I was going to leave this alone, but as I think you’ve suggested I should know my place, and you like a good argument, I just can't resist some more batonage.
We are not talking about the same things.
My question... “Drivers/promoters in tkm, rotax, super1, fks, even some club drivers, etc, etc what if there were a high quality video player with good quality, edited multi & onboard camera footage, commentary, graphics, and interviews, etc, etc, coverage of your karting embedded on the front page of this website streaming kart, that could directly target the UK karting community. Would anyone be interested in that?” And as caveate at to it, what if it could be done at significantly less cost than production for television? Say the same content at say 90-95% of the technical quality of broadcast. No it doesn’t exist, yet... Hmmm...
First and foremost, let me say Ben well done for what you are bringing to tv, karting on tv is better than no karting on tv. Anything that raises the profile of karting is good, but there’s room for many levels of promotion & coverage of the sport. And the more there is, the more people are interested in karting and more people are interested my work.
"Everyone can be on the net and therefore it devalues the ideals for clients who want exposure."
I'm not sure, what are you saying. I think your clients want to find an audience for their message they want to get that message over to that target audience. Your clients question is how do I get my message to my target for the best value, the medium of it's delivery is secondary.
TV initially seems like an easy sell. I've pitched promoters about making TV programmes before, and we know it is not the broadcaster paying? MotorsTV are not paying for your production of say the festival, it’s either the championship/promoter itself that pays your bill, or (in part) an associated sponsor. i.e. Motors will show it if it meets standards and someone else pays for it. Now you’re right if the promoter has laid off the cost of production to a sponsor, it then becomes a question of who and what message the sponsor is targeting and how to reach their target audience, thats the sell. TV well, there’s tv and there’s TV.
Now I’m trying to think of the Festival coverage sponsor, and if it were not tkm itself then it must have been Maxxis, and/or Whilton Mill, all karting supplier related, I forget anyone else (Oops) so in most respects is their target audience really just the karting community. I'd agree the net is poor to reach a wide non-karting audience (but is MotorsTV a wide audience getter? It’s a specialist subscription channel).
Then again it depends on the remit you have been given, and having a bit of vision.
Sticking with tkm, but only as an example, and only you and tkm know what their desire was but let's suppose tkm's main desire is promotion of their tkm championship, and only karting in general as a secondary welcome by product. Primary goal then is to get more for tkm, more of the best drivers into their championship... and that is at the expense of other championships? I know it’s terrible, but thats life.
Now how to reach them? TV thats sexy yes, immediately simple to understand, “you might be on satellite once a year, that maybe attractive enough”. But look a bit closer the UK population is 60m, BBC’s biggest audience 8m. Sky, Virgin, Tiscali combined in the UK & Ireland has 12m subscribers, in total, but something like 300 channels, so how many of those subscribers are interested in MotorsTV, and then interested in karting. One promoter told me they would not get 30-40,000 viewers for the total run (including repeats) on MotorsTV, and how many of those would be karters looking to join his championship? He could not justify the expense even if someone guaranteed it would be broadcast on Motors.
You’re right little johnny sat on the settee with mum and dad, get’s one showing off moment (and yes I’ve done it myself, hell it’s the same motivation for custom paint on helmets) it’s look at me, on telly tell your workmates, friends tune in etc.
But the person paying the bill for the production what does he get? Well it could also be a vanity purchase, also, but in truth, it has to be a hard business decision, now if it means there are more johnnys on the settee, and enough to pay for the production then yes its worked for him, more entrants, fees, spares, more prestige, that would work, and if a programme sponsor is a supplier to the championship. But none karting related sponsor? And can you quantify any of it?
I’d argue that that EFFECT of big TV, terrestrial TV is still there, more or less, it stems from when we had just 4 channels, the box in the corner was a window into every home. Quoting Strictly though Ben? Strictly, really I hope your pitch is not a potential audience of 8m, as 8m is BBC’s biggest mainstream family entertainment audience on Saturday evening, karting is not Strictly! F1 only gets 3m, and thats F1, 1m? Maybe on BBC, but satellite within 300 channels? I just had a look at viewing figures on BARB for MotorsTV, for November the channel’s audience share is too small to count. I and many of your potential clients and competitors would be fascinated to know the viewing figures for say the festival, on a subscription satellite/cable channel, care to share them?
As I said the initial thought of TV is immediate, and attractive, but depending where on tv it is the EFFECT maybe overstated.
You are right the internet has no prestige, and if it were costing the same to produce for the internet as it does for "tv" you'd still be right, but it doesn't have to, what the internet is doing is democratising media.
I'm not doing what I'm proposing, I am merely pointing the direction new technology continues to take us. Whether it be the music industry, news, books and television as technology improves, and quality of the technology improves, production costs are squeezed and reduced, and access to the means of production increases, anybody working in TV will tell you how the cost of production along with staff numbers has reduced massively. Look up 'Citizen Journalism'... Of course quality is different matter and your audience wading through the dross on the net for the pearls...
|
|
Cameras again! (Gopro) by 'TheROTAXkidakaTKMkid' (15 Dec 2009 @ 8:31)
