Bencredible

With 2010 very quickly approaching I have been trying to get Spacevidcast epic all worked out so you guys can enjoy post shows and hopefully an ad-free experience (here’s hoping we win the Livestream contest!) To make epic work I looked at a bunch of different membership plugins for Wordpress including DAP, Your Member, wp-Member, MemberWing, Wishlist Member and Suma. Combined the plugins do exactly what I am looking for, but each alone has major faults that make this a very tough decision.

There are a few key things I think a membership plugin for Wordpress should include:

• Payment processing should have the option of being on-site and not via stupid PayPal subscription buttons. It is far easier to get and keep a sale if the entire sales process is taken care of directly on the site. If the user has to sign up for a PayPal account or jump through any hoops at all, you have probably lost them. They already trust you, why send them away to another site for payment that they may not trust? In addition, not all areas of the world are able to create PayPal accounts. To this end, using PayPal Payments Pro which is their API allowing for on-site credit card processing is ideal. This does require the installation of an SSL certificate, but for anyone *serious* about a membership site this should be done anyhow (do you really want them to send their username and password in clear-text?)
• Free and premium content should be easy to manage. In the case of Spacevidcast we give most of the content away for free but keep back some of the added stuff like post shows for epic subscribers. Rather than having to remember silly short codes, or double enter my data in the post and excerpt section I should have multiple ways to protect my data. If I want to have everything above the ‘more’ tag be free and everything below be paid, that should be allowed. If I want to have only the excerpt be free and the main content be paid, that should be allowed. If I want to use a short code and protect just part of the post, that should be allowed. The plugin should not assume that one method is the best method for protecting content.
• Coupons and promotions. From time to time I may want to run a sale. The plugin should allow me to say something like ‘20% off your first 3 months’ or ‘$10.00 off a yearly membership’. This also allows me to track where the sales are coming from. If I want to give all NASASpaceFlight.com L2 members a 25% discount to epic then I would just give them a specific code to use, which I would then run a report against to see how successful that campaign is.
• Affiliate program. The best people to help sell epic are those in the Spacevidcast community. If I have a member that helps bring in 10 other epic subscribers, then frankly they should get free access for a duration of time. Affiliates get a kickback of sorts to offset the cost of their own membership.
• Drip content. I personally won’t use this and will allow every epic subscriber full access to the entire catalog of content for as long as they are a member, but it should be an option for those who want to use it.
• Recurring memberships as well as single payments. If someone wants to buy access to just one article rather than pay for a full recurring membership, they should be allowed. If they pay for a membership for 60 days and then stop, they should always have access to the 60 days worth of content that they paid for and nothing else. I should also be able to shut that all off so if you no longer pay, you no longer have access.
• Full bill and receipts on the site itself. I don’t want to send my community to a third party for my CC processing, nor do I want to send them there to get their payment history, receipts, etc. The ability to quickly and easily cancel their membership should also be on the site itself, not via a third party.
• E-mail marketing. I want to keep my epic members up to date with the content that they are privy to, in order to help show the value of epic. Since the epic content will be mixed with free content, it may be hard at times to understand exactly what they are getting. Weekly e-mail campaigns (with the option to opt-out) for members should be built in or at least it should tie to another WP plugin that allows me to do this. The advantage of using a different plugin is that I can also have non-subscribers get mail messages to showing the updates on the site as well as show what they are missing out on by not subscribing to epic.
• Detailed user reports. Who bought what, when. Revenue shifts. What coupon is working best. Who is the best affiliate, etc.
• I should be able to assign memberships to users. If I want to bypass the purchase system and give a membership to someone (my mom for example) I should be able to do that and have it tracked in the system as a subscriber, not just a regular Wordpress user.
• There should be multiple tiers of access. Silver, Gold and Platinum for example. Each tier could have a different amount of information, so a silver subscriber gets some of the content whereas a gold subscriber gets all of it.
• Access to all restricted content via an RSS feed specific for that user. When they are a paying member their RSS feed works showing all available content. When they stop paying the RSS feed stops working or reverts to the public feed with only partial information. Simply placing a ‘you need a subscription’ in the public RSS feed isn’t good enough, paying members should be able to see the content whenever and wherever they are, including their RSS reader.

Those are a lot of requirements. We can break that in to two sections. The first is credit card processing and account management. The second is marketing and user retention. Both are equally important but unfortunately not one of the above plugins does both.

