Why the fuss about Phil?

No not the Dr., the self-described "new media entertainer."

Philip DeFranco is a YouTube phenomenon, one of the many voices on a site filled (pardon the pun) with random, crazy, wacked out people clambering for their 15 minutes.

So how is it out of all those voices, his has been heard over 23 million times in 3 years? And what is it about this one man that has prompted many like him, to band together to take over the Internet and change the way we watch videos on the web? I'll let you watch this first and form your own opinion before I give you mine. (Warning some mature language...)

Again I say that Phil is one of many people who voices their opinion on YouTube, but what sets him apart is his delivery and personality. That combination caught the eyes of people with money and now Phil is getting paid to produce his YouTube content as well content for his own Vlog and his website/blog.

Imagine, being able to quit your day job and get paid to rant about whatever social issue is popular at the time. Well, Phil doesn't have to imagine anymore, he is one of the growing number of YouTubers who are beginning to change the landscape of modern media on the web.

Several other prominent figures from the web have joined forces to form what they call "The Station," which as of right now just a collection of videos individually produced by the founders of the channel. But, it will soon feature web series and other network-type programming ushering in what I am considering one of the Internet's first "official" web networks.

As of now content on the web is spread across several sites and even those sites who produce "webesodes," or episodes for the web, dedicate their programming to the subject or genre of their site.

This new experiment is important in that if it is successful, it will open the door for the web's acceptance of true Internet networks, making local Internet television much more feasible.

If you need proof that the web is a major player and will be become an increasing threat to television as we know it, ask the almost 8 million people a year who tune in to sxephil, and the millions more who watch less TV thanks to their favorite web videos.

And more than that, look at all the shows on TV itself that focus on the webs latest viral videos. The web is here, it is now and it can be made into whatever we want. It will soon become the most popular vehicle for our education and entertainment.

Don't agree? Take a look at where you are at right now....

A very interesting juxtaposition

Found this today thanks to a link posting from a friend on Facebook...watch first, then we talk.

Ledger Live: newspapers and porn share economic bind

I know my readers are mature enough to handle the content of this video, so I will ignore the snickers... But the simple truth is that this video is the epitome of Internet media and its future. One man...one camera, one mic, one message (and a few porn stars to boot).

It also did a very good job of hooking an audience, who can resist a good story about porn? But seriously, while whimsical, this story had great points about the status of the status quo and how the web has shaken the very foundations of modern media.

What we can take away from this introspective is in the simple idea introduces towards the end of this video in that, "everyone has a voice" the real question is, what will you do with that voice?

As out #stir movement continues to roll with this free flow of ideas and information, lets remember that people will tune in to our podcasts, read our blogs, follow us on Twitter, only, if we give them a good reason to stray from the familiar.

We have to continue to give them content they can not get anywhere else, or at the very least, package it in a more attractive way than our competitors.

It very much is the only way to survive in the current age of content overflow...even porn stars know it....

The Crabtree syndrome

And really sports fans, lets call it like it is... a syndrome.

Sure Michael Crabtree isn't the first NFL player to suffer from this, but hell pigs and birds weren't the first to have the flu either right?

So for those of you not in the know, the San Francisco 49ers 1st round draft pick finally signed a six year deal with the team this week. I will not get into the details of the deal or the events leading up to it, a simple Google search will get you caught up if need be...don't worry, I'll wait.

If you are reading on I assume you are familiar with the way Crabtree was a holdout since the beginning of this season. I can also safely assume that you know he wanted 7th pick money, without being the 7th pick in the draft. But he wasn't alone in this, he had help.

I am not talking about the posse of bad advise givers, no I am talking about the hundreds of kids coming straight out of college with their hands out, demanding what they haven't earned.

Since when did it become all right for a person who has not performed a day in his job to be in a position to demand anything from his future employer? And moreover, how is it acceptable in a league where there are talented veterans who play for just above the league minimum, that a rookie can expect to get paid at least 10 times that without ever so much as stepping on the field?

Taking this one further, these rookies are basically getting paid for what they did in college. Can doctor's hold out for a better contract because they were good med students?

No, they get to start an internship (if they are lucky) and if they can hack that, then they get moved up to a residency, make it past those tough years, they get to call themselves attending. See the ladder?

They don't start out making Chief of Medicine pay, they start out eating ramen and sharing apartments until their hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of student loans are paid off. It takes these professionals YEARS to make a fraction of what these NFL rookies make in a season, and they save lives.

