Spectrum Free TV

I met Miles 'LG15' Beckett last summer to chat over the launch of Kate Modern in the UK.  Gazillions of page views, millions of users and many rave reviews later, Beckett is seen as one of the pioneers in the morphing world of TV.  The LG15 team is now a company called EQAL which has just signed a deal with CBS to build on their vision of community-driven drama.  In the announcement, I was struck by the simplicity of Beckett's vision about what he does: “It’s incredibly exciting how you can take existing TV, make it interactive and create communities around it.”  Makes it sound easy doesn't he?  In my chat last year I was struck that, while it involved huge amounts of work by a group of very clever people, the plans for KateModern weren't complicated.  A couple of backers, some young actors, the starting point for a script, a flat in Whitechapel and some handheld cameras.  Oh, and a deal with Bebo on the back of the LG15 story.  But the really big thing, the broadcasting or spectrum to share stories with the world - that was a given.  It's a kind of if we've got it, we can share it mentality which is hard wired into the brains of webizens and everyone under the age of about 25.  Clay Shirky illustrates the point when he says that the hardest time he has with his students is explaining that (only) ten years ago, you couldn't instantly share your ideas with the world.  This is one of those far-reaching changes that can be difficult for people still stuck in a world of spectrum scarcity to fully understand.  Just compare the ease of Beckett's vision for a brave new world of TV with those of his now boss, CBS Interactive president, Quincy Smith said: “These guys have cracked the code.”  There's no doubt that Beckett and his crew are super-smart and have learnt a lot about the world of community-driven story telling, but I didn't get the impression that they think of themselves as code crackers.  They are just playing with the new toys available to us all.  And having fun along the way.

Comments

[Colin Donald]

"It's incredibly exciting how you can take existing TV, make it interactive and create communities around it."

Yes, it is, but the producers have to be careful how they manage the interactivity. As we blogged about the apparently sudden ending of KateModern:

Did audience interactivity kill KateModern?

http://tinyurl.com/3po857

Interestingly, it's the fans who have been coming to read it...

[James Cherkoff]

Thanks Colin. Agreed, but deciding what your million strong community want next is a nice problem to have! ;-)