Not an April Fool
This may seem like a less than propitious date to launch the Capriol weblog, but I had to start sometime. The article in today's "Observer" about the BBC also galvanised me into action. Assuming this is not a 1st April jape, it would seem that the BBC intends to instigate a review entitled "household value", which essentially addresses the concern that the corporation is too "upmarket". Whilst it is true to say that this publicly funded organisation should endeavour to serve the needs of all of its audience, it does raise concerns about the amount of money and screen time that may be allotted to the arts on television in future.
More broadly, this ties in with the long term aim of this blog - to look at the performing arts in the UK and beyond and try to create new synergies with broadcasting for the new age. The concept of the "long tail" has been much trumpeted, but it is surely going to be an important part of the future of broadcasting. The concept of relatively small communities who want to watch what is increasingly being labelled "niche material" is here today and will be widely in use tomorrow.
I want to create an online community that discusses the performing arts in a non elitist manner. Further down the line, as Capriol Films increases its reach via DVD sales and Internet protocol television (IPTV), the community can tell us what films they would like to see and we can ask them if the films we want to make might interest them. I'm not talking about conventional opera/concert/stage relays, although these have their place, (more in a future posting). I'm really interested in the more quirky types of film that I strongly believe can engage a contemporary audience.
For the time being, lets try and create a forum of good humoured comment - if something that I have seen or researched interests me I will talk about it, if something appalls me, (and plenty does!) I will probably not. In a world beset with bad news this might be refreshing!
So in this spirit I will return to the BBC - its not all bad news when you can watch two hours of Chris Douglas and Nigel Planer's sublime creation, Nicholas Craig, tonight at 9.00pm on BBC4. He will doubtless have his view on this blog - hopefully lots of people will - tell your Friends and voice your opinions!
Tony Britten
More broadly, this ties in with the long term aim of this blog - to look at the performing arts in the UK and beyond and try to create new synergies with broadcasting for the new age. The concept of the "long tail" has been much trumpeted, but it is surely going to be an important part of the future of broadcasting. The concept of relatively small communities who want to watch what is increasingly being labelled "niche material" is here today and will be widely in use tomorrow.
I want to create an online community that discusses the performing arts in a non elitist manner. Further down the line, as Capriol Films increases its reach via DVD sales and Internet protocol television (IPTV), the community can tell us what films they would like to see and we can ask them if the films we want to make might interest them. I'm not talking about conventional opera/concert/stage relays, although these have their place, (more in a future posting). I'm really interested in the more quirky types of film that I strongly believe can engage a contemporary audience.
For the time being, lets try and create a forum of good humoured comment - if something that I have seen or researched interests me I will talk about it, if something appalls me, (and plenty does!) I will probably not. In a world beset with bad news this might be refreshing!
So in this spirit I will return to the BBC - its not all bad news when you can watch two hours of Chris Douglas and Nigel Planer's sublime creation, Nicholas Craig, tonight at 9.00pm on BBC4. He will doubtless have his view on this blog - hopefully lots of people will - tell your Friends and voice your opinions!
Tony Britten
2 Comments:
Tony,
Long time to hear - can't quite believe I'm hearing a Thespian talk about IPTV though.
Actually, you might be interested in looking into a new product we're launching called LiveStation - currently in Alpha release, but enables live streaming of large media (i.e. films) direct to the PC, courtesy of some technololgy we got from Bill G and that reasonably large software company.
Hope all's well - love the blog.
Ali Ball (skinkers.com, livestation.com)
Ali, we thesps have to get into the 21st century or die - yes, I will investigate Livestation.
Tony
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