I narrowed my search down to both Suma Plugin and Wishlist Member. I purchased both and have been playing with them. Wishlist Member has a ton of features allowing me to really advertise the system and retain members. It has a ton of options for how I will display my content, who I will display it to and when it will be displayed. I have marketing options after the fact so I can send out e-mail blasts to all of my users. The problem is that their credit card processing, which is very important, is sub par. Want to integrate with PayPal? Sure, create a PayPal button, send users to that site, have them create an account, enter their details and then they will get access to your content. If a user wants to unsubscribe that is all taken care of on the PayPal site. The moment I send them over to PayPal I already have the potential to lose them, which means from the beginning this plugin has failed. Too bad because the rest of the plugin is quite powerful. They even allow me to use other merchants, but in all cases I have to do the card processing on a different site which is a huge no-no when it comes to a real solution.

Suma Plugin is the exact opposite of Wishlist Member. This plugin does one thing and it does it extremely well… Process credit cards and give users access to your content via their subscription level. Anything beyond this and it falls flat on its face. Want to do coupon codes? Nope. Want to have affiliate marketing? Nope. E-Mail newsletters to members? Nope. Can I at least drip content to users over time so when they subscribe they don’t just get the whole library? Nah, you can’t do that either. All you can do is process a credit card on your site. They got the user from the beginning by allowing a very simple and straight forward way to purchase a membership without ever having to leave the site. They also help the member with their subscription by giving them the billing history and ability to cancel right on the site. But that’s about as far as the plugin goes.

In an ideal world the developers of Wishlist and Suma would get together and merge their products. That would allow for a very powerful solution where the card processing is done one site, the member management remains on site, and all the cool marketing and retention features would be available to keep the subscribers and get new ones. Unfortunately today it looks like the developers are either in the card processing camp or the marketing camp but not both. So what will I end up using for Spacevidcast epic? I have no idea yet. Suma 3.0 looks promising, but frankly I need/want a solution that does it all. Maybe I should just get going with one of the plugins until Spacevidcast has enough cash to get a programmer to develop the ultimate plugin, then sell that to other users who are in the same camp as we are. Or maybe one of the plugins will develop the other half of the solution that they are missing today by then.

Do you know of a plugin that does both and works with Wordpress? Think I’m crazy and should be going about this a completely different way? Leave your comments below!

Ok Spacevidcasters, I need your help and fast!

I’m trying to give the Spacevidcast site a badly needed revision. The site itself is getting very cluttered in the main navigation and I could use some more room in the video window. Rather than make you click on a video from the homepage to start viewing I wanted to allow you to watch the video right from there. So fewer clicks, cleaner code, better navigation and more room were a few of my goals. I do have a beta available which you can see by going to http://beta.spacevidcast.com (note that not all pages work, right now I’m only focused on the homepage). Generally speaking most users don’t seem to like the really large format video. I would like to know if you like it or not and if not, would you prefer that I stick with a theme much closer to the current site design?

Remember that this is a beta site. Nearly all the features are there they just don’t all work correctly. In your opinion is this site easier or harder than the old site? Also note that the site is fluid, so you’ll see changes in real-time on the beta site as I work on it. Your constructive feedback (and details as to why you think what you’re thinking) would be greatly appreciated.

I would also like to know… What do you think Spacevidcast is? Who are we, what do we do and why are we here? Just checking to see how scattered that answer will be.

Thanks everyone for your time and comments in advance!

Oh the pains of living in Minnesota. Of course much of the US is blanketed in snow right now, but this is nothing unusual for us. Check out the video of our 8′ C-Band dish, which is what provides everyone with Spacevidcast HD, covered in snow.

Since we installed the dish in spring we had never needed to deal with snow before. With the dish as you see it in the video I had 51% signal, which I thought was pretty good for having the dish covered that much. Alas, 51% is not enough for an image and I ended up with 0% image quality. I spend around 15 minutes shoveling off the dish (and 45 minutes trying to get dry again) to get the signal back up to 95% with 100% image quality. w00t! Of course now NASA is switching satellites on January 16th, which means I’ll need to figure out how to rotate that dish with all the snow. I’ll probably need to give our great friend PSB Satellite a call to help and make sure that who area is clear of as much snow as possible before hand. That won’t be fun because that is super-compacted, super-wet snow.

[UPDATE]: Voting is now open! You can vote for Spacevidcast on the Livestream.com site.

