Online vs Television

Hi all

As you can probably understand, content that previously was the domain of television, cinema and home video is increasingly reformatted to sought an online audience. One could look at the advent of YouTube and BitTorrent as examples here.

A half hour television programme lasts about twenty two minutes once the ad breaks are taken out. An hour programme lasts 44-45 mnutes. This is standard industry practice.

The internet doesn’t need these deliverables. Shows can last from about four to five minutes for a comedy show up to a proper half hour for a review show.

Even sport, which normally takes up about two to three hours is slowly going online. Though it must be said that the sporting broadcasts that I’ve seen purpose made for online vary greatly in the style of production from those purpose made for television.

The above video is of the North East Australian Football League match between Sydney University and Eastlake. It was produced for and presented live on YouTube. Yes YouTube does have that feature. As you can tell watching it, the production crew filmed it with a single camera.

Television broadcasters like Fox Sports have about eight cameras – with corresponding number of operators – for the same type of content. The multicamera setup used here provides a sort of safety net in the event the main camera is obstructed from viewing the action. Trust me, I’ve been operating a main (only) camera the kept getting obstructed and it’s annoying as buggery.

Oh well, things happen. We will probably