I am a firm believer in a rookie salary cap and more than that, I think a rookie should not even be allowed to start until he has been in the league a full season; not play, just start.

Why you ask...

Well for starters, since we are on the 49ers here, Alex Smith. Smith signed a six year $49 million dollar contract. Of that money, $24 million of that was guaranteed. Now, that money is wasted on a player who did not deserve to start and subsequently became a high priced bench rider.

But it's not all Smith's fault, there have been a slough of washed out, overpaid college kids who just couldn't make the transition to the big, bad, NFL. Ryan Leaf, Akili Smith, Cade McNown... the list (I found a good one here) goes on and on.

Here is an idea, pay me the league minimum of $310,o00 and let me sit my happy ass on the bench all season long. That way you save millions of dollars for players who have proven they can play at the professional level, and I fill a roster slot that would otherwise be occupied by a punk kid who thinks he has earned those millions by being the big man on campus.

Again, whether is was bad advice, or just a naive college football player thinking he knew what he was doing, I don't blame Crabtree so much as I blame the system.

Until we make it clear to these kids that playing in the NFL is a privilege and not their god given right, their prices and egos will continue to go unchecked.

On a side note, how cool do you have to be to have Deon Sanders and MC Hammer at your contract negotiation... I know right??

P.S. I guess the team who drafted you starting out 3-1 without you kind of backfired huh? Next time don't listen to your cousin, unless he has been an agent his whole life.

Why the Internet Rod? Why not the television or radio, or newspapers?

Cause it's global you twit, it will reach farther...

If you can excuse the silly turn of that quote, I think the message speaks for itself. When we think of the world of online media, we have to think of the world of online media. As many of us podcasters and bloggers know by checking out the analytics of our sites, we, for whatever reason, have fans all over the world. That is to say that our words, be them written, spoken or videotaped, are reaching a global audience.

"But Rod, aren't you the champion for all things local?"

To answer your question, yes I am. But stop and think for one second the power of a local message over the tubes of the web versus the limited (albeit recently expanded thanks to the digital conversion) broadcast power of your local television station.

Again I make reference to the fact that we can finally be the masters of the image of our town, but more important than that is the ability for those who have moved away and cannot watch an entire network newscast, to reconnect with the goings on in their old hometown.

I can't tell you how many times while in the Army I longed for a few words from home. Even the power of the Internet couldn't help at the time since in it's early stages, newspapers avoided the Internet like the plague, only major networks even bothered to put short video segments on their websites, and radio...well there was radio. Several years later, things have changed yet stayed the same.

Newspapers are now online and beginning to realize that the only way they will survive the juggernaut that is the Internet is to stay on for the ride as long as they can. Now, you can find most of the days top stories on local news television stations websites. The only medium that I think made the smartest move is radio. The fact that they now stream their entire broadcast live 24/7 makes them a much more attractive place to visit when longing for the familiarity of home. Something about hearing the stingers from your favorite radio station as a child when you are far from home is reassuring.

But this is stuff you all ready know and are probably bored to tears hearing me say it again, so here is where this is all leading. In order to package what we hope to accomplish very soon, we have to try and convince our public, more importantly those who will be funding our endeavor, not to dismiss the power of their words on the web.

An example, and lets use sports since it is something I am mildly familiar with. Grandma in Syracuse is watching her little Johnny play soccer on a Saturday afternoon in Stockton when all of a sudden a commercial plays advertising the Stocktoberfest this Saturday. Grandma is coming to visit on Friday and is staying for the weekend. Johnny's parents ask Grandma what she wants to do for fun and Grandma remembers seeing the Stocktoberfest commercial and decides it's something she wants to check out.

Local message right? Then why should we worry if it makes it to New York, or Germany for that matter... Grandma in Syracuse, she is why we need not think of ad dollars as wasted on the Internet.

I think that is the biggest obstacle that is standing in the way of local minded Internet broadcasters the world over. One I hope we can clear together...

Win the advertisers, win the world...

Monday observations

It was during a Sunday visit to my uncle's house that I realized two of the biggest obstacles to the Internet media movement...fear and ignorance.

After watching him fumble through even the simple steps of opening a web browser, finding YouTube, then signing up for it and eventually finding what he wanted to watch, all the while growing more frustrated by his lack of success, I realized that sometimes I overestimate the common denominator when it comes to the Internet. I also realized that some of the so called "security" measures websites are employing are scaring away a generation of people who look fondly on the days when all they had to do to hear their favorite song was drop the arm on their favorite record... presto...instant gratification. No long, drawn out sign-up process, no warped letter that a person with perfect vision has trouble deciphering let alone someone with bifocals, just plain, simple technology.