Exciting day for me and I think for all Spacevidcasters out there! I have wanted to get a premium account with Ustream.tv (watershed) or LiveStream.com but simply could not afford it on Spacevidcast’s budget of $0.00. Earlier this month LiveStream announced a contest to win a free premium account (I assume the small one). The contest was simple: using LiveStream’s new channel design features, create a new channel look that would wow the judges. I had a couple of weeks to make this happen, but as usual waited until the 11th hour and at the last minute submitted something. I actually liked what we submitted but had no idea if it would actually make it. The contest ended on December 14th and then… nothing. Not a peep.

Earlier today I got an e-mail from LiveStream that said,

“Nice work. Out of hundreds of page designs, yours was one of the ten best. Voting starts tonight and ends Monday, Dec 28th at 11:30 pm. Your Channel will be featured as a finalist in our next newsletter as well as on the Livestream website. Good luck.”

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet! I actually had no idea this was a two stage process, but at least we passed the first stage. I just figured they would pick a bunch of designs and go from there. Now we need to win stage 2! Later tonight LiveStream will post the content on their website where users can vote (I assume there will be a blog entry). I would be greatly appreciative if you would vote for the Spacevidcast design to help me get in with a premium account as a great way to start 2010.

Why should you care? Because a LiveStream premium account can have all those annoying ads removed! That’s right, no more pre-rolls, no more overlays! I can opt to add them back in if I want to make some cash for SVC, but this is a fantastic way to get epic subscribers a channel without any ads!

Now I just need ToDoCast.tv to have a similar contest so I can win a free satellite broadcasting setup and free satellite air time. That would be truly awesome!

What a great way to end 2009!

Oh, this is brilliant. I can’t make this stuff up. In the video are actual signs plastered all though the Southdale mall. Simon Malls, please Call me… I can help you!

Wow I sound so angry at the end. I think I was going for dramatic and just failed. But really Simon? “Follow us on the Twitterz!!!11!!” Um, k. For a real kick, check out the @simonmalls twitter account. No idea if that is them or not, but HA! Of course if they were trying to advertise the @southdalemall twitter account, I think the 9 followers they have shows an epic fail on their part.

Seriously, Simon… Call my cell! 612-568-0852. Or, you can follow me on Twitter too!  @bencredible See what I did there? Gave you all the information you needed all in one place without having to dig for it.

Creating weekly or even daily video shows online is, well, hard. There is a lot of work that has to go in to the production. Unlike traditional television where the video just plays out of a video server and you’re done, in new media you have to compress, re-compress and compress again before you even think of distribution! I saw this message from Miles O’Brien of SpaceFlightNow’s new show This Week in Space (TWiS) and it inspired me to give you my list of things to make your life easier. What should you do in a new media videocast? What should you avoid? And how can you get it done? This list applies to any new media show being put online and is not specific to SFN’s new show.

Don’t try and simply put a traditional TV show on the web
I wrote a long and detailed post on this here. Just remember who your audience is and more specifically when and where they will be watching your show. In many cases a lot of your viewers will be watching at work, so try and keep your shows short and under 5 minutes. This also makes it easier to distribute as you don’t have to worry about YouTube’s 10 minute limit. If you’re a REALLY HUGE provider you can subscribe for a YouTube partner channel to circumvent said limit, but it is not terribly easy to get in to this program. I do happen to have an in, so if your show needs help here, contact me.

Stick with progressive video
A traditional television signal is 480 interlaced lines of resolution. This is fine because that is what the TV sets are designed to display. A typical computer monitor is 768 progressive lines of resolution or HD. Remember this when creating your show! Avoid using SD cameras and specifically interlaced content. Stick with 480p and 720p to avoid interlaced artifacting. 1080i will end up being more like 540p by the time it hits the web, so skip that painful step and only use cameras that support progressive video. By following this simple step you’ll save time, money and frustration in trying to get your show online and looking good! Below is an old video I produced  back in 2007 that explains why this is important:

Video is 80% audio
You can have the best video show in the world, but if your audio is garbage then you have nothing. People will forgive bad video, but they won’t forgive bad audio. Over spend on audio, under spend on video. To be a true video geek you must be an audio geek first and foremost. I can’t stress enough how important not only the speaking audio is, but any music or sound effects used. Audio can completely and totally change a show from something painful to something epic and awesome.

