Today’s Times has an article about the new phenomenon of “slivercasting,” or narrow-interest Internet-only broadcasts. They give an interesting overview of how all sorts of narrow interests can potentially find an audience for video content on the net.
However, as with Wired’s September 05 issue on “The TV of Tomorrow,” the Times article focuses too heavily on centralized content creators. One broadcaster laments that:
The site has had as many as 200,000 visitors in a month, he said, but only if he buys advertising to attract them.
Net video is entirely different from television in that there’s no “push” or guarantee that your content will find its way into an audience’s home. On the net, content and community are king. Some of the most successful video efforts on the net that I have seen start as a community of interest and then grow into a collaboration (including video). Unless there is a name, or incredible material, on a site without a preexisting community, I doubt that efforts such as these can be successful. Video takes time to watch, and without a push like broadcast, one needs a good reason to devote the effort.