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Back before MTV or MuchMusic, there were music video shows. At first it was just segments of music or dance shows that would run a video or two. Eventually, there were hour long blocks of television reserved for music videos. The music video was a new and rising art form and at least a few people out there decided that there was an opportunity available for anyone who could present a platform for that art.
There was, of course, a need for someone to host such things. Radio DJs became video VJs. Someone who could throw to the next three minute clip and maybe conduct an interview or two. The hosts were always secondary to the content, the music videos.
When MTV, and then MuchMusic, launched in the early 80s, there were literally not enough music videos produced to fill an entire day of programming. That meant a lot of the hosts vamping to fill air time.
In the early days of MuchMusic it was fairly easy to tell that this was a scrappy operation. Maybe a dozen or so people just doing their best to keep an entire television station up and running. That meant that you, as the audience, got a lot of time with the hosts. They were trying to make something slick and well produced, but it leaked around the edges.
I’m not sure when, or even if, they figured it out but fairly soon, the hosts became as big a draw to the channel as the music videos. Their quips, interactions and ad-libs. Real, authentic personalities were why the audience came and stayed. That’s the sort of authenticity that only happens when you don’t have enough money or people to make something slick and well produced.
In the late 90’s, video streaming and on demand video were just starting up. Home internet fast enough to deal with streamed video wasn’t exactly commonplace, but a few pioneers started give it a try. Most failed quickly. Some failed due to lack of resources. Some due to lack of audience. Others failed due to gross mismanagement. You know, the normal ways companies die. Not one of them died because video streaming was the wrong business to be in.
My favorite industry to follow is, and always has been, video games. As soon as people were able to stream video, I knew that video commentary and reporting on video games was soon to follow. Not highly produced, timed, and packaged TV content either. This stuff would be made by people as interested in the game industry as their audience. I found a few.
I remember bringing a copy of a video from the AllGames Network to the animation studio where I was working at the time. Most people didn’t seem that interested. One person said that it seemed amateurish. I remember thinking then, that is what you want. Not badly done video work, but scrappy, authentic work. They started other shows and joined the Pseudo streaming video company. The whole thing was local UHF channel levels of bootstrapped, but it was streamed from a studio in New York to anywhere in the world.
It was authentic, and I knew it couldn’t last. Eventually those people went on to start the G4 channel. The shows were better produced. They had flashy intros and music. They didn’t feel authentic. This wasn’t a person who loves a thing talking to you, another person who loves that thing. This was a filtered and distilled version of that. A packaged thing made to appeal to advertisers. Prettier, but less authentic.
By the mid-2000s, streaming video had proven itself. The next big entertainment platform would be a series of audio and video streaming web sites. Of course, video game journalists were on the forefront of that. There were several groups that tried it, but the pattern was always the same.
Some people from editorial would manage to get enough of a budget to get a few people on camera to talk about games. The people on camera would put way more of themselves into it than the production warranted. The result would be something scrappy, a bit clunky, and extremely authentic.
That authentic thing would get attention, and someone higher up the corporate ladder would take notice. They would think that it looked amature or janky, but it would also cost a lot more to produce that slick, polished product that would appeal to advertisers. So they would shut it down. Why put money into a product that you can’t sell. The problem with that thinking is, authenticity draws an audience.
By the time Giant Bomb started in 2008, several companies had tried, and failed, to create a streaming channel about video games. Most of them had the right idea. Create videos that speak to your audience, grow that audience, sell advertisers on the size and dedication of the audience, not on the quality of the video being produced. Stay authentic and you can’t lose.
Giant Bomb had been around for seventeen years. In all that time people higher on the corporate ladder never really figured out the secret. The secret is, there is no secret. Let the VJs VJ, let the hosts talk. Let them connect with their audience and then sell advertisers on the size and dedication of that audience. Seems simple enough.
Well, maybe whatever new thing emerges from the husk of Giant Bomb will be the one that gets it right. I suppose we will see.