Don’t try and chroma key, you’ll suck at it
Do you know why film uses a blue screen and video uses a green screen? Do you know the difference between 4:4:4 sampling, 4:2:2 sampling and 4:2:0 sampling? Do you know what backspill is? Do you know what a nodal compositor is? If you answered no to any of these questions then you’re not going to get a good chroma key when you try and make your video. A bad key can take away from the video and distract from the information at hand. It is time consuming and unless you can do it right looks like bad community access TV. You’ll be tempted to do a chroma key because you’ll think virtual sets are cool or you want to show off how advanced you are. Avoid the temptation! If you think you have what it takes to do a good chroma key, watch the video below. If you have that gear and can pull it off, go for it.

Time to market matters
Once you have shot, produced and edited your show… Well, you’re about 1/2 way done. The next thing you need to do is compress. The time it takes to compress your video matters as it can be a very, very long process. Personally I use a bunch of programs and devices to make this happen. One of them is a great device by Elgato systems called the Turbo.264 HD. This little USB stick will radically speed up the amount of time it takes to compress your video. The down side is that the video quality is not as high as something like my favorite compression tool Episode Pro. I like Episode because I can really get in to the guts of the CODEC and make it do what I want it to do. Since this is web video we have very little movement and the GOP can be really, really long! Another really great solution is built right in to Final Cut Pro. Compressor and QMaster are on the Final Cut Studio disc. Install QMaster services on as many Mac systems as you can on your local network and distribute the rendering load. Compressor makes some beautiful images if you’re editing right out of Final Cut Pro, but it is painfully slow. One thing I have wanted to try but have not had the time to yet is Episode Pro with a Matrox MXO2 Mini with Max. This should supply accelerated h.264 compression like the Turbo.264 HD but ties to Episode Pro so I would hopefully get the quality Episode Pro normally delivers. Could be a very powerful solution for web video!

Make multiple versions
You have no idea how your viewers are going to consume your content. This is web video, not TV! That means that a consumer can watch your content on an iPod, Zune, Apple TV, Roku, Computer, iTunes, Miro or something completely different. Make sure you make a mobile version, HD version and web version for each video, which means compressing it more than once!

Make your life easy — distribute with blip.tv
Blip.tv is a great way to upload each version of your show and distribute to multiple sources like YouTube, Vimeo, Archive.org, iTunes, Roku and others. After playing around with TubeMogul for a while I finally decided to stick with Blip.tv for our distribution partner. While they certainly have their glitches it is well worth the invested time to have a central place to distribute all my content. Grab a pro account while you’re at it, it is well worth the $$. Biggest down side that I have seen is that they have a 1GB upload limit which makes it hard to do long form content like Spacevidcast Live.

Remember to pimp out Spacevidcast.com
Whatever show you’re producing, remember to mention how awesome Spacevidcast.com is! Well, OK, maybe you don’t have to, but if you got any value from this post I would certainly appreciate a plug. We’re trying to change the world by edutaining it with human space flight, and the more people that get involved the better! My hope is that this post helps you produce better online video, and if it does the best way you can thank me is to plug our show from within your show. I know all of the Spacevidcasters out there would certainly appreciate it!

Of course if you need more information on how to make your new media production work, be it from equipment to production techniques, I am available to hire for consulting too. See the About page for more details.

The verdict
This Week in Space premiered today, and I have to say I was super excited (and a bit nervous as this show does compete with Spacevidcast). I love the work that Miles O’Brien and David Waters do so I had no doubt it would be world class. In my opinion it was a fantastic start, but I think they fell victim to a couple of the ‘do not’ tips listed above. Below is the final video they posted to Vimeo. Based on the tips above, do you think some of those items may have helped a bit, or am I just full of myself? You tell me in the comments! No matter what the case, it is FANTASTIC that other new media outlets are starting to come online to talk about space flight. With traditional media dropping the ball, space advocates can use all the help we can get! Competition aside, this is a badly needed show and I hope we’ll start to see even more great content coming out soon! I also hope that we kill ‘em in the viewer count, but that’s the competitive side in me that I’m not supposed to talk about.

I recently heard something along the lines of, “Internet television and traditional television are the same thing, but with a different pipe.” This caught me a bit off guard as I have never viewed Internet video and television to really be the same thing. There are a few reasons why video produced for your television is and should be very, very different than video produced for the Internet.  Not only does this change how we view our content, but it also changes how we, as content creators, monetize. Allow me to explain.

