Kent TV. The Party’s Over, so What Lessons Are There for Online Video and How an Organisation Communicates in the Twenty First Century?
When the first railways were built, they used horses not steam engines to pull the carriages. Everyone could see the benefit of rails, compared with the inefficient, muddy roads of the day, but not everyone was convinced that the new fangled steam engines were the way forward.

Yesterday Kent County Council announced it was axing its online video channel Kent TV. Kent TV was run by Bob Geldof’s company Ten Alps. KCC set it up with an initial investment of £1.4 million and paid £600,000 a year to run it.
At its launch in 2007 Geldof said it was a blueprint which other councils would copy. But the World has changed since 2007. According to Paul Carter, The Leader of Kent County Council, Kent TV is no longer a priority in “different and difficult economic times”.

So was Kent TV a success or a failure? Was KCC right to kill it off?

The way we consume media is changing dramatically and for me, that’s the real reason Kent TV had to go.
Ironically, Ten Alps’ Chief Executive Alex Connock, speaking just days before the announcement to axe Kent TV, summed up the changes pretty neatly. Talking about the importance of search engine optimization Connock said, “Optimization is absolutely fundamental for any media business because of the atomization of content. Customers no longer visit the overall brand, but go straight to the individual story or video itself”.

In other words, while we are consuming more and more online video content, we expect to find that content widely spread around the internet and not simply on a single channel like Kent TV. For example, if I want to find a company to make a video for my business, I’d type “Kent Video Production” into Google and see what comes up. I wouldn’t go to a dedicated website which lists video production companies. If I wanted to find out how to bowl a cricket ball, I’d type “How to bowl” into Google. I wouldn’t look for a dedicated website for cricket bowling. I’m sure you get the general idea!

Connock’s remarks are a tacit admission that dedicated online channels, like Kent TV, are obsolete and (as KCC discovered) an unnecessary expense.

Kent County Council was quick to appreciate the power of online video when it launched Kent TV back in 2007. Today video is rapidly becoming an essential tool for communicating just about anything to anybody (try typing “video marketing tutorial” or “how to bowl off spin” into Google for instance).

Video is a powerful way for any organization to talk to its customers or stakeholders. Video content is the future. But running your own dedicated channel is not the way forward.

By the 1840s it had become clear that railways were the future. But people also realized that horses weren’t.

The Avatar Blues. Why Pandora's 3D Digital World is a Film History Urban Myth in the Making
The popcorn cost nearly as much as the tickets, but taking the kids to see James Cameron's movie Avatar in 3D last week really was a terrific experience. The filmís breaking all box office records and itís easy to see why. In case you havenít seen it, itís an amazing 3D spectacle which transports you to an imaginary planet called Pandora.The 3D is not gimmicky, but engages you, draws you in and makes you feel youíre really there. I certainly felt I was watching something innovative and significant.So while I was still in the cinema, I found myself wondering how film historians would write about Avatar and its effect on audiences.

This week came the first clues. A number of posts to internet forums appeared expressing feelings of post-Avatar depression. Viewers say they wish Pandora was real and say the film makes real life appear second best. The phenomenon is called the Avatar Blues.

"When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first timeî wrote one teenager, who calls himself Eltu, ìThe world seemed gray. It was like my whole life, everything I've done and worked for, lost its meaning. I live in a dying world".

It's quite possible historians of the future will write; "Back in the early Twenty First Century, audiences felt waves of despair after watching Avatar; many killed themselves after watching it because they could no longer distinguish between reality and illusion".

I was reminded of other exaggerations and urban myths about film.

In 1896 the French Lumiere Brothers filmed a train moving towards the camera. The history books will tell you that, ìAudiences fled in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" trainî. How foolish they were back in 1896!

Similarly, in the 1903 film The Great Train Robbery, there is a scene where the robber points his pistol at the camera and fires. The history books describe how, "Many people who saw the film thought that they were actually about to be shot and screamed in fear or hid under their seats". How backward they were in 1903!

Theyíre good stories, but unfortunately they're untrue. Theyíre huge exaggerations which have gone down in popular folklore and been accepted as historical fact. In 2045, when my grandsonís studying Film History at the University of Kent, heíll probably ask me how I reacted to Avatarís digital 3D trickery. Perhaps Iíll think up something good to tell him.

“Is it radio? Is it TV? Is it YouTube? – The changing face of online marketing and advertising.
I was driving to work this morning when I heard an unusual advert on the radio.
At first I couldn’t work out what it was trying to promote,. It urged listeners to go to the video sharing website YouTube and search for a particular brand of lager.
Here at Kersh Media we’re pretty hot on video marketing, so I was curious enough to take the bait.
What I found was rather bizarre and made me realise just how quickly the world of advertising and marketing is changing.
Back in the good old days, when I worked at Invicta Radio in Canterbury, a radio advert was simply a radio advert.
It would say things like, “Come to Muggins furniture store. We have branches in Folkestone and Dover and if you order before Christmas, we’ll give you ten percent off all sofas”. In the good old days, people would hear the advert, go to Muggins and buy a sofa. End of story.
But today, if you’re a business owner trying to promote your company, or a radio station executive; life’s no longer that simple.
The number of people who listen to the radio is dwindling and so too are radio advertising revenues.
With fewer listeners and competition from the internet, podcasts and mobile media, radio advertising is less effective than it used to be. It’s a vicious circle.
The respected media analyst Claire Enders predicts that “commercial radio could die out in 15 – 20 years time”. The Guardian’s Matt Wells believes, “the worst advertising recession we have ever seen means that commercial radio is on its last legs”.
Which is why I found this morning’s advert so intriguing.
What I found on YouTube was a promotional video which was pretending to be a TV show (from the 1960s). The spoof TV show is “sponsored” by the makers of the beer.
The marketing campaign is a jumbled confusion of media; a radio ad promoting an online video which looks like it’s a vintage TV show. And just to make it more confusing, it’s in French (with English subtitles).
But could this be the future of marketing? Cross platform messages; adverts in newspapers and on the radio telling us to view online video ads on the company’s Facebook page or YouTube site which we can then comment on and respond to?
The strange YouTube video has been viewed 180 thousand times since it was uploaded at the end of November, so maybe they’re onto something!

