This is a response to Tyme White‘s article: “Experienced vs. inexperienced ‘advice’”, which was a response to my article, “Personal Brand? No Crossover”.

@Tyme: Good points.

First of all, I was specifically talking about internet shows. Actually, FIRST OF ALL, no… I don’t have ANY experience with hiring ANYBODY to be the figurehead or “face” of a show. What I *DO* have experience with is watching a show and determining whether a) it’s good, b) it sucks because of the production (technical issues), c) it sucks because of the script-writing, d) it sucks because the face of the show is entirely talentless, or e) EVERYTHING about the show sucks.

Granted… That MAY be because I’m an editor AND a show producer.

I wouldn’t know what the average joe/josepine takes away from looking at a show that “fails” (whatever that means in the context of this discussion). All I can do is ‘project’ and believe that distinctions are made between whether the show a) wasn’t good, and it’s the talent’s fault, b) wasn’t good, and it’s NOT the talent’s fault, or c) WAS GOOD, but got shut down for other reasons (or didn’t make money or didn’t grow it’s audience… whatever you’re defining as a “failed” show).

For instance, we just received news that MobLogic was shut down. According to articles on the net, Lindsay Campbell is still an employee of CBS. Before MobLogic was cancelled, they were outputting sporadically compared to the regular schedule they were using when they first started.

Without “inside information” from “the horse’s mouth”, there’s no telling what the reason was for the shutdown. It just so happens that WallStrip was shut down on the same day, apparently. Let’s say the average person isn’t going to search for articles about WHY a show got cancelled, and all they know is that it was here today and gone tomorrow.

What that person’s going to take away from the show, as far as the “face” of the show, is the sum of their experiences from watching her. They either liked her style, didn’t like her style, or felt she was inconsistently good/bad. If she gets selected for a new show, that sentiment is going to drive whether that viewer goes “YAAY!” or “oh no. She got ANOTHER show? :/”. That’s what the talent has to carry forward, their own performance. Unless the public feels that the show “failed” because the talent sucked, the ending of a show, which as you mention, is the BUSINESS side of things has nothing to do with the ENTERTAINMENT VALUE they received from the talent.

Slightly-related story… I was just in the Indy Mogul Test Film “The Spirit’s Day Off”. As I’m reading the script, I read “I am the millipede, and I have a thousand of everything”. So, the director, Erik Beck tells me to say “a million”. So I’m like “yeah, but milli -> thousand” and he’s like “I know, but a million sounds funnier”. So even though it was a technically incorrect statement, I said “I have a million of everything”.

So the video’s been viewed over 25,000 times, and ONNNNNE person decides to bring this up. That doesn’t mean that other people didn’t notice, of course. Now… that person is going to take whatever they personally perceived away from that situation. They might think that the character “The Millipede” is a dummy. They might think the actor is a dummy, because he [I] said a million instead of a thousand. They might think the script-witer is a dummy if they realize that the actor was reading a script. They might think the director’s a dummy for wrapping the shoot without correcting that error. The might think the editor’s a dummy for not cutting around it or re-tracking the actor saying “a thousand” and dubbing it.

This brings us to the other part of your point, which has to do with people who are in charge of hiring people to work on shows. Anybody who’s looking for on-air talent should be…. wait for it…… KNOWLEDGEABLE about how shows are put together and the extent of the actor’s responsibility for the production of a show and therefore his or her CULPABILITY when the show “fails”.

Therefore, if the acting was POOR, then the person doing the hiring should be able to properly low-rate the actor/actress because they didn’t look good on camera or they read the teleprompter like a left-back 3rd-grader or they weren’t any good at interacting with their viewers/community… Similarly, let’s say the talent was involved in more than reading a script. The extent of their involvement in production should also be analyzed/criticized. If the production is what caused the show to “fail”, then the talent can AND SHOULD be charged with the failure of whatever role they played.

Other than that, it’s out of the talent’s hands… like any. other. job. :) You can’t blame the assembly-line worker in the sock factory who’s been making socks for YEARS and has done he same quality job or better each review period for when the plant gets shut down, and they’re suddenly jobless. It’s obviously not their fault, the way the “failure” of an internet show is obviously the responsibility of SEVERAL people, unless it was a one man/woman show.