The Medium Matters
When compared to television, Internet video has much more constrained bandwidth. This means that fast moving pictures, large and beautiful frames and motion in general will get squashed by the compression for the Internet. The end result is a smaller picture, lower frame rates and a much blockier image than what you would get on TV. In addition every bit matters online. If you have 10,000 people watching a television broadcast there is no more load on the TV tower than if 5 people were watching. In fact TV broadcasts can scale to an indefinite amount so long as everyone is within range of the tower. Internet video on the other hand has to serve a unique stream to each viewer which means that 5 people watching a video is 5x harder than 1 person watching a video. 10,000 people watching takes 10,000x more bandwidth, more server power and more resources than is 1 person is watching. However, unlike television the viewer of my Internet content can be just about anywhere in the world. There is no need to be within range of a powerful and expensive broadcasting antennae.

While both TV and the Internet are using digital information to transmit the data, that’s about where the similarity ends. Not only can a TV station broadcast to more users easier (although with a much smaller footprint), they also have a lot more bandwidth to work with. Today Spacevidcast targets around 1Mbps for our 720p video, which is about as large as we can make it before users stop being able to see it due to Internet congestion. Television on the other hand has around 20x more available bandwidth. To this end they can simply push out a better picture and not have to worry if the end user will have a fast enough computer, a fast enough connection or the proper plugins installed.

All of this technical stuff adds up to a difference in how the content is produced. Internet content generally allots for the smaller distribution pipe whereas TV does not. This directly impacts what the video looks like, how many shots are moving, etc., etc. The very feel of Internet video is completely different than that of traditional TV.

The Mindset Matters
I refer to television content as ‘lean back’ or sometimes ‘brain off’ content. That is to say television is not a participatory event. You watch television to be entertained, not to interact. You will generally lean back in your chair, turn off your brain and relax. There is nothing wrong with this (so long as it is done in moderation) but it is very different than what you would do on a computer.

A computer and more specifically the Internet is a very different mindset. This is what I call ‘lean forward’ or ‘brain on’ content. You generally use your computer to accomplish a task. You’re there to look something up, engage with someone, chat on Facebook, Tweet, or actively do something. You’re leaning forward, typing on your keyboard and using your brain. What you’re looking to do on your computer is very different than what you’re looking to do with your Television.

What this all means
When you combine the medium and the mindset you get a very different picture of how video works online vs offline. Online videos are often short and creative (or at least viral) because many of them are watched at work during a few minutes of downtime before the user has to go back off to make money (read: stop screwing around on YouTube). When that same person gets home they are not looking to search for a bunch of clips, create a playlist and watch TV that way. Rather, that user would like the content to be sent to them in longer chunks so they can sit back and relax. The content is very, very different, the mindset is very, very different.

So what then of Spacevidcast, TWiT and other long form shows on the Internet? These shows seem to fly in the face of this entire post. TWiT is a very successful radio podcast turned videocast. You’ll note that even Leo states that today the Podcast portion is where the money is all made but it is slowly moving to video. Spacevidcast Live is an hour long video show, far too long to watch at work. What gives?

This is where understanding that the Internet is not just another pipe is critical. Spacevidcast is a live, interactive and worldwide show. We won’t have the viewership of traditional TV because of technology limitations as well as the fact that we’re a more focused niche. We will be available to anyone on the planet that has an Internet connection and flash plugin. Traditional television won’t be able to easily accomplish this and certainly can’t accomplish it at the low price point we’re able to do Spacevidcast at. If we just look at Spacevidcast as another TV show that will use traditional advertising to fund everything, then we’re already dead. We are not traditional TV. Someday you may find us on TV, but it may be a slightly different beast than what you see today. What makes us different, unique and better than traditional television is our ability to do real time stories, streamed around the world, with audience interaction that can all be viewed on-demand at any time of the viewers liking. None of these things can be done with traditional television.

You’ll note that Spacevidcast really has 3 different shows: Live, Daily and Podcast. Each one serves a purpose. Live is a long form show that is fully interactive with interviews, community involvement and launch events (dare I say some of the best launch coverage in the world). Daily is a 2 to 5 minute clip designed to allow you to get your fix of space at work via YouTube. Podcasts are designed to let you listen in your car, while you’re working out or whenever you’re on the go and can’t sit to watch but can listen. We know what the Internet allows for and have created a show that fits each category. Something you simply won’t see traditional media doing. And just as the Internet is not just another form of TV, it also is not going to make money the same way as traditional television.

