Robert Wright announced today that he is scaling down his
Bloggingheads.tv site, in part because as a business it clearly has no potential to make money. The basic problem, he found, was that his site tried to have people on both sides talk about issues, as opposed to what is much more popular, having people who agree with each other talk to each other (MSNBC, CNN, Fox):
4 comments:
I like bloggingheads too and am sad to see they're not doing well.
I think their problem is that their debates are too long and unfocused. No one has time to watch a one hour video anymore. They need to edit, and cut it up.
Also, video is unnecessary for what is essentially an audio debate. The people are not attractive (sad that it matters but it does), and they don't put up figures or tables or anything that requires video.
Well, I agree with Ken. I like bloggingheads but I don't have time to watch it.
Partly it is the "too much good stuff" problem. I hardly watch any TV these days - but if I wanted to I could easily fill up the rest of my life doing nothing but watching well written, well produced, TV programmes.
There is plenty of stuff worth watching - it's not that I don't watch because I think it is rubbish.
Also it would be nice to have a transcript so it can be skimmed and searched.
Transcripts! There is no way I want to spend a sig amount of time watching a debate. Reading it is much faster.
Speaking of which -- is there a good, free on- or offline tool to transcribe video clips? I've looked around before without much luck. Would be great to boil 1-hour vids down to 5-minute reads. Thanks.
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