On top of all that, who’s to say that they would hire the figurehead to have ANY say in production anyway? Let’s say the talent WAS culpable in the mishandling of a show…. What difference does that make if you don’t let them get their hands on any of the controls in this case? None. I didn’t edit “The Spirit’s Day Off”. What difference does it make that I’m an editor? None. I was there to play a position. I did what *I* had to do, everyone else did what THEY had to do, and the video ended up sweet. :)

Also, the reason you might want to take a chance on talent from a “failed” show is that they come equipped with automatic reach. They have a built-in fanbase as well as an established communication network to inform their viewers what they’re going to be doing next. If you start out fresh, with a newjack, they have to build their community from ZERO, meaning that you either have to hire someone else to start building community for them and getting the buzz out, or part of their time that they could have been making the show BETTER is going to be wasted on doing PR for themselves.

So, no… I don’t think culpability for a show’s “failure” follows the talent AT ALL, unless the REASON for that failure was the talent’s ability to entertain.

~Bill Cammack

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Twitter changed the game as far as blogging. Instead of posting something, and MAYBE people would stop by your blog and MAYBE they’d read your articles and MAYBE they’d leave a comment, all of a sudden, what you had to say was being pushed to people who actually REQUESTED to hear what you had to say by following you and then either checking the site itself or installing an app or widget on their computers or phones.

Twitter > Bill

I noticed that the traffic on the Yahoo Videoblogging Group fell off DRASTICALLY as Twitter presented a far better and faster way for people to get immediate responses to questions than an email list.

I also noticed A LOT OF PEOPLE putting a lot of their ideas on Twitter instead of their own blogs. I didn’t really think much of that until I talked with Tyme White about it ten (10) months ago, back in March, 2008:

Tyme: “Yes, the conversations are moving away from blogs but the problem is the same problem that has always existed, one I warned about at least two years ago. How many times has a writer published an article, a larger site wrote about it, and the conversation took place every where but on the writer’s site? Same problem – the writer would have to keep up with those conversations. Now, the same root problem exists, but there are many more sites where the conversation can take place. The writer publishes the entry and now a discussion can happen on the originating blog, any blogs that write about it, any site that aggregates content (Reddit, Chawlk, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.), Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, any of the social sites that are popping up, forums…the list is long.”

The question is: does it matter to the writer if the conversation takes place in other places? If the answer is no, the writer would have one strategy. If the answer is yes, it does matter and the preference is for the conversation to take place on their blog, well, that would take a different strategy, wouldn’t it?”

So, referencing that practically-one-year-old post by Tyme… Does it matter where *YOU* blog your material? I blog mine to BillCammack.com. I post references to my blog posts on Twitter and Tumblr.

On December 18th, 2008, Wayne Sutton blogged about the advice he received from Tyme months and months ago:

Wayne: Earlier this year I had a conversation with Tyme White about twitter and personal branding that had stuck in my head ever since I got off the phone with her. She brought up the fact that I had a lot of twitter followers but where or how would I stay connected with those followers if twitter goes down (fail whale) , twitter gets purchased by google & closed like Pownce or their business model just doesn’t work and everyone leaves the community.

* For the record, that conversation actually happened months before Pownce got shut down, but I understand what Wayne was trying to say as far as making his point. *

So Wayne has over 11,000 twitter followers. It would seem to make sense for him to post to twitter a lot…

Tyme: “The reason why the conversation goes on without the writer being involved (and this is going to hurt but it’s the truth) is because the commenter doesn’t really care about talking to the writer. The commenter cares about commenting on the article. Unless the writer has a direct connection with their audience, the hurdle of converting a reader to a commenter is tough enough. If the reader finds the article on another site, it is a tougher hurdle to get the reader to leave the site he or she is on (particularly if it is a favorite site), and convert that reader into a commenter on the original site the article was published on. To achieve that type of interaction a deeper connection than publishing articles and hoping someone reads them is required.”

On December 20th, 2008, Chris Brogan wrote “Of Streams and Stopping Points”:

Chris: “Twitter is a stream. Facebook is both a stream and a stopping point (but mostly a stream). Your blog is a stopping point pretending to be a stream.

It’s important to think about where you want information to live, and how you want it to impact the world. For everything you toss into a stream rolls past, and if I’m not at the stream when you throw your leaf onto the waters, I’ll miss the leaf entirely, or perhaps catch only the ripples.”

I think this is a really good way to think about this topic. Do you want to post your ideas to a stream or to a stopping point? Like I said earlier, I post my ideas to stopping points, but I publicize them in streams. The question is… Which style is more relevant to the information you have for the public? Should you use streams, stopping points, or a combination of the two?

I think the answer depends upon the type of information that you’re presenting to the world.