Monetization
Either make money or the show will die. Sounds harsh, but an Internet show can be self funded for only so long. The problem is that traditional advertising as seen on TV is not really working on the Internet. I can point to maybe 5 shows online that have been able to successfully bring this ad supported model over. The problem isn’t just the Internet but a shift in mentality when TiVo was introduced. Users are used to being able to fast forward through ads and don’t have the patience to sit through them much anymore. For traditional TV it is no problem since that is really hard to measure. For Internet TV we can see exactly how many people viewed the ad, how many skipped it and how many converted to sales. This is both a blessing and a curse! Great for the advertiser, terrible for the ad agency selling the ad. Alas it is also bad for shows like Spacevidcast that have a very tech savvy audience who have become immune to online ads. Add in that the Internet shows generally have a much, much smaller viewer base and, well, you don’t have a winning recipe.

So what is the solution? Oh how I wish I knew. I would be worth billions! In the end I think it is understanding that these mediums, while both use moving visuals, are inherently different. What works on one may not work on the other. Hulu looks to be suffering pretty badly this last year whereas TWiT is doing fantastic! People are not afraid to pay for their content. Apple has this figured out with iTunes. I believe that the future of online media won’t be one outlet like advertising but rather many outlets. A little bit of ad revenue, a lot more subscribers to a freemium option (in our case Spacevidcast epic), merchandise sales and even things that have not been thought up yet! The key here isn’t that advertising online won’t work. In fact it will, just not to the levels we had seen before. The point to take home is that advertising is just one small piece of the much larger monetization puzzle.

Crossovers
Generally you don’t see radio on TV, but there are a few exceptions. Howard Stern is one of them. In much the same way, there are Television to Internet crossovers as well. These are the exception to the rule and as of yet are generally not as successful.

Advertising and older methods of monetization will cross over as well. The irony of all this is that TWiT is an advertising based show that has been doing so well that the only paycheck Leo will take home is that of donations from the community. Lets not forget that TWiT is the ultimate crossover… A radio show on the Internet in the form of video. Makes my head spin a bit. But TWiT is one of the 5 shows I can count that are really making the traditional model work. I have a feeling that new models will also be introduced in TWiT and eventually could even replace the ad revenue they see today. Only time will tell.

The best Internet shows seem to be those where the talent came from a traditional media spot and already had a following. TWiT is a great example of that and I’m pretty sure This Week in Space will be another. These are brilliant people who are leveraging their own personal brand to gain market share on the Internet. It seems to work well, but these people are also a finite resource. Miles O’Brien and Leo Laporte are, in my opinion, the diamonds in the rough. Eventually we will run out of these personalities and we’ll all have to build our online shows from scratch. I am all too familiar with this process through Spacevidcast. It is emotional, irritating, expensive and insanely fun.

Conclusion
So why write this mini novel about TV vs Internet video? On the last epicsode of Spacevidcast during post show we debated the chat room being burned on the screen. A long portion of that debate revolved around the idea that it may scare advertisers off in the future. In traditional television it would. Some day we’ll grow past the chat room and we simply won’t be able to have it on the screen anymore, the text will scroll by so fast it won’t be useful at all. Until then, building our show around what advertisers would want will be the instant death of Spacevidcast, and if you have an Internet show, then the death of your show too!  Advertising revenue will be one of many different areas that money will come in. Don’t be afraid to be true to your community. Work and build a product that is right for them, not designed around your (yet to be) advertisers and what they want. Once you have that, then money will come in via many different avenues. I do believe epic will work without the need for advertisers. I also think we’ll bring on advertisers as soon as it makes sense. We will do many things, but we won’t change the show, our Internet show, to do what would work on Television. The medium matters, the medium changes things and Internet TV is nothing like traditional Television. For better or for worse.

Be true to your show, your community and your passion. The rest will fall in to place.

A lot of people hate it when I shake things up over at Spacevidcast. Why mess with a good thing? Well I believe that we must change and improve all the time else we become complacent and eventually die. Change is not always good (see Spacevidcast 2.01 for example) but it can lead to some pretty cool stuff (see STS-129 launch coverage from Spacevidcast). Besides, change can be fun!

