Tag Archives: Let’s Knit2gether

a good vendor is hard to find

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The test of any vendor is not the quality of their products or the price. The true test is how well they handle problems. I’ve dealt with a lot of professional video vendors over my 25 year career and most are mediocre, some are really bad, but occasionally one really stands out. Bodelin Technologies who make the ProPrompter II LCD teleprompter has shown me that they are definitely one of those rare vendors who deliver excellence.

ProPrompter and notebook

We’ve been using the ProPrompter II LCD on our show Let’s Knit2gether for over a year now. (We first used it on episode 7 – Felting part 1.) I’ve been on the set with and known several different companies that make teleprompters. (I actually used to scotch tape script pages into long runs and load it under a small black and white video camera back in my live news days… but I guess that dates me so we won’t talk about that.) In any case when we started Let’s Knit2gether we needed something simple and easy since this was New Media and it was just the two of us doing everything.

I’ve been a fan of GeekBrief.tv from the beginning and they mentioned on their site that they were using a ProPrompter II LCD and liked it. I’d never heard of Bodelin Technologies but I checked out the prompter and eventually bought one.

The prompter is light and easy. No counter weights. No complicated rail system. It just clamps onto the end of your lens. Setup time is minimal. We were even able to get a foot switch so CAT could control the software all by herself and I could concentrate on what I was doing while we were shooting. It made a significant improvement to our show.

Near the end of last year the small LCD monitor on the prompter just died for no reason. A quick e-mail to Bodelin support with a picture and description of the problem got a response back with within hours. The e-mail even included a return authorization number. I packed up the defective monitor and got a brand new replacement within a few days, no questions asked. I was actually quite surprised. No hassle, no searching for receipts to check warranty status, no extended turnaround times, only one simple e-mail to support. Problem solved, now get back to shooting. This kind of service is very rare and deserves the highest kudos.

Grabbing the Same Old Eyeballs

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gruesome knitted eyeballs

This is a response to a post on Michael Geoghegan’s blog called Podcasting – It’s a Community Not an Industry.

Podcasters, it is time you face the facts. If you are waiting for a podcast advertising service to ride in on a white horse and rescue you from your monetary woes, let me help you: start looking elsewhere.

Over the past year we’ve basically come to the same conclusion as Michael. The various new online ad “networks” aren’t going to do much for you as a podcaster.

The promise of joining an online “network” and automatically getting ads (and payment) as you focus only on making your content has always seemed a dubious promise to me. I do a video podcast about knitting which I think is a strong niche with lots of potential. In the various meetings we’ve had with these online “networks” it’s always been about raw numbers with very little consideration of the strength or subject of your content. There seems to be a blind focus on grabbing eyeballs, and advertising as the only way to monetize those eyeballs. Last year pre-roll ads were the answer. This year it’s overlays. The online mainstream media and all the VC money seems to be focused on developing advertising technology ONLY. No other options are being explored with such vigor. However, this is a new industry. Everything is changing very fast. There are a LOT of things that aren’t going to work. We really need to be exploring many new, different, out of the box models to find a FEW that are really going to be successful and repeatable.

The focus today seems to be to try to give the traditional ad buyers exactly what they want. The problem is, all they want is what they know. And all they know is what works for them now on TV and radio. I don’t think a traditional broadcast model is going to work for podcasting. We’re seeing a paradigm shift in the media industry. The Digital revolution is separating content from delivery technology. Shows go everywhere and aren’t confined to the specific distribution technology they were created for. At the same time the content producer is moving closer to the consumer. In the TV broadcast world there are lots of middle men. There’s the producer of the show, the cable channel corporation that pays for the show, the cable TV systems that delivers the show, etc. etc. before you can see it in your living room. With podcasting it’s, producer –> internet –> viewer. Any monetization model is going to have to leverage this greater simplicity. The mass media models from the past aren’t the answer and that’s all anybody seems interested in trying to develop.

So, I called podcasting an “industry” above and I guess I should probably respond to what Paul Colligan posted on his blog about podcasting NOT being an industry. These days I use “podcasting” as more of a synonym to New Media. The whole landscape is changing and constantly morphing into something else. It’s harder and harder to be strict about the definitions of specific technologies. For example: Our show Let’s Knit2gether is technically a podcast because it’s downloadable with an RSS feed but on the new AppleTV you can just click on it and play it. Does that make our show NOT a podcast? We also sell DVDs. Is our show a podcast when it’s on DVD? I don’t know anymore. In any case the media industry is changing rapidly. What it is becoming may be unknown (and un-nameable) but I still think it’s an industry.

A final thought. There’s so much more in Michael’s post to address. CAT and I have been talking about it all day. I think I’m going to cut it off here though and save the rest for future posts. When I made the decision a few years ago to shift my broadcast TV career into New Media I expected it to be a wild ride with plenty of excitement and change. I have not been disappointed in that respect and I’m sure there will always be plenty to comment on next time.

picture – maryjanemidgemink