Media & Entertainment

YouTube : Mountain comes to Mohammad

Media & Entertainment

No this is not the title of some video clip on YouTube. This is the story about YouTube itself. The mainstream media has finally behaved sensibly and instead of seeing YouTube as a threat (which of course it is!), it is now looking at the opportunity potential that the fledgling video community service offers. This is in marked contrast to what happened in the music industry where all the big players ganged up in defence against Napster.

It is significant that YouTube CEO Chad Hurley was invited to the Allen & Co. media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, a mainstream media event, where even Google wasn’t invited till it had completed five years of existence.

Just 17 months ago, Chad Hurley was squirreled away in a Silicon Valley garage running up credit card debt as he and business partner Steve Chen developed the quirky Internet video site that became YouTube Inc.

During the past two days, Hurley has emerged among the main attractions at an elite media summit in Idaho, where the 29-year-old entrepreneur is seizing upon the attention to further his quest to establish his San Mateo, Calif.-based startup as an entertainment and advertising hub.

“There is a big wave of video coming online and these (media) guys want to work with us to stay relevant in this changing marketplace,” Hurley said during an interview with The Associated Press. “This trend in the Internet isn’t changing, so we are working with them to find solutions on how they can embrace what we are doing and really leverage that to help their business.”

Media giants like NBC, CBS and Walt Disney have already started their initiatives with YouTube. Wal-Mart and Home Store are the other big-guns working on their YouTube stratgey. Read the full story here on Yahoo! News.

10 Years

Media & Entertainment, Politics, Sports, Zeitgeist

I had received this emailer last year:

In 1995 Narasimha Rao was the Prime Minister and Sonia Gandhi was a reclusive figure

For Saurav Ganguly, playing test cricket seemed a pipe dream

Very few people in India had ever used email or logged onto the internet

We were not a nuclear-armed nation

India had 25 states. Kolkata was Calcutta. Mumbai was Bombay. Chennai was Madras.

Aishwarya Rai had acted in only film, in Telugu

There was only one life insurance company

There were no cellphones. No one had heard of call centres or Kargil

And till October 11, 1995, there was no Outlook

It has been along journey, these ten years. And an exciting journey, in a world transforming itself more rapidly than perhaps any other decade in human history.

To celebrate this journey, Outlook presents a series of 10th Anniversary Special Issues, looking back over the last ten years and looking forward to the next ten. Because we know, and you know, that the next ten years will be even more exciting.

And come to think of it, even in the last one year, a lot has changed indeed.

  • For Saurav Ganguly playing international cricket is yet again a pipe dream
  • We are on the verge of climbing down on our nuclear status
  • Aishwarya Rai hasn’t given a hit since Devadas (if you were to ignore Kajra re)

Krrishi Darshan

Media & Entertainment

To all those souls who grew up spending an agonising 30 minutes every evening watching Doordarshan for want of a better alternative, here is your chance to exorcise the agony of those two words — Krrishi Darshan!

In the world of entertainment there are three instances of father-son relationships that make me go back to my dad and want to be his little boy — Life is Beautiful, Finding Nemo, and Hrithik in papa Rakesh Roshan’s films. Perhaps that’s why no one else presents Hrithik the way his dad does — for not only does he (Roshan senior) make films as a business, he also discharges his responsibility of presenting his son in the best possible manner. The son obliges. And together they don’t disappoint.

So is Krrish a great movie?

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This Guy’s Goma make it big!

Humour, Media & Entertainment

Chances are high that by now you have already heard about the mix-up at BBC News 24, where a wrong 'Guy' (pun intended) was interviewed as an expert on a programme to discuss the court ruling in a case between Apple Computers and Apple Music. If not, read the details here.

Fair chance that by now you may also have seen that uproariously funny clip, where the wrong Guy (pun unavoidable) first makes the most hilarious expressions on discovering the goof-up, and then goes on to confidently answer the questions put to him. (Laughter guaranteed!).

Chances are there that some of you would have been quite impressed with his ability to carry on with the show in front of the cameras, so as to suggest a career for him in the media! You are not alone in thinking so. See what a lot of other people are saying about this, here.

And it was only a matter of time, before other media groups picked up on this, and tried to make some funny footage of their own. Channel 4, did its own studio interview with him, where he was asked to answer questions in his capacity as a Venezuelan, a lawyer, and a doctor — all of which he is not! Watch it here.

Then he got invited to Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, where he got a tremendous applause from the studio audience. Watch it here.

His original BBC clip was also made into a remix version!

Wait that's not all, there is already a website on/for him www.guygoma.com!

A Google search on "Guy Goma" throws up some 80,000+ 104,000+ 124,000+ 198,000+ results!

In the next few weeks/months, Guy Goma could try and capitalize on his brush with fame. Columns online and in print — where he answers questions on *any* topic. This is sure to become a big hit, what with people so eagerly looking forward to hearing him talk on issues he has no clue about! Television appearances have already started. If he is lucky, he may end up making a fair amount of money from this. Then he may not at all need the original job he had come to interview for at BBC. The job's done!

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This has shades of the Mahir Cagri madness which happened at the height of the dotcom boom, where an ordinary Turk, Mahir Cagri, found himself becoming a freak celebrity. Read about it here.

Updates:

(May 22) BBC has asked YouTube to remove some of those clips over copyright issues! I guess they finally saw some value in the content to push for copyright cover!

(May 23) In a potentially tragic twist, Goma may face deportation due to possible immigration complexities. Read here.

(May 27) Finally, Wikipedia has a chapter on this, so I can stop my updates, while you can catch the updates here.  

CAS: Talk the write!

Media & Entertainment

In context of the previous post, I not only wrote about it, I also talked what I wrote! I had raised this question at the FICCI-FRAMES 2004 forum. Here is a snapshot from their archive:

Synopsis of FRAMES 2004 : Addressability – Where do we go from here? (Terrestrial / DTH / CAS / Broadband: Friends, foes, cousins or brothers)

Host:
Ms. Janine Stein, Editor, Television Asia & Media Review
Keynote Address:
Mr. Doug Miller, Mg. Director, Walt Disney Asia Pacific
Panelists:
Mr. Derek Nottingham, Vice President, Systems Engineering & Customer Operations, NDS UK; Mr. Prakash Bajpai, President, Reliance Infocomm; Mr. Shantanu Aditya, President, SET Discovery Pvt Ltd; Mr. A K Shekhar, Country Sales Manager, Motorola Broadband; Mr. Ashok Mansukhani, Executive Vice President, Hinduja TMT

Host:
Everybody wants to talk about conditional access and the companies involved in for a few minutes and then we will move on to questions. I am hoping to make this no longer than an hour and then we may have half an hour for discussion at the end.

<snip> Read the transcript of the session </snip>

Host:
Derek thanks very much. I think we have had some really interesting presentations, lots of differing opinions. I am not going to sum up right now because we have run out of time. I think, it is just better to open the floor to questions. So, if there are any questions. Could you? Gentleman over there. (That's me being referred to…)

Participant:
Hi, I am Rahul Razdan from School of Convergence. I think considering the composition of the panel I think the only set of players who are missing out here are the manufacturers of white goods or television manufacturers…

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