Since 2010 is right around the corner I was looking at where we’re at and where I think we should be. I love that Spacevidcast is HD, that we’re live and interactive and that we’re pretty consistent. I do think a few things should be reviewed and possibly modified to help the show continue to grow. Spacevidcast is a social community in which I like to solicit the feedback of our members to see what you guys want.  So, in no particular order is my list of stuff I’m thinking of:

• Change the day and time of the show. Remember that we are a worldwide show with 60% of our audience coming from the US. 8:00pm PST would be 11:00pm EST so I need to pick a day and time that will work for as many people as possible. What about Sundays at 21:00 UTC? That would be 1:00pm PST, 3:00pm CST or 4:00pm EST. I am open to thoughts and options here. I’m thinking of changing the day/time as we seem to keep butting up against other programs on at the same time and competing. This was not the case in 2005 when we started Technology Evangelist podcasts, but it is now.
• Change the format of the show a bit. Keep the live audience and guest, but rather than just interview the guest bring them in as a guest host for the whole show! Think of a TWiT but for space. We would be more like a radio show that also does video, so maybe that’s not quite the right fit. Space generates a lot of stunning pictures and video, would be a shame to lose that to a radio format. Besides, even TWiT is moving to video… Worth noodling it at least. Maybe keep the live show as is and add a podcast format that also has video… So a TWiTesq version once a week and the regular show once a week. Hmmm, where to find the time?
• Change the opening video (keep the music for now) as well as the graphic overlays. I have yet to find graphics that I’m really satisfied with, other than the STS-129 launch graphics which I don’t think lend themselves to the live show very well.
• Add more Twitter and Facebook integration. How?
• Should I keep the chat room burned on the screen the whole time? Why even put the chat room up anymore? Does anyone like that graphic up there?
• Make the whole show as casual as the post show is now. Everyone seems to like the post show best anyhow.
• Change the set a lot. I know, I know, y’all hate it when I do this, but work with me here. Check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIOgvmy0DZQ. Now imagine us sitting in a formation much like that (with me in a cool chair like what Ashton has), Cariann on the couch (co-hosting) and a HDTV set on the couch next to her (guest). Cheesy? Should be cheap and easy to do. We still get our computers, we’re still sitting but I think it is more of a casual conversation, more true to the show.
• No virtual sets.
• I’m thinking that instead of streaming NASA TV when we’re not on we would have our own TV channel. Stream past SVC shows, show some snippets of epic content, add in some commercials/PSAs, put in the calendar of events that week, etc., etc. Still offer live streaming of launches, but no more freaking children programming!
• Should I bring back the ‘Coming Up’ portion at the beginning of the show? Did anyone care? It is a huge PITA to create those.

Then here is my list of things that I would like to improve but we don’t have the cash for today:

• I would like to get an AJA Ki Pro so that we can record a nice HQ version of the show and quickly/easily export it to every version we need to web and device distribution. $4,000 for this recorder (but it is uber cool and does exactly what we need).
• I would like to make sure our iTunes and RSS feeds have all of our videos available to them. To this end we either need more time, more encoders or that AJA Ki Pro.
• I want my ToDoCast Satellite system. A cool $40k for the dish alone.
• I want TWO new audio boards. One to replace the dead M-Audio ProjectMix I/O that we used for Podcasts (notice we no longer do Podcasts?) Another for the studio (replace the working DFX-12) so we can have more Aux outputs allowing for more live guests! I really like the PreSonus StudioLive 16.4.2 which has everything we need built in. Alas they are $2,000 each. I would get one and move it from location to location but they are decievingly heavy and large. I’m pretty sure I would break it and then we would be *really* SOL!
• I would like four new Podcasting mics (I really want to bring back our Podcasts, I miss doing them). I’m stuck between the Heil PR40 and the ElectroVoice RE27N/D. Either model is around $400.00 each. Both are fantastic!
• I need to buy a bunch of headsets for guests in bulk and just mail them out to each person. No idea what to get, but we have to fix the guest audio once and for all!
• I would like Spacevidcast to buy its own MacPro. Right now we’re using the CRCC MacPro and every time we need to do a show I have to utilize Cafn8ed’s equipment. If he was editing a project (which he makes money at) I have to stop whatever he is doing. I hate doing that. In addition it would allow us to stream higher quality 24×7 NASA coverage (although I think I want to stop that). While you’re over there clicking on links, go buy some Blastoff Blend!
• 3 new HD cameras for the show. Something that can do 720p really, really well.  I’m thinking of using the Canon EOS 5D Mark II but I don’t think it can do live video as well as a traditional camera (it can record great looking video though). Maybe an HPX170 or an HMC150.
• 1 new HD camera for the dailies. Since this doesn’t need to be live I think a Canon EOS 5D Mark II would work perfect here!
• A XD300 would be kinda nice.
• A 3Play would be kinda nice if we’re going to do remote shoots for things like NGLLC and other space contests. Of course we would need that satellite truck first.
• A LiveStream Pro subscription so we can stream ad free! I believe that came out to something like $1,600 a month for our viewership.
• Fiber Optic bandwidth to the CRCC studio. We need more upstream bandwidth so we can provide you with more live channels! Around $1,500 a month for anything substantial (10Mbps up and down).
• I want a team of 3d animatiors and a team of music composers who can create stunning elements for use in shows. Imagine a Meteorwatch quality trailer for absolutely everything we do, every week. Basically a staff of 4 people, 2 on each side, to create amazing media the likes of which the world has never seen. Probably around $250,000 or more a year to bring on staff like that.