There are lots of people who write tech blogs who are entirely derivative. All they’re really doing is regurgitating what they read or heard somewhere else and MAYBE.. if we’re LUCKY… adding literally two cents worth of their own commentary to the original information. These people are more like reporters than bloggers. They’re like the television news, informing you about what happened or what MIGHT happen. I’ve done blog posts like this, like this 2007 post where I “reported” that there was a New Joost Version Available”.

There’s no information there other than the facts that you could have read anywhere else. On top of that, that post ceased to be relevant almost immediately. Nobody cares on December 29, 2008 that a new Joost version was available on April 03, 2007.

If this is the type of information that you have to offer the blogosphere, put it on Twitter. People will see it quickly, react to it, give you credit for it, and then it will blow away in the wind. Nobody cares that it blew away, because your information was only as useful as it was timely and relevant.

OTOH, some people post original ideas that happen to be evergreen. These would be posts that are just as relevant today as they were on April 03, 2007. You do NOT want “How To Break Up With Your Girl” or “Why professionals avoid web video” to blow away, because people always want to know these things.

This is why I post to my own blog and use twitter/tumblr/etc for announcement purposes. I post evergreen, consistently relevant and interesting material, so it needs to be available when someone new searches Google for something that I wrote two years ago.

You wouldn’t, for instance, want this TIMELESS CLASSIC to go unseen, because you only referred to it on Twitter! hahahaha :D :

Permalink: Wayne Sutton TV

* Yes. I know that the video above gives an error message. Go to Wayne’s site if you want to actually see it. That’s really smart, making a video not embeddable….. *

So where should your material “live”? Should it rest on the temporary stream of twitter or the stopping point of your own blog? Who’s going to care next year about what you posted this year? Who’s going to care tomorrow about what you posted yesterday? Who’s going to care an hour from now about what you posted just now?

If you think people are going to care, make sure people can find your material on Google by posting it on a stopping point instead of tossing it away, down the stream.

~Bill

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Raymond M. Kristiansen wrote a post on January 11, 2007 entitled “The Audience of Ten”. He also made a post with the same name to the Yahoo Videoblogging Group. They’re both good an interesting reads if you’re planning to do a “show” on the internet.

Basically, Raymond was making a distinction between having a few viewers and having many viewers. I understood TECHNICALLY, what he was talking about, but I didn’t have any IRL experience that would have made me really empathize with his points. His focus was on the HOW and WHY of doing a show being based on WHOM you were doing the show FOR.

I’ve kept Raymond’s concept in mind over the more-than-a-year since I read it. In the last month, I’ve had reason to revisit the concept to attempt to determine the “sweet spot” of “Audience”, as it pertains to me, personally.

My third and most recent “season” of ReelSolid.TV, my interenet video show, is entitled “Delusions of Grandeur”. This isn’t a personal statement, even though everyone that actually knows me IRL will tell you that DoG fits *me* PERFECTLY! :D The reason for the title is that as I contemplated WHY I would do a show, the reason is for the audience. I don’t have to do a show for ME, because I’m already living my own life. I already know what’s happening. I’m already getting laughs or education from what goes on around me. I’m enjoying NYC sights and sounds every day. So it’s not for me that I would make a show….. or, is it?……

Some people just enjoy being famous or internet famous. Some people enjoy being popular, even if they have to play themselves out to gain status/notoreity/fame/infamy. That’s of no interest to me, because I’ve always BEEN popular. I had a pivotal discussion with David Karp on June 10, 2007. I know what day it was because I shot this video:



As part of the discussion that day, David brought up the concept of “popularity”, and I insisted that that had nothing to do with my doing shows. At the same time, he sparked a question for me, which was “What’s the goal? Why do it?” which correlated with Raymond’s question “Who do you do it for?”

DoG is indicative of a cycle. In order to do an internet show, you have to delude yourself into the believe that someone, ANYONE is watching your show. Otherwise, by definition, there’s no point in putting you videos or audio or text ON the internet. It’s a beacon… A message in a bottle. You don’t know WHO’S going to get the message, but you’re hoping… BELIEVING that somebody will. So in order to do a show, you pre-fabricate your audience in your own mind, then you speak to that audience, and hopefully a REAL audience catches on to what you floated out there into the stratosphere.

