General Information on Starting Online TV Site

[canadaneedsmusic]

Hey,

Let me just say to anyone that passes along any information in this thread, thank you very much in advance.

I am currently in the planning stages of starting an online tv network of sorts. Don't worry, it won't be a competitor to Revision3.com, it's going to have a single genre throughout all of its programming. Anyway, I was hoping some of you may be able to offer some general information about the whole process. I've done my fair share of research, but my knowledge lies on the side of communication and content side of things, not the technical side; my business partner is in the same boat.

Anyway, I don't really have many specific questions, but I'll start with the ones I have. First of all, I read that Revision3.com raised $1mil in funding... why was that much needed? I'm planning to start with a much smaller budget obviously, which is why I'm interested.

I've also been looking into different hosting options, and from what I've read it seems that I should be looking into a dedicated server with a 10mbps (I will get faster if I can find something that fits with everything else) and an unmetered transfer limit. Does this sound about right? Any information on this front would really help.

We will be using flash video, and we are planning to offer downloading in other formats including MP3. Furthermore, we've also registered a .mobi site for eventual use. Any information on either of those fronts would also be very useful.

I don't really have any questions about production itself, it doesn't seem that hard from what I've read. As for the writing and communication aspects we have a solid foundation.

Any information about any of the questions I've brought up or anything else that comes to mind would be greatly appreciated; and thank you again for your help.

[ElectricalBurn]

money = bandwidth, a mil is much but i dont know the needs of rev3.. um....yeah

as far as unmetered transfer, goodluck, can you say "CHA-CHING"?

[rabidbadger]

considering this is your first post, and the title, I thought this was spam, but you seem legit, but it might have been wise for us to get to know you a bit before making this your first post... This is a community after all.

That being said, willing to help, being a podcaster myself, but could use more info:

What is the "genre" you mention?

Can you afford the bandwidth? I'm Lucky, my semi popular vidcast is hosted for free by a friend who owns a hosting business. There is no way we could do it otherwise.

Are they stricltly video? Do you have shows that will translate to audio well, considering most podcasts are listened to rather than watched?

Other than Rev3, who else do you emulate? Twit? Rocketboom?

Can you keep things coming at a regular rate? Even here, at Rev3, people (paying customers) complain about irregular availability...

I have other questions but will let you grok these first...

good luck.

Joel

[ElectricalBurn]

Joel PM me with links to your podcast

[rabidbadger]

No need to PM. I try not to spam it here, but lots of people ask, and I tell them. That and it's a hobby, not a venture, so no money made unless you wanna buy mediocre cafepress stuff...

Any way, been outa commision due to one of the hosts pregnancy/birth and our "set" being refurbished, but a new ep is being edited as we speak...

I'm the behind the camera guy, so I only poke my ugly mug in once in a while, but it is great fun... Tomorrow we get to try our two month in the making Pilsner. Our first pilsner...

Anyway: links.

iTunes (http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=172851077)

Website (http://www.swillburgbrewery.com)

RSS (feed://www.swillburgbrewery.com/beercast.xml)

We also have a spinnoff in the works called "eating beer" which is a cooking show with beer in every recipe. There is a secret first ep up.. but not ready for primetime.

[xibalba]

I'm watching it now. Could have just looked at his profile it has a link thats how I found it. :D

[canadaneedsmusic]

Electricburn and Rabidbadger,

Thanks a lot for the comments and questions. I know that my first post wasn't really "welcoming", but in the future I'll try to post more often. To be honest I havent really had much of a chance to watch many revision3.com shows, however I have diggnation to be pretty funny and enjoyable. I do however REALLY like the website, the whole idea with the videos, the layout, etc.

Now I'll answer the questions:

First of all, the genre is going to be news. I don't want to get too much into it, but news is the basic genre. My influences really came from drudgereport.com, but after the initial idea I started looking at other sites like revision3, rocketboom, and even cnn, etc, all in an attempt to gather more ideas about the website, format, style and content. We want to try to mix things up of course, we don't want to offer an exact copy of anything, so we're trying to come up with some interesting ideas and concepts for shows.

As for the "can I afford the bandwidth" question. The answer is yes and no. I'm in a lucky position to have family who have the financial means to back the company to some extent, but of course I want to be in as little debt as possible. I myself also have some money coming my way, and will be able to save a good deal of money in the coming months. Plus there is the money from my business partner. I was initally worried about the pricing. I looked at Brightcove and Maven initially, but heard reports of prices between $20,000-$60,000 a year because we want to stay in control of advertising, etc. Could we potentially afford that? Yes. Do we want to? No. This is why we're going to try to do as much as we can on our own. I recently did some searching and found sites which offer a dedicated server with 10mbps (200mbps bursted) and unmetered transfer limits for between $700-$1000US per month. I think this is something we could swallow, atleast until we (hopefully) get some revenue.

We plan on offering the content in video format on the main page so that is what viewers will see initially (meaning when they go to the main page). However, we do plan to have audio only available. Furthermore, video and audio will be available for download for a period of time (meaning we are planning to take old episodes off the site after a time).

