Blip.tv (Photo credit: Luis M. Gallardo D.)
Sorry that image is blurry, but that’s what came up in Zemanta’s list.
Blip.TV was a place YouTube’s reviewing community went to for hosting once YouTube starting releasing the copyright bots and no avenue to protect oneself. The YouTube bots look for any potential issues but there is no grounds to speak in your defense. Noah “The Spoony One” Antwiler recent got a ton of flags for his theme song, even though he has permission from the band who made the song.
My review of the Challenger Of The GoBots miniseries can’t be monetized because it caught that I used footage from the DVD…about half-way through the review…while the Cricket On The Hearth review is banned in Germany because of the use of Angela Landsbury singing “We Need A Little Christmas” in the decorating montage. This tells you how weird their set-up is. and I don’t think I’m going to put up any more reviews, including the first two, because i”m worried about getting flagged and losing the account. I have too many videos in various “favorites” playlists that I don’t want to lose and I’m starting to build a presence with the panels and interviews.
Blip was also a good place because it was easier to monetize your videos. With YouTube you have to stay in good standing just to post a video longer than 15 minutes, resulting from all the idiots who post TV shows and movies illegally. I’ve never challenged YouTube’s reasons, just its methods. Recently, however, Blip has been doing something odd itself, which in part I also understand, But like YouTube, they have been doing something wrong, which is why I’m pushing my review of The Tomorrow People‘s new pilot to Monday. This is interesting.
As of this writing I have not received a notice from Blip that BW’s presence on their service is part of the current wave of takedowns. I’ve also never received a newsletter so there’s that, but as of this time my presence is still there. Not everybody is so lucky. Some of my reviewing colleagues like Chris “CFerra” Ferraiolo (you may remember one of his posts started this one) and at least two of my Reviewers Unknown colleagues, Writrzblok and the Animated Reviewer, have lost their accounts. Cferra didn’t just let the form letter stand and went asking why his account was taken down, partly in fear of discrimination due to his deafness making his voice sound a bit off. This is the latest response from their back and forth he posted to the TGWTG forum thread:
Hi Chris,
Composition in this case refers to the way elements are arranged, not the actual elements themselves. Likewise, fidelity refers to the cleanness of the audio or visual recording – such as whether the recording is free of distortion, unwanted artifacts and background noise. A review of these components lead us to conclude that your series did not fit our definition of a high quality original web series. Your voice and physical appearance were not a factor in the decision to close your account.
Best regards,
Blip Producer Support
I don’t know if Chris was deaf from birth or if he uses some form of hearing device, but I’ve been one of the people bringing up his audio and his latest episode (which I obviously can’t show you right now), part of a retrospective of Marvel’s first New Warriors team, showed improvement in that regard. Is there room for improvement? I could point out a few things, but I’ve been lucky to improve my own audio. Lighting is still an issue as is my delivery, but I’ve been focused on getting caught up on convention footage plus my more recent non-BW related issues.
I’m using this to break the text wall, where my eyes burn!
Now I don’t know if Blip has the resources to have a staff of people willing to help Blip creators overcome their issues. I know that reviewers like Nash (as part of his “video in video commentaries”) and BW Fave Tyler “TJOmega” James have posted tip videos and their quality is amazing. (Tyler has been featured here at the Spotlight numerous times.) Others have posted behind-the-scenes as to how they produce their shows. James Rolfe posted how he does a typical Angry Video Game Nerd episode and both Doug Walker and BW Fave Lewis Lovhaug have done “how I do it” videos to their DVD releases. But outside of a critics helpline there’s only so much that can be done.
And I think we reviewers forget that there are other shows on Blip, which I had hoped to get to before I stopped having time to do the Saturday Night Showcase feature. There are romantic comedies, LGBT and straight, sci-fi shows, talk shows, interviews (I think the interviews and con footage are helping keep me up and I’ve tried to improve after every cycle), a kids show or two, cooking shows, and other things that don’t involve reviewing some movie or toy. In fact, we reviewers probably have the lowest production quality since we’re using one-person shows on a tighter budget than the old Doctor Who series. I don’t know if any of them have suffered like the reviewers because I don’t know anybody in those circles.
That all said, here’s where Blip is slipping. Like I said, Blip can’t host a tips line because (a) they’d have to watch every show or at least the last batch to get a handle, and that’s time-consuming as most review shows run for around a half hour. And yes, we’re assuming somebody actually watched the show and didn’t just use a questionable algorithm like YouTube does for its content flags, but most likely these people aren’t in a position to throw tips at you and some producers can be thin-skinned thanks in part to the trolls who like to target people who are already nervous about their quality. That said, Blip has started coming up with ways to promote some of their favorites. They started a “League Of Super Critics” channel on YouTube but that only posts TGWTGs contributors and let’s be honest they don’t need promoting as badly. Nash Bozard does a “Reviewer Spotlight” every Monday on his Radio Dead Air program, which is much better help.
The other guy is “Guy Lynxor” according to his card. No, I’ve not heard of him, either.
And it’s not just how many people like you. Popular shows have gone down, but it’s not the first time a popular show goes down. However, Blip is doing a terrible job at explaining why a show is canceled. Buzzwords don’t cut it for people who aren’t diehard filmmakers up on all the latest terms. I’m still not sure what Chris was being told up there, and neither does he. He’s been help edit Bad Movie Beatdown, a show on TGWTG for a while and he still doesn’t know what they’re saying. What do I know? I’m a writer/cartoonist who does videos on the side. And bigger reviewers have jumped ship to try other resources because of Blip’s payment system. I don’t know how that works, either. The aforementioned GoBots review has received over 5000 views since I posted it and still hasn’t earned a single dollar in ad revenue on Blip (while YT won’t let me monetize). I don’t know how it decides what we get, if people are staying for both ads, or if adding in commercial breaks would help. They really don’t tell us anything and when they do it’s forms and buzzwords. Again, I don’t know if this is a problem for all of Blip’s producers or just the review community.
So where do reviewers go? If you already accepted that you aren’t going to live off this income you could try other sites but some of them may have copyright issues or are not very well known like Veoh. Then you have the really obscure sites that you aren’t sure isn’t messing with your computer when you log on. When a friend checked out my computer one time I have a bunch of permissions from China-based sites or something.
So what’s the future of internet reviewing? It’s unclear. Blip, and their parent company, Maker Studios, may or may not being playing favorites or they haven’t gotten to everyone (me) just yet. What they should do is explain what the actual problem is in easy to understand, but not patronizing, terms, and offer suggestions to improve, like a warning, and then the re-evaluate in a few months or something. A tip show (they exist for general filmmaking but not for reviews) would be nice, but I don’t expect Blip to pull something off. Too bad Channel Awesome didn’t add that to their Kickstarter stretch goals. That would have been a good idea. It’s going to be harder to make a living at this beyond building an audience and unless a hosting service pops up like Blip did in the early days there’s not going to be a go-to site for reviewers. Maybe we’re just hitting the problems of every genre and product, where oversaturation means at some point “survival of the fittest” comes into play. As long as we don’t turn on each other and instead work to improve our genre we may weather this storm like we did YouTube. Only time will tell.
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