Some people don’t have this problem. They just love to see/listen to themselves talk. :D That’s great for them, because they don’t need an audience. They just need to have a camera pointed at them to feel accomplished and happy with what they’re doing. More power to them! :D

When I decided on DoG, I wasn’t thinking about Raymond’s “Audience of Ten”. I was thinking about the audience at large. I was thinking about the people that randomly land on my site because of google searches. I was thinking about the people that happen to be looking for a topic that I happen to have had something to say about and just dropped in. I was NOT thinking about “core viewers” or “passionate viewers”. I wrote “Are You A Tech Elitist?” from the standpoint of someone that was focusing on the non-core and recognized a deficiency in my own core relations. With more and more Twitter followers and more and more Facebook and LinkedIn contacts, my time was being spent managing the social media masses instead of relating to the core. This is what brought me back to Raymond’s concept.

When I returned, however, I wasn’t focusing on the numbers being the difference. I was focusing on RELATIONSHIPS being the difference. The perfect example for me is my iTunes feed.

I receive stats on how many times each of my videos is pulled through iTunes. That number has never been higher than 30 within, say, 3 hours of a video release, and it’s currently sitting around 6 within the first hour. iTunes doesn’t give you any feedback about WHO IT IS that’s downloading your videos. Another thing is that when people use iTunes, they can take your show with them on their iPods or iPhones, so all you understand as the content creator is that there was one download of your video. That doesn’t mean that that person didn’t watch it 18 times and show it to their friends. So… In the mindset of focusing on the social media masses, I completely neglected my iTunes feed, meaning that as I redesigned BillCammack.com, mentally catalyzed by Tyme White, I broke my link from my video category to my iTunes feed and didn’t bother to check it because “in the grand scheme of things”, it was only 6 people anyway, right?

I received my wake-up call when my friend Adrienne Brawley asked me “So… what happened to your iTunes feed?”

All of a sudden…. And I mean *ALL* of a sudden, I completely, fully and POSITIVELY understood WHY I needed to fix my feed, and WAY MORE IMPORTANTLY, I recognized the sector of the audience that’s important TO ME when I make videos or write posts. I suddenly realized that amongst the random hits I receive from people looking for dating advice or footage of snow in Manhattan, NYC, I have a few, VERY IMPORTANT hits that I get that are from people that are ACTUALLY INTERESTED in what I’ve said or done now. Interestingly enough, DoG glosses this over, because you delude yourself into believing that lots of people care, which makes everyone like fans in a stadium. It’s the opposite of not seeing the forest for the trees. It’s not seeing the individuals for the crowd.

What it’s about for me certainly isn’t “popularity”, as I told David. Popularity’s useful for people that just want to be admired by a bunch of people they have no relationship to. It’s about having a good conversation IRL with Kenyatta about a blog post we both commented on. It’s about Tim saying he enjoys my work. It’s about Lux being able to rattle off DatingGenius concepts to new people that hang out with us because she’s watched me DEMOLISH people with the DG Live Show so many times already and people always come up with the same arguments. It’s about instigating-ass Annie throwing me under the bus every chance she gets. It’s about Charles laughing with me over something I said or did on the net. It’s about Grace shaking her head when I break down “the real” to her. :D

So, finally, I understand Raymond’s concept, and I agree with it for the most part. As I do videos going forward, I’m going to do them for the audience that I know I have and that I enjoy receiving feedback from. I might do them for individuals or I might do them for groups. I am NOT going to be focusing outside of that, however I welcome anyone who finds anything interesting to watch, give feedback or join in the fun. :)

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Tyme White linked me to Caroline McCarthy’s article where she interviewed Lindsay Campbell. I found this exchange particularly interesting:

McCarthy: The “girl in front of a camera, talking about stuff” has almost become a Web cliché by now. How do you hope that Moblogic will be different?

Campbell: One of the things that we’d like to move beyond is just being a Web talking head, like a Web counterpart to the TV talking heads. So a lot of the talking on the show is going to be done by people that we meet all over the country, and eventually hopefully in other countries, about the topics that we’re talking about. I’m not an expert, I’m just expert at talking to people, and that’s how the stories are going to get formed.

I found it cool that Caroline brought up what I affectionately call “the formula”, since it’s been my experience that everybody knows it’s going on, but nobody wants to discuss it.

“The Formula” for internet shows is that no matter how your content is aggregated, researched or scripted, make sure you have an attractive female in front of the camera to “talk about stuff”. That’s pretty much it. :D The obvious problem here is that it’s very tough (if not impossible) to tell who’s tuning in to hear about the content, and who’s tuning in to “check out the chick”.

Does it matter why they tuned in? No. Views are views. Sponsors and advertisers want to know how many times their ad is going to be shown. Revenue Sharing is based on hits, not “reasons why”. Also, I’m not knocking utilizing Eye Candy (EC) to draw attention to a show or product or get guys to concentrate on the screen long enough for your message to get across. :D It’s the same thing as having “booth babes” at conventions or car shows.

