Bencredible

I have been doing a terrible job of keeping this blog up. I do have some interesting ideas I thought I would throw out to the Interwebs and allow you all to see what I’m thinking for Spacevidcast 3.00. For those who don’t know we number each season with the season number then episode, so the very first episode was 1.01 and the latest we just did was 2.33. Next year in 2010 we begin 3.xx shows so the season is called 3.00.  Now on to the ideas.

1 – I’m thinking we will release Spacevidcast Pro as an attempt to monetize the show. Making money is very important here as I can’t fund the show out of pocket forever. We have some great donators but that’s not enough to keep the lights on. By adding a pro option that will allow us to have monthly subscribers and hopefully bring in enough income to allow us to do live coverage of additional events across the country. One of the reasons we could not cover the *awesome* 2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge was that we simply didn’t have enough money to travel to the many different sites. Dailies and live shows will remain free, Pro will be options on top of that. Basically, a freemium model. My big concern is that space is a niche industry with not a lot of money for new media shows like ours. Not sure how many people would be willing to pay for Pro. To do my full vision of what I want, I would need 2,500 subscribers at $10.00 a month. That is a lot. To break even with our current setup I just need 100 subscribers at $10.00/mo. Well, that’s a starting point at least.

2 – I’m not sure we will be able to do this for 3.00 but I want to create a mobile production truck. The NewTek StreamOrDie.com site is quite inspiring. For not a lot of money (relative of course) we can create a mobile HD satellite production truck that I can drive just about anywhere in North America to do live streams. The truck would use something like a ToDoCast.tv mobile satellite solution. I’m also thinking that mobile events like that would be pay-per-view for users that are not Spacevidcast Pro members. Why not free? Well, 24 hours of satellite time is $2,200 so we have to recover those costs somehow. If the event itself is willing to pay for the satellite time, then we would offer it for free with pop-up ads or without pop-up ads for Pro members. That’s the idea at least. I believe the initial cost would be around $150k for the car and all production equipment. Not too bad when compared to other HD satellite production trucks but still more than I have today. Anyone want to sponsor our 3.00 series?

3 – I would like to bring in a NewTek Tricaster XD300 combined with an LC11 and 3Play. Expensive solution although it would still be HD and it would allow us to record 3 HD cameras in slow motion for live playback. Imagine watching Xoie’s engine close up in slow motion after the successful landing. Would be epic! I’m not sure it would work, but if the Canon EOS 5D Mark II can output 720p clean via component HD that would be a pretty powerful solution. This would probably all still link to CamTwist since there is a lot of stuff in there that even a Tricaster simply can not do today.

4 – And finally, I’m looking in to moving the studio. I don’t have a lot of detail here but I want to bring in a live audience each and every week. Crow River Coffee Company is awesome but we can’t fit an audience in to the back room. Currently I’m looking at theatre space that would allow for a full production. Might be able to just drive the Spacevidcast truck up to the location and stream from there. See how that all comes together? To add to the awesomeness, I may know just the theatre to use…

What does the community think? Ambitious plans for and ambitious industry. Feedback?