Not that we’ll be able to buy ANY of that in the near future, but the bigger success epic becomes, the more funds we will have to do some cooler things. I hope epic turns in to something great. If not that’s OK it won’t be the end of Spacevidcast, but it sure will delay my plans for world domination!

Almost 15 years in broadcasting and I’m treated like I have no idea what I’m doing. I should just let this go, but I have been trying to get media passes for the last 3 NASA launch events now, and each time we’re denied.  This is a snippet of our latest denial letter:

“Requests from online orgs must be from a previously established, independent site that contains regularly updated original news content above & beyond links, forums, troubleshooting tips and reader contributors; a readership of more than 1,000 per month, and has covered the space industry before. Fan sites, Web logs and personal web sites do not qualify for media badges. Links to two bylined articles clearly displaying publication title published within the past six months AND EITHER a copy of your current masthead or business card with name, title and media outlet’s logo OR a copy of your online pubs home page and the masthead page with your name and title appearing in an editorial capacity OR an official letter of assignment from your media outlet. The web material must go through an independent editor before publication. In other words, you’re not media if you’re independently writing and editing your own material. That is what defines a blogger”

I won’t go in to how ***THIS*** is a blog and Spacevidcast isn’t.  Fine.  I won’t go into what defines a blog because clearly NASA has their mind made up there.  No, let me go in to where people get their news from now.

Traditional television is dying. People don’t go to CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, etc., etc. to get their information all that much anymore. They go online. If you want information on space you go to SpaceflightNow.com, NASASpaceFlight.com and yes Spacevidcast.com.  In fact over 3,000 people get their dose of Spacevidcast every… single… day…

It’s not that NASA isn’t trying, they really are. In fact STS-129 saw their first ever space shuttle TweetUp at KSC which looked to be an awesome event. We would have gone, but unlike media the Twitter users didn’t have access to the HD video feed, so I would have been SOL if I wanted to bring the world awesome coverage. NASA allowed 100 twitter users to come in and get a personal tour of the launch itself. Very awesome and I really do think they should get kudos for that.

However, it is just a start.

Maybe NASA thinks that all they need to do is allow 100 people in each time for a total of 500 more Twitter users until the end of the shuttle program. Maybe NASA wants to control the information flow and they are simply not used to the new media instant access. Or maybe NASA thinks that Spacevidcast getting a press pass would create a rip in the space time continuum to the peril of all humanity. No idea. I can say that 100 twitter users isn’t enough. Great start, but now lets start to take notice that sites like Spacevidcast don’t fit in to NASA’s nifty little categories. We are something new, something different but not something less valuable. We stream to tens of thousands of people during launch events. Don’t discount us because we are new, different or making change in this arena. The fact is that for STS-129 we had 73,814 people join us for the launch (based on the Ustream.tv viewer metrics). I don’t know what SFN or NASA.gov got but I would be willing to bet we held our own against both of them.

Anyhow, my rant is done. If NASA won’t allow us press passes, that’s fine.  I don’t need NASA to bring everyone amazing coverage of a shuttle launch. In fact I would say to this day we have the best launch coverage of any media outlet, online or offline. We’ll have people at Space View Park, we will have moles within NASA and we’ll have people at the STS-130 TweetUp if NASA decides to do that again. We don’t need NASA to bring you the coverage, we’re big enough now where we have people everywhere to make that happen. No, what gets me is that NASA doesn’t seem to care enough to look at not just Spacevidcast but all the other people out there who could be game changers in the space industry. Hey, we don’t fit in to the NASA “broadcaster” category, so what good could we ever accomplish?

Other than, you know, changing the world.

[Corrections: I have updated the time I have spent in the industry to reflect 15 years not 10 as originally posted. I just realized that I have spent nearly 15 years in broadcasting. In addition I made note that this was the for KSC TweetUp. NASA has actually had a few TweetUps before but the STS-129 TweetUp was the first at KSC and the first for a shuttle launch]