Those youngsters, or those of us older in the know who are reading this blog don't think twice when we double-click the Chrome icon (*shameless product placement in the hopes that Google will pay me for these blogs...) and the wonderful Interweb opens before our eyes. A few more clicks and you are to your page of choice taking in all the marvelous content you can handle. But stop for a second and take in the fact, that there are those who don't know what a web browser is, let alone what it does.

Why is that important you ask? In my opinion, a couple of reasons really.

1. It stands of the way of those of us with something to sell (ie. content related to them) and a huge number of those who might have bought it if we could have packaged it in a way more familiar to them.

2. Convincing business to advertise on a site that is missing the mark due to a lack of knowledge by it consumers is an almost impossible task.

Which makes the idea of a target demographic one of them most important concepts as we dive into this new world of online media consumption. It is no secret that the generation who has grown up with a computer screen in their face from day one will make the transition smoothly, but do we neglect the ones who have the deeper pockets because of a gap in communication?

That my friends is the big question, not just from a financial standpoint, but in getting the audience we want in general. The hit them where they are philosophy is all well and good, but if we get them there and they don't know what to do...what then? An old saying runs pretty true for us and that is, you can lead a horse to water... well, you know the rest.

Our problem now is more convincing the older horses that our water is not scary or hard to drink. But I still hearken back to another saying which I will tweak some for our purposes... if we build it, and make is simple, they will come.

But before you go thinking it's all doom and gloom, here is an instructional video that might speed the education process along. Sorry, can't embed this one, got to click the link.

Friday question session

A few questions to ponder over the weekend;

If you could...

Watch a nightly newscast dealing with news concerning only Stockton, Lodi, Manteca and Tracy... would you?

Watch your kids, cousins, brothers, sisters, best friends, high school, little league, or any sports event live and on demand...would you?

Keep track of the entertainment that is going on around your town be it the night life, family friendly events or just something to do on a Saturday...would you?

Visit one place to find all of this... would you?

What if I told you that place is on the Internet, would that stop you from wanting it? Do you think you could convince those who are scared of the web to embrace local media from an unfamiliar medium?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, then you understand the importance for a local media presence in Stockton. In the next two weeks, I will be announcing a gathering in which I hope to assemble a group of people who are interested in embarking on a bold new project to take our city's media back from Sacramento. In the meantime take a few minutes to mull over these questions.

If at anytime you thought to yourself, "why," then consider yourself not right for this job....

AM power put to good use

Many of you in the Twitter world are already aware that I currently produce the only Stockton relevant program on the Stockton based 1280AM KWSX. What you are not aware of are the specifics of this show or the existence of the station itself. Allow me to enlighten those not in the know...

First off, this is not a history lesson on 1280AM or KWSX if you want a full run down check out this thread, Madmansam does a more than adequate job of running down the historic record. Elaboration on my part would just be repetition. Take a second, it's worth the read.

With all that taken care of, let me begin my explanation...

My relationship with KWSX came out of a meeting with the Clear Channel execs stemming from last years Delta RTV mediafest. A program director from a sister station took note of the goings on in the department and realized the potential of a partnership with Delta College Radio and Television. They soon approached and from that was born a half hour community affairs program dedicated to Stockton issues. Community News and Events airs during the industry standard 6am on Sunday and has ran for one month.

Until now I have had representatives from several organizations including the Stockton Symphony, the San Joaquin Food Bank, and even Podcast Stockton. But as this #stir buzz started to gain some steam and the players in this new movement began to come out of hiding that I thought to myself, "We have 1000 watts of AM power at our disposal, this is a movement of community sized proportion, it is time to go public."

To that end I propose this, today many of us will meet for the first time away from our keyboards. Let's find a time that as many of can assemble at once, next week if possible, and get our thoughts on "tape." Not very many bloggers or podcasters can boast the power of 1000 local watts on a radio station. Sure the Internet is global, but this falls under the "hit them where they are" mentality we are trying to foster.

We have the technology, we have the knowledge, now lets find the right ears to hear what we have to say.

Here are the download links for the first three episodes of the show to date:

Episode 1 - Beep Baseball World Series

Episode 2 - Podcast Stockton/San Joaquin Food bank

Episode 3 - Stockton Symphony