Topic 36 of 40: Will interactive talk shows on the web be a hit?
Wed, Jan 27, 1999 (07:41) |
Paul Terry Walhus (terry)
Will talk shows be more compelling on the web than on radio?
3 responses total.
Topic 36 of 40 [internet]: Will interactive talk shows on the web be a hit?
Response 1 of 3: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Wed, Jan 27, 1999 (07:41) * 80 lines
From today's Forbes:
It's a long shot, but a talk show might be more compelling when it moves
from the radio to a PC.
Webcasting
By Nikhil Hutheesing
KENNETH WILLIAMS netted $150 million in stock from the $1 billion sale of
his computer game company, Sierra Online, to Cendant Corp. in 1996. A year
later he retired, after wisely selling the Cendant shares, planning an
oceanfront estate in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico and a 62-foot Nordhaven yacht
to go with it. Then he got bored.
"The house is impractical, and the boat is a paperweight," he complains.
Instead, Williams, 44, decided to start another company, this one to
provide interactive talk shows on the Web.
Is this what digital convergence is all about? Maybe. The intersection of
broadcasting and computer technology was supposed to create huge new
opportunities for profit, and big companies like Time Warner have
dissipated tidy sums trying to find them. But the earliest success stories
may come from modest endeavors like Williams'. Williams figured that the
proper model was neither video on demand nor sports nor hard news, but
rather talk radio. He got the idea when his wife, Roberta, asked him to
find a way to funnel Seattle talk shows to their future home in Mexico.
Williams hooked up with Jarold Bowerman, who had run marketing and product
development at Sierra Online, and in November 1997 they founded
Worldstream Communications in Bellevue, Wash. Williams invested $3
million; Bowerman added $100,000. Williams hired six technical people and
lured James Golden away from his job as producer of Rush Limbaugh's radio
talk show.
Worldstream Communications' Web site (www.talkspot.com) offers shows on 3
channels; Williams expects to offer 100 shows by the end of the year. The
topics range from news and politics to sex (an economic engine of every
new medium since Gutenberg's day).
In a typical show the host interviews a guest to the accompaniment of
video and still photographs. You get the audio over your computer's
speakers (as long as you have a recent browser); on your screen you get
the video plus text-based discussion between the host, guests and the
audience. The discussion can change the course of the programming.
Example: A newscast on the recent U.S. attacks on Iraq might send the
audience off on the tangent of high-tech bombs. This flexible format
requires the host and the producers to react, say, by quickly pulling up a
picture of a smart bomb.
It's not enough to find such a picture in an instant; you must also be
able to speed it to the viewers. Worldstream tries to get around the
chronic logjam on the Internet by anticipating where the discussion is
going, calling up the right images and sending them to your computer's
memory before they're needed. That way the producer can unveil them
instantly when the time is ripe. To make all this happen, Williams wrote
some 15,000 lines of software code in Java to compress audio, text and
images.
Will all that hard work pay off? It won't be easy to lure couch potatoes
and advertisers to the Web. "People won't give up TV to watch something
on-line," says Daniel King, an analyst with LaSalle St. Securities in
Chicago. "That's why ABC doesn't produce television shows exclusively for
the Web."
Worldstream must also face down broadcast.com, its main webcasting rival.
Unlike Worldstream, broadcast.com doesn't try to make its own content, but
broadcasts stuff from such companies as ABC and ESPN. Another difference:
broadcast.com runs conference calls for investors and corporations. Its
revenues jumped 171% in the first half of 1998.
Williams expects revenues—mostly from advertising and subscription fees—to
hit $2 million in 1999 and rise to $50 million in 2000. "People will run
home from work to turn us on," he says.
That sounds a mite optimistic to us. But hey, if Williams loses his $3
million investment, he'll still have $147 million left over—and a Mexican
estate that will be ready to live in by April.
Topic 36 of 40 [internet]: Will interactive talk shows on the web be a hit?
Response 2 of 3: Paul Terry Walhus (terry) * Wed, Jan 27, 1999 (07:47) * 9 lines
I tried http://www.talkspot.com and the interface was pretty slick.
It's a text chat window with real audio running.
Which reminds me, we need to focus in on a good chat system here.
We could be doing what they're doing with our live webcam, all we need is
the chat.
Topic 36 of 40 [internet]: Will interactive talk shows on the web be a hit?
Response 3 of 3: wer (KitchenManager) * Fri, Feb 5, 1999 (22:44) * 1 lines
definately intriguing...
internet conference 
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