Five Reasons Why Online Video is Better than Regular TV

The title is pretty self-explanatory; online video is taking over, live regular TV is diminishing in ratings. With that in mind, here are five reasons why online video is better than regular television and why it's taking over.

1. Available to Watch; Anytime, Anywhere.

Regular television had this problem, it can only be watched at a specific time and then it's gone until it came out on video. There have been efforts to counteract this over the years, replays, VHS recording, TiVo, Sky+, DVRs, etc. But it still forced the viewer into restrictions set by the TV Network. With the advent of online video things were up and available to watch whenever you felt like it, and for the most part weren't going anywhere, thanks to the ad revenue system, people could be earning money any time and views can watch content any time.

2. No Wasted Hours of Programming

With so many people working all day, everyday, only "Primetime" shows were watched, three or so hours after 7pm for TV Networks to air their stuff when people could watch it. That left roughly seven eighths of the day almost completely wasted airtime, leading to some people being forced to miss their second favourite show when it clashed with their favourite. Now, they're online all the time, so they can be aired any time they want, as well as the fact that if something goes up in the middle if the day, it's always going to be viewable later when people get home from work to relax.

3. Content in the Hands of Creators

YouTube, Blip.tv, Vimeo e.t.c. all have the ability to upload videos with no oversight committee of assholes, who wouldn't know their head from their bell-end, saying "I want you to change this". Now people can put their content online with only their view count to determine if someone likes their content. It means talented people who have great, unconventional ideas that TV Network execs, who are completely out of touch with the viewing audience, would shoot down before they even reach the pitching phase. Combined with crowd funding sites like Kickstarter, bigger, better projects can be made with the help of a community. In the case of a web-series, their fate for another season lays in the hands of their fans and their fans alone.

4. User Interaction

Despite the fact that in YouTube comment boxes you can find the lowest forms of human scum and obnoxious drivel. Comment boxes provide a way for fans and creators to interact with each other on a level that simply wasn't available with regular television. Audiences can now talk about their favourite shows with each other and the creators can read and what they're talking about. Regular television simply can't do this without something like a forum or dedicated manner. It's the power of social media at its finest, people interacting online with each other.

5. Competition Becomes Collaboration

Maybe I'm being a bit of an optimist on this one but when there's no need for competition between shows as there is no longer a time slot system, what was once competition for ratings between shows now becomes collaboration between them. They help each other out, collaborate on various things and work together for their mutual benefit. Just look at this video here: REWIND YOUTUBE STYLE VIDEO. It's nothing but collaboration based on an Internet meme song by Korean Pop Star. Everyone benefits from it, just like when crossovers happen online, they only serve to bolster each others view count and rating. A system that was once about crushing the opposition and stealing their views, now has become system of mutual help and benefit to each other, a "scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" system.

So those are my five reasons why online media is eclipsing traditional television. Take it or leave it, I hope one day I can look back on this and be proven right, but only time will tell.

Convention Time: Vid Con 2012

This past weekend I went to Vid Con, and by God was it incredible. I've been to three conventions in the past so my experience is limited, especially as they were all gaming conventions of varying degrees. First I went to Eurogamer in London, then the London Gaming Con where I presented Final Fantasy: Zero at a panel and demonstration, then came the biggest I've been to; E3, which I was only at for a few hours on the final day and it was awesome. But nothing could have prepared me for how incredible and probably life changing Vid Con would be.

First off for those of you who don't know, Vid Con is a convention for online video; initially dreamt up by Hank Green and created in partnership with his brother John Green, the novelist. Both of them make up the duo of the "vlogbrothers" on YouTube. Now it's easy to dismiss YouTube as this place where people just talk utter bollocks, or show clips of Family Guy - but then you'd forget just how life changing this thing has been. It's only been seven years since it launched and in that time there are channels like Machinima that have 4,600,000 subscribers. If last generation was the generation of self-made millionaires like Bill Gates, Richard Branson or even Mark Zuckerberg - YouTube and Zuckerberg's own creation Facebook, along with other social media platforms like Twitter, Tumblr and back in the old days, MySpace, have created a new generation, a generation of self-made stars. In the past if you wanted to show case your talent to the world and make money from it, you had to be damn lucky or know the right people. Now you can do it yourself and your videos will could go viral - I have friends who have 100,000 subscribers plus on YouTube. We live in an age now where the internet is integral to our lives and YouTube is one of the major parts of that. YouTube is the TV channel, that has millions of programs you can watch at any time and anyone can have a show on there - this is the future and the future is now.


