might not hit my site’s pages at all if they subscribe to my videos in RSS. They might not hit the RSS more than once if they are downloading the videos and watching them offline. So… if one site uses page hits to judge popularity and another site uses video downloads, they’re going to see things completely differently, even looking at the exact same site. If you have to have a particular widget installed to count in the rankings, you can forget it entirely as far as accuracy. Anyone who hits the site without being “part of the program” doesn’t count in the stats.
Anyway, I doubt the 2007 Broadband Emmy Awards will have anything to do with page hits and downloads. The Emmys in general are about quality content and quality production values. That’s what makes this contest interesting. MSM (Main Stream Media) is now getting involved in putting clips on the internet in mass quantities. All of a sudden, there are videos on MySpace with laugh-tracks. :/ All of a sudden, a “new” show appears with 30 episodes uploaded on the same day! :/ Reading the eligibility requirements for the MySpace contest, “Repurposed material originally produced for traditional media is not eligible”. That’s good, because cutting three minutes out of a professionally produced, shot and edited piece shouldn’t put you in position to compete with someone that made their video specifically for the internet. That doesn’t mean the internet piece isn’t well done or professionally produced, but it’s apples vs. oranges.
The first category open for submissions is “Entertainment”. It’s open right now, and “News & Documentary” opens on Feb. 26th. They both close on March 26, and finalists will be notified in April.
As usual, make sure you read the fine print in contests or even when you choose a hosting service to upload your videos to. Check out these terms of service in The Rules of the MySpace My Emmy contest:
By entering the Contest, you grant Sponsors a perpetual, fully-paid, irrevocable, non-exclusive license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, distribute, display, sub-license, exhibit, transmit, broadcast, televise, digitize, otherwise use, and permit others to use and perform throughout the universe the Material (including without limitation, the underlying intellectual property therein to the extent necessary to exploit Material) in any manner, form, or format now or hereinafter created, including, but not limited to, on the Internet, and for any purpose, including, but not limited to, advertising or promotion of Sponsors and their services, all without further consent from or payment to you. The completion, expiration and/or termination of the Contest shall not affect Sponsors’ rights regarding Materials or Sponsors’ other rights hereunder. Sponsors shall have, forever and throughout the universe, the right to use such Material in any manner as determined by Sponsors in their sole discretion, including without limitation, the right to make changes, alterations, cuts, edits, interpolations, deletions and eliminations into and from such Material and the right to package such Material with those rendered by other Entrants in connection with the exploitation of such Material, all without further consent from or payment to you.
That’s fantastic! Look how progressive those terms are! Throughout the universe! :D Wow! They must know something we don’t know about pending space travel. Anyway… here’s the link to the Broadband Rules from MyEmmy.TV. If you’re willing to pay the $400 entry fee, you can skip all the TOS shenanigans and soul-selling.
The MyEmmy.TV page also includes the Judging Procedures & Criteria:
JUDGING PROCEDURES AND CRITERIA:
Content, Creativity and Execution are the primary standards for judging. Each criterion is given equal weight.
Judges will focus on the clarity of presentation of information, as well as the visual impact of the entry. Judges can also give weight to the entrant’s utilization of “broadband†capabilities, (e.g., interactivity, and viewers’ choice of images). Although any entry originally produced for “broadband†transmission is eligible to compete, the more the web’s capabilities are demonstrated in the production, the better the chances may be for winning.
Advocacy and presentation of strong points of view are eligible for award consideration. “Self-published†work by individuals as well as production entities is also eligible for consideration.
All “Broadband†entries/URLs will be viewed at home and judged in one round to determine the nominees and winner. Judging panels will consist of content experts rather than technicians. There will be separate panels for each category, although there may be an overlap with some judges serving on more than one panel. Judges vote via secret ballot using a scale of 10 for the highest and 1 for the lowest rating in each area (Content, Creativity, and Execution), for a total of 30 possible points.
OK… So I see what’s going on now. :) Myspace is holding a contest in which the winners will be sponsored to the official Emmy competition. There are going to be two levels of judging. You can skip one level altogether by paying the entry fee and going straight to http://www.myemmy.tv/ . If my understanding after skimming the official entry rules is correct, as long as you made your content specifically for the internet, any level of professional involvement, time or money spent on the project is fine.
I’ll be interested to see what MySpace promotes to entrance in the actual Broadband Emmy Awards. Let’s see if any of the “mom & pop” user-generated content gets the nod over studio-produced work. I’ll refrain from mentioning any shows that I think could compete favorably… VERY favorably in the competition, just in case my region is involved in the judging and asks me to participate.
Either way, I think both the MySpace contest and the official Broadband Emmy Awards are fantastic ways for content creators to gain exposure and/or accolades. It’s definitely worth considering entering… whether it’s a video that was already done (since March 2nd, 2006) or one that you’re planning up until April 2007.
Bill Cammack • New York City • Freelance Video Editor • alum.mit.edu/www/billcammack
Myriad Genders
As I was wasting my day, I stumbled into Yahoo 360. I’m not sure how I got there. I think I was browsing MyBlogLog and one of the members in my contact list had a Yahoo 360 page, and when I clicked on it, I found out that I had a Yahoo account, but not a Yahoo 360 account. I figured this was similar to having an XBOX but not having an XBOX 360, so I joined up right quick. It’s a simple process, and your avatar transfers automatically.
ummmmmmmm…..
