Dave Randolph

Being on the ass end of TechTV and the middle of G4 and the beginning of Revision3 I figured it would be good time for to write about online media in general. It always interest me to read forum post that talk about “core audiences” and being what TechTV was and not what G4 has become and so on and so on. The short answer is advertisers pay for what they know. Advertisers don’t get the “core audience” because the core audience doesn’t usually buy the products. They are not really affected by advertising in general. This is the problem with uber-geek culture in general. This is why places like CNET and G4 still make money. G4 changed focus to general male culture which is a tangible demographic for advertisers to go for. CNET reports news and reviews which is a great place for advertisements since people watch are looking to buy products. However with high end tech(SYSTM), training(PixelPerfect), narrow demographic shows(PopSiren) it is difficult not only to find an audience but also to find advertisers. Take PixelPerfect for example what companies have a marketing budget and could find customers through the show? Adobe? The show is about them, how much more advertising do they want to dump into it? Etc. Etc. How about Systm? Imagine the liability and general public image from being associated with a show like that. Finally think about the numbers needed for traditional advertisers. They count in the millions usually, not in the 10 to 100k range so not only do they have to be convinced that it’s a great idea to invest the money into non-traditional shows but a non-traditional format with lower numbers and a focused audience that might not be interested in the product in general.

So I hate to say it about the “core audience” since I am one of them but to advertisers we don’t add up to a hill of beans and in current times were not worth the risk. Until we as the core audience start listening to advertising and stop listening to good research (which I hope we never do) content specific media will be tough without the “core audience” directly supporting them.

I feel that this type of media will only grow if the people creating them do not consider it the main source of income and treat it as secondary and are only reporting on their daytime jobs. Better yet businesses create programming to not only promote themselves but also encourage a deeper understanding of their markets. A great example of this is “willitblend.com” Right now I’m working with a company that makes products for the music industry and they are bringing in artist to talk about music and engineers to talk about the products right down to manufacturing and they are doing it to amazing detail. This is how the future can be for now till the market recovers and advertisers in general understand how to exploit “core audiences”.

Looking at shows like Dirty Jobs, Mythbusters, Prototype This, Smash Labs You can easily tell they only put about 3 minutes of content into a hour of fluff. I still watch them and my ears perk up everytime they start geeking out. But even the MythBusters flash up a warning “Science Content” sign when there about to get nerdy on the show.

Sorry Internet you’re just not ready for big budget “Core Audience” shows yet. Maybe in the future but not yet. Support the little folks and the one-off shows as much as you can, wear their shirts and put bumper stickers on your car. They are the ones that can truly live up to the phrase “content is king”.

When will it be ready? When Coke or Pepsi advertises on a show on the internet then it will be time.

Tools that should be on every techie thumb drive.
This is a list of tools I personally run and some that were recommended to me via twitter post a few weeks back. Enjoy part one and soon I will be posting part two so if you want to add your own tools to this list leave them in the comments. Also not that it will happen but if this somehow gets on digg could someone be so kind to drop this list in the comments there? This being a wordpress blog and not very stable I would hate it if people couldn’t see the list.

ccleaner: http://www.ccleaner.com Good util for cleaning the registry and removing privacy files. Good to run after your done with a clients system.

AVG: http://www.grisoft.com Are you working on a machine where the user didnt think they needed a virus checker? First slap them on the back of the head and then install AVG.

autoruns: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx See everything set to autostart on a system and you will soon realize how much junk people install on their systems.

spacemonger: http://www.sixty-five.cc/sm Get a nice visual image of all the files on a system and notice the giant avi file they downloaded which is filing up the harddrive. They swear they never saw that file before but you know better.

Memtest86: http://www.memtest86.com/ Could it be the RAM? did you swap it out? do you have enough ram and patience to figure out what is bad and where? I don’t.

TrueCrypt: http://www.truecrypt.org Do you wear a tin foil hat? Are you reading this through a proxy server just in case? Is the lone gunman and 9/11 conspiracies monthly delivered to an unnamed PO box around the corner? IF so then you should encrypt all of your drives and thumb drives.

SysInternals: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx not so much a single app but a collection of apps from microsoft. Also they let you run most of them directly from the web http://live.sysinternals.com/ Good for when you forget your thumb drive or the system is so bad you dont want to plug your dongle into the USB (much like Paris Hilton)

avast: http://www.avast.com another free virus checker because you should always get a second opnion.

CPU-Z: http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php OK so you just want to know what type of RAM chips are in there or the tempature or while model and serial number of the processor they have. I dont think there is an easier way than this.

BGinfo: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897557.aspx Want to be the cool guy in the server room? Run this app and it will put a ton of text containing all sorts of stats on the desktop background. No so many geek points for the home user but all the I.T. guys will think your the master of MSPaint.

Sometimes I have thoughts and dreams and wild visions of the future that can not be expressed in 140 characters so I must blog and blog I will.