“Charlie Bit Me – Why Kent Businesses wish they were 3 again”
Here in the UK we take pride in our national successes. Whether it’s a gold medal at the Olympics, winning the Ashes, or England qualifying for the World Cup Finals, we generally feel a frisson of pride or a warm glow of contentment.
So I was surprised that more fuss wasn’t made last week when a short home movie by a British family elbowed its US rivals out of the way to become the most watched video clip on Youtube.
“Charlie Bit My Finger” has become the ultimate viral video with more than 133 million views and rising.
The home movie clip, which is just under a minute long, features a three year old boy whose finger is bitten by his baby brother.
The video’s popularity has spawned a huge number of spoofs and imitators on YouTube and other video sharing sites.  There are fan websites, a Facebook page with more than 16 thousand fans, blogs, a calendar and of course t shirts. 
The video has even entered the mainstream of our consciousness; my children now say “Charlie that hurts” instead of “Ouch” when they suffer any minor pain.
The video’s success reflects the success of online video as a whole.  YouTube’s popularity just seems to grow and grow with no sign of it stopping.
We watch more than one billion videos every day, while more than twenty hours of video is uploaded to the video sharing site every minute.
You can see why businesses are desperate to cash in on our love affair with online video. Just think of the marketing benefits to a business if it could replicate the success of “Charlie Bit My Finger”!
A report published a few days ago by the Online Publishers Association in the US, suggests that 46% of people who view an online video advert are prompted to take some action. 22% visited the related website, 26% searched for more information, 15% visited the company and 12% purchased that specific product.
YouTube and the World’s other video sharing sites are working hard to cash in (or “monetize” to use the jargon) on the vast libraries of online video content they’re amassing.  One tactic is to sell advertising space around the video clips and even forcing viewers to watch adverts before they can watch the clip itself.
Not everyone’s keen on this “pre-roll” form of advertising and YouTube has now introduced a button which allows viewers to skip the advert.  (Just imagine if you could skip the adverts on TV or radio)!
Online video is becoming a hot topic with the World’s professional blogging community. Many people make a half decent living by selling advertising space on their blog pages. However one blogger, Eric Berlin, commented this week that there are now so many blogs being written, that saturation point is being reached. “Does the next generation of blogging stars need to look to video blogging and technology such as skippable ads in order to scratch out a living”? he asks.
I wonder what Charlie makes of it all.

Something extraordinary is happening under the streets of South East Kent and it could have global implications.
Is it wise to predict the future? Consider these examples.
 
“Rail travel at more than twenty eight miles per hour is not possible, because passengers, unable to breathe, will die of asphyxia”.
Dr Larder, University College London, 1827
 
“The telephone has too many shortcomings to be considered as a means of communication. It is quite unnecessary; we have plenty of messenger boys.”
Sir William Preece, Post Office Chief Engineer, 1878.

“The horse is here to stay, but the motor car is only a novelty, a fad. It will not last”. A banker advising against investing in the Ford Motor Company, 1903.
 
One recent report caught my eye; it says the internet will come to a “virtual standstill” next year.
Why? Well according to the highly respected Nemertes Research Group, it’s too successful. Today the internet is transferring one exabyte of data every hour. One exabyte is quite a lot. It’s 1.074 billion gigabytes. You’d need 13 million laptops to hold that much information!
The report says we’re watching so much online video, the system soon won’t be able to cope. In the UK, the internet video boom is being handled by networks designed for voice calls. The most congested part of the pipeline is the last link that connects our homes to our local exchanges.
But just a few miles away from us, in Ashford to be precise, an extraordinary experiment got underway this week Virgin Media has installed the fastest home broadband service on the planet and is now looking for a hundred people to try it out.
It’s based on high tech fibre optic instead of old fashioned copper wire and it promises download speeds of 200 Mega bits per second. That’s much faster than the “up to 8 Mbps” which most of us currently get.
It’s faster than the 44 Mbps enjoyed by the French and even faster than Japan’s 90 Mbps.
So what does it all mean? What will the future bring? The collapse of the internet, or lightening fast connections? I’m not going to make a prediction, but watch this space and we’ll keep you posted!Kersh Media produce  high quality video to promote businesses and organisations.  We create high quality podcasts, conference and exhibition films, work place films, video testimonials, staff and management interviews, PR films, content for product launches, AGMs, award ceremonies and seminars.