New Mediacracy is an audio podcast about web video featuring industry producers, directors, writers, and other content creators.   It’s not for everyone to be sure – it’s in the form of a casual conversation which usually means that it goes on for hours.  Being a web video producer myself however, I find it an incredible resource.  Creating web video can be very isolating and it’s nice to hear about other web video creators’ successes and failures in this depth of detail.

Episode 13 of New Mediacracy was a discussion that happened after the first meeting of the IAWTV in Los Angeles.  You can hear the episode here.  What follows are my comments about the episode:

–

Great discussion.  There’s so much to comment about in this episode.

First impression: The most surprising thing I realized after listening to this episode is that the actual members of the IAWTV don’t really know much more about what’s going on than we do on the outside.

My thoughts on Steve’s “gatekeeper” frustration:

I’m frustrated by it too but I think that it may partially be an illusion.  I know I’m still over here doing my thing and I’m guessing there are lots of others that we never hear about in other places doing their thing too.  I think an echo –chamber has started up in new media and we’re all beginning to believe our own press.  Nothing has changed.  Everyone can still do their own thing.  Keep doing it.

That being said, I think an overall attempt to re-structure new-media (open media) to resemble old-media (gatekeepers) is inevitable.  I personally see new media not as a new medium, but what old media is becoming.  They are not separate, just in various states of becoming if you will.  The transition is going to be very painful because old media won’t want to give up their control.  It’s going to get worse over the next few years as the old media ways become more and more threatened farther and farther up the big business food chain.

OK, so we all know that.  Big media would rather sue Napster than buy it.  We’ve seen it before.  What I think Steve is reacting to is that it seems that some in new media are actually trying to mold OURSELVES back into old media, presumably to gain some sort of “acceptance” from old media.  I see it too and it’s really sad.  I came from old media.  I jumped off that ship on purpose and I can tell you there’s no reason to go back.  Old media is dying.  All my old-media friends think I’m crazy for doing what I’m doing now but they are also in a lot of pain with their own old-media careers.  Right now, temporarily, old media still has some advantages, like traditional revenue streams, but those are drying up.  Don’t make the mistake of jumping backwards onto a sinking ship.  You’ll just go down with it.  The only way is forward.  (What “forward” means is unknown but I guess that’s the curse of being a pioneer.)

end of rant –

My thoughts about the IAWTV

Unfortunately I don’t think the IAWTV has any substance to it.  There’s a lot of potential there and I see a lot of people (including myself) projecting their HOPES on this organization, but what is the IAWTV really doing right now that is worth saving?  What does it have right now to build on for all those future possibilities?  I don’t see anything.  I just see a big mess.  I think we’re getting distracted trying to solve all the problems with the IAWTV and we’re not noticing that there’s nothing there to begin with.

I think it might be time to put the IAWTV aside and redirect all our energies elsewhere to build the organization we all really want and need, from the ground up.  We can bypass ALL the IAWTV issues by starting up a new organization with a mission and an organizational structure that is aligned with the core values we all care about.  I know there are some who have put a lot of time and energy into the IAWTV and they won’t want to abandon that hard work but that’s not really a good reason to put more work into it.  If there was some core asset that the IAWTV had that was worth saving I would say go for it, but from here, at this point, I don’t see anything.  Just a thought…

Best quote from episode 13: “The Television Academy isn’t called Visual Radio.” – Barrett Garese