So now what do I do with this? Apparently, from the home page, there’s a page to get you to the news, there are pages so you can set up your profile and check your mail, and then there’s “search”. That’s it…. When you go to search, you can either search people by location and age, or you can search people or feeds by key words. From there, you can read stuff and invite people to your friends list. oh… There’s also a list that someone creates for you called “Interesting Pages on Yahoo 360″… Interesting to whom? Who chose this stuff? I’m not seeing the 360-ness of this aspect of Yahoo.
If you go back to regular Yahoo, there’s a bunch of stuff on the main page. I decided I needed to see what other people found so interesting about 360, so I googled “benefit of yahoo 360″. I got a lot of pages of people that weren’t getting any benefit from it at all. Three pages into the google listings, I spied “dykes do digital”, so you KNOOOOWWWWW I had to click on THAT! :D
http://www.dykesdodigital.org/yahoo-360-mandatory-binary-gender-choice-sucks/
“… I’m REALLY REALLY disappointed that I have to a) choose male or female as a gender and b) I have no choice about making it public or not.. it’s mandatory that the bit is made public, and searchable.
It stinks.
At the very minimum, I should be able to choose whether I want that info public or not. Better: I could tag my gender, or at least get a text box. Something. Throw us people of complexity a bone here. And, in the best of all possible worlds, *I wouldn’t have to be asked in the first place because no one would give a crap* in some sort of ridiculous institutional put-people-in-boxes sort of way because we feel the need to LOCK DOWN and CONTROL every bit of stray METADATA we think might be appropriate. I love metadata, too. But not when used against people, to fix them down and gloss over things that are really, really important and complex, like how you feel about your gender. In case anyone has been living under a rock since the dawn of time: GENDER IS A COMPLEX, PROBLEMATIC ISSUE. Complicated by the vast long history of sexism, culture, sociology, biology, technology, politics.
You can’t just collapse all of that INTO A LITTLE CHECKBOX.
Okay, I’ve had my tirade, now, thanks. ;)”
Hmm… The title of “her” post was “Yahoo 360 mandatory binary gender choice sucks”. So I needed to go look up “gender”. :D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender
So now, things start to get ‘interesting’. “She” was complaining that there was a binary (meaning only two) choice for gender. That would make Male (1) and Female (2). ummmmmm….. How many more genders does she want? What’s she expecting the distinctions to be? Or perhaps her idea is for there to be no distinctions at all. You can just be whatever you feel like being, whenever you feel like being it. Like… if someone engages you in conversation, instead of not declaring a gender at all, you get to say “I’m vague, thank you” or “I’m ambiguous” or “Is it Tuesday? I’m kind of a chick on Tuesdays… but not really”. I suppose if someone walks up to you and accuses you of being a human, you’d like to be able to say you’re a beetle… or perhaps a cow. So I read on to see what wikipedia had to say.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender
“Since the 1950s, the term gender has been increasingly used to distinguish a social role (gender role) and/or personal identity (gender identity) distinct from biological sex. Sexologist John Money wrote in 1955, ‘The term gender role is used to signify all those things that a person says or does to disclose himself or herself as having the status of boy or man, girl or woman, respectively. It includes, but is not restricted to, sexuality in the sense of eroticism.’[5] Elements of such a role include clothing, speech patterns, movement and other factors not solely limited to biological sex.”
Disclose himself or herself as having the status of boy, man, girl or woman? So, if a guy decides to “disclose himself as a girl”, that’s supposed to make him a girl and there’s supposed to be a gender choice on Yahoo 360 for “guys that disclose themselves as girls”? :?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender
“Many societies categorize all individuals as either male or female.. however, this is not universal. Some societies recognise a third gender[6].. for instance, Native American Two-Spirit people, and hijras of India and Pakistan[7].. or even a fourth[8] or fifth.[9] Such categories may be an intermediate state between male and female, a state of sexlessness, or a distinct gender not dependent on male and female gender roles. Joan Roughgarden argues that in some non-human animal species, there can also be said to be more than two genders, in that there might be multiple templates for behavior available to individual organisms with a given biological sex.[10]
There is debate over to what extent gender is a social construct and to what extent it is a biological construct. One point of view in the debate is social constructionism, which suggests that gender is entirely a social construct. Contrary to social constructionism is essentialism which suggests that it is entirely a biological construct. Others’ opinions on the subject lie somewhere in between.
Some gender associations are changing as society changes, yet much controversy exists over the extent to which gender roles are simply stereotypes, arbitrary social constructions, or natural innate differences.”
How interesting is THAT? Maybe she’s onto something! :D
side note: I’m going to have to get back to that “Native American Two-Spirit people” idea…..
So, let’s say Yahoo 360 is released in India… People there should be complaining that there are only two divisions as well. Do you get the extra genders if you register in India?!?! :D hehehe Maybe she should make a foreign account and see what happens.
While we’re at it… Where’s the part where we get to declare that we have several wives? Shouldn’t the sultans be up in arms about this? How come we can’t go on Match.com and declare that we have 8 wives and are looking to date? :D All we get to put is stuff like “married” “single” “in a relationship”… Isn’t this as bad as *ONLY* having Male and Female to choose from in gender selection? :O Where’s the selection for “I’m screwing several chicks right now, and I’m looking for more women that want to get with this program?” hahahaha
Well… I’m off to research how gender is a social construct and learn about the Two-Spirit people! :D