So with all this in mind but not really knowing quite what I was in for, I went to Vid Con 2012 in Anaheim. Now I'm not a hardcore YouTuber; I am more so than regular people but I'm pretty low on the totem pole (for now). I tried the vlogging thing, I was too lazy to contribute regularly because I have no decent video editing software and dear lord do I hate editing with a vicious firey hatred of boiling hate. I'm mostly a commenter and a watcher of videos, and in attending Vid Con 2012 I was mostly going to meet people I admired in this community, maybe make some contacts and network a little... but I didn't know anything about this community....

Wait up, backstory time. Around about 2006 I started watching videos by this guy called... The Angry Video Game Nerd, you might have heard of him, if you haven't... who the hell are you and why are you reading my blog? Anyway, he made me laugh with his funny angry video game review parodies, from there I discovered The Nostalgia Critic, and his website and co-workers. Soon I started using my YouTube account that I'd only been using for Final Fantasy: Zero trailers and videos until now to subscribe to people. People like brentalfloss with his "What If Video Games... Had Lyrics?" series, who eventually I met in person and am still good friends with to this day, which gave me my first real glimpse behind the camera of YouTube into the life of someone with some fame online. So really my experience at roughly this point was mostly the "online internet reviewer" crowd with some similar video people thrown in there. Then I went and saw this review channel called Tardistacular, run by two lovely Doctor Who fangirls, one American Kaylee  and one British, Rosianna. I thought they were both a lot of fun and as a Doctor Who fanboy myself, I was curious. Then I heard Rosianna had a "vlog"... Wasn't sure what that was exactly, was it a mispelling of Blog, a lisp, a cute pet name for some kind of disease? I checked it out, it was her talking to a camera, talking about her life, talking about things going on in it. "What is this crap?" I asked myself wondering why anyone would talk about their personal life on the internet like that. Then I realised what it really was, it wasn't her talking about her life, it was her sharing her life with us. Sharing the lessons learned, the journey's experienced and all life has to offer in a few short minutes. This is the principal YouTube was founded upon, hence it's name YOUtube. She eventually mentioned a book "Looking for Alaska" once or twice, I checked it out, it was by John Green - some time after I returned from New York in 2009, I heard Green was doing a signing in London. I went there and suddenly I realised he was not just an author, he was so much more. He had his own Nerd Kingdom based around his YouTube channel who called themselves "Nerdfighters", other vloggers were there and I started to realise what kind of insane world I was discovering. From here, I subscribed to John and Hank on YouTube (and you should too after you finish reading this if you've made it this far). I discovered Jenna Marbles, Felicia Day and her web series The Guild and all manner of crazy stuff. I thought I knew this world...

I had no idea. The community is huge, they are old, they are young, they come from all walks of life. They cosplay, they dance, the laugh and geek out. It's crazy and I absolutely love it, every second of it. Going to Vid Con really made me realise that this is the future, that's the future audience, that's the future content creators, I was embarrassed when people kept asking if I had a channel, "Sure, I do, it sucks, wait until my web series comes out". I met Mike Diva, a singer and entertainer on YouTube, who was absolutely awesome. I saw Felicia Day sing live, I made a ton of new friends, met old friends from school who were a part of this community through their page "Sorted Food".

We stand on the precipice of a new age, where creator and fan are one in the same, where every person has a chance to create their own content, to grow, to communicate, network and collaborate. Vid Con will probably have irrevocably changed me and even if for some reason I'm not living in Los Angeles next year, I will fly out to Anaheim for Vid Con... only this time I'd prefer it if I didn't get stuck in 4 hours of traffic again please?