As for the programming. We do have a number of shows which we think will have some appeal. There are two shows which we hope to have ready at the beginning of the website, and we plan to add shows as quickly as possible there after. The two first shows we would like to have available every evening, but if this is not possible, one show WILL be everyday (monday to friday). The shows we are planning are for the most part going to rely heavily on the host, and require very little editing (we're not trying to make any overly fancy aspects to the show). One show will require more work for the writing, etc. We plan to have very content driven shows, as that is our strong suit. Anyway, our initial plan is to have atleast 7 new shows a week, 5 being the daily show, and atleast 2 episodes of the other show. Eventually we would like to have 90% of our shows having a new episode everyday, but we realize this involves a lot of time, energy, and resources.

I believe I answered all of your inital questions. Sorry my answers are so long, sometimes I just tend to ramble on, lol. Thanks again for your help.

[rabidbadger]

No. I like the detail. Have wanted to do something similar for a long long time, and it is great to know you have a lot of things in the planning stages.

But Survivor is about to start. The only network show I watch regularly, so will be back in an hour with more thoughts.

[canadaneedsmusic]

Rabidbadger... don't worry about the show watching, lol... I watch too much TV as it is, so I know all about wanting to catch your favorite show. Whenever you have a chance to reply is great, no rush. Thanks again.

[rabidbadger]

Man, that sounds very ambitious. I'm sure you know to start small, and work up. Don't try to slam everything into the pipeline at once. As far as bandwidth I'm gonna try revver. If it's good enough for ZeFrank it's good enough for me.

[rabidbadger]

I'm watching it now. Could have just looked at his profile it has a link thats how I found it. :D

What'jathink? Even if you thought it sucked feel free to comment on iTunes and/or rate it on digg.com/podcasts...

[xibalba]

What'jathink? Even if you thought it sucked feel free to comment on iTunes and/or rate it on digg.com/podcasts...
I sent a pm I think last night.

[rabidbadger]

Oh, cool. Thanks

This Forum should find a way to make new PMs more obvious.

[xibalba]

Oh, cool. Thanks

This Forum should find a way to make new PMs more obvious.

There is an option you can check that will make a popup and tell you when you have one.

[rabidbadger]

Ohh, cool. Thanks. Been using PMing quite a bit lately. That will help. Now if we could have more than fifty...

[xibalba]

I had it on for awhile but turned it off.

[magunwarrior]

I honestly hate PMs, good thing I never get them. I'd rather people just IM other then PMing me, seeing how I have to delete the god damn things.

[rabidbadger]

good point, but I always forget about IMing, and then when I use it I get distracted from the other things I am doing on the web/computer...

[samureye]

I have 193 PMs now, ugh, when this site launched it was ridiculous.

As for hosting a show, Revver seems like the thing, www.bigbignews.net uses it, www.acceptable.tv uses it, so it's what I will be using when I do my online shows.

[rabidbadger]

I have 193 PMs now, ugh, when this site launched it was ridiculous.

As for hosting a show, Revver seems like the thing, www.bigbignews.net uses it, www.acceptable.tv uses it, so it's what I will be using when I do my online shows.

they seem to have a good model, non intrusive for viewers, visibility for sponsors. Clicked a few myself, which is more than can be said for website ads...Just wish they were more "contextual" (ie: on ZeFrank, the ads were nothing related to what the show was about.)

[samureye]

Were those video ads? I want to use Revver because it seems better than youtube: player "feels" better and it doesn't hang as youtube does a lot (asking you to replay video as if you loaded the entire thing when the entire thing didn't load). Also, I remember when there was the big thing about Youtube changing the ToS and it meant they owned what was uploaded. I just don't want anyone to own my content or mess with the video (putting ads in the video that are not mine. Is Revver good for that?

Oh, and this is something I wanted to know - what about playing youtube videos (or revver even) on TV or some podcast or something. Do you just have to credit youtube and you're good to go?

[rabidbadger]

Were those video ads? I want to use Revver because it seems better than youtube: player "feels" better and it doesn't hang as youtube does a lot (asking you to replay video as if you loaded the entire thing when the entire thing didn't load). Also, I remember when there was the big thing about Youtube changing the ToS and it meant they owned what was uploaded. I just don't want anyone to own my content or mess with the video (putting ads in the video that are not mine. Is Revver good for that?

Oh, and this is something I wanted to know - what about playing youtube videos (or revver even) on TV or some podcast or something. Do you just have to credit youtube and you're good to go?

Nope. Strictly a clickable image at the end of the video. Works in iTunes and everything. Very clever code.

Youtube video sucks. It's supposed to. Appeals to (and works with lowest common denominator, (tech wise- browser, OS, system) and that is fine and works for them obviously. But I will never put my stuff on youtube. Quality sucks, and yes, they kinda "pwn" your stuff to a certain extent. Revver has a very specific, we don't own your shit policy, and just slaps an ad at the end in exchange for them hosting your bandwidth...

Cool deal. It might have changed since I checked it out a few months ago. but I doubt it...

[canadaneedsmusic]

Revver looks interesting, I'm going to look into it further. It may be a good way to start before moving to other options. But I'm not sure about them putting ads on the videos. Anyway, I've found some interesting hosting options from this thread and another thread, so thanks everyone.

[samureye]

Sweet. Again, check acceptable.tv and the show is on tonight on Vh1, and it's a good look, gonna watch the rerun (The Soup comes first :D)

[rabidbadger]

Hey you guys are invited to the party (http://www.revision3.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5168).