Or, is it?……..

I think it’s very important to note what percentage of your show’s props are due to content vs the looks and hopefully TALENT of the EC. There are several flavors of EC:

1) Entirely Talentless = Just looks
2) Knows how to read the teleprompter, but not theatrically
3) Enthusiastic and personable, but not knowledgeable
4) Researched and wrote her own material
5) Actually lives what she’s presenting about, obviously knowledgeable and speaking from a first-hand, in-the-trenches perspective.

I suppose flavors 4 and 5 might not qualify for EC, because you’re not “dressing up the show” by having her speak. She’s not a front. She’s the actual show. If you ran into her in person, she could intelligently engage you in conversation about facts that didn’t come up on the show or tangents she didn’t explore. However, for the purpose of this discussion, I’d like to include all the flavors as we consider how dependent your show is on the EC.

So… Let’s think about what happens when “The Face Of The Show” leaves the show…..

Let’s say you’re doing a show with an ECfl5. Actually, there wouldn’t be much for you to do except tell her when the camera’s on. :D She knows the material, she’s prepared what she wants to say, and really all you’re doing (if she needs you for anything at all instead of producing her own show completely independently) is helping HER to bring her vision to the masses. There is no “leaving the show”, because she IS the show. If she makes another show, it’ll be the exact same thing, with a new name, and without YOU connected to it. :)

ECfl4 is pretty much the same thing, except it’s likely that the research she’s doing doesn’t make her AS unique as an ECfl5, though she’s still extremely important for the show to have the same style and delivery. If she leaves the show, not just the look of the show changes, but you’ve lost the ability to write the shows in the same way that you did when you were building your audience. Also, if she joins another team or makes a similar show on her own, she automatically transfers the style of your show to hers. You can get another researcher, but if your viewers don’t appreciate her looks AND her new style, that might be all she wrote.

ECfl3 is a pretty good combination for both sides in a show break-up. :) Guys love to watch her talk. She’s fun and interesting. She’s someone that they would love to actually meet in person at a conference. Perfect. :D At the same time, since she’s not the writer or researcher on the project, none of the infrastructure disappears if she leaves. She’s “acting” what you tell her to act, so that’s what she’ll do on her new show. There are mannerisms that she’ll bring to the new venture that come from working with you or your team, but for you, transitioning to new on-air talent is seamless. She’s basically an informed spokesperson. The information doesn’t leave with her, and next week… (well… whenever you get new EC hahaha) the show goes on as planned.

ECfl2 is pretty much dime-a-dozen. Imagine the reading skills of a used car salesman in a late-night low-budget television commercial. “This. Is. Not. A. Lemon… Believe. You. Me….. I. Gah.Rohn.TEE. Ya. That.” In this case, you might be better off taking your chances and using an actual guy. :D … Or, at least a less-attractive female that can actually deliver the lines well and make your show look intelligent.

The problem here is in comparison to the better flavors. ECfl3 is like having a conversation with a friend. ECfl4&5 are like hearing a technical conversation… Like last year at BlogHerBiz ’07 when Lisa Stone moderated a panel which included Google’s VP of Search Products and User Experience, Marissa Mayer:

Also, that’s the fault of the producer or whomever’s in charge of the production. If there’s a bad read, have the talent DO.IT.OVER! :/

Which brings us to ECfl1, hehehe… This is when the producer says “I don’t care WHAT you people think! I know she can’t act and I know she can’t read, but she looks good, so I’m going to get hits and that’s all that matters”. Content-wise, these could actually be silent videos, or at least without her talking, because nobody’s listening anyway. It’s kind of a cycle… Since the EC has no mental connection to the material (if you bothered to write any material in the first place) the people who find out about your show and continue to watch it are tuning in to see how the EC looks this week. Because of this, if she leaves the show, your ratings leave with her because the EC *IS* the show, so you’re kaput.

So… Interestingly enough, if you’re a show producer, “middle of the road” is the way to go. If she knows too much, your show suffers when she leaves because she removes the infrastructure. If she comes off as a dolt or a simpleton, your show suffers when she leaves because NOW you have to survive off of the merit of your content….. Content which you disrespected in the first place by not selecting the right woman to represent your project from the giddyap.

And now, in the spirit of EC, I gratuitously embed pictures of Caroline McCarthy and Stephanie Frasco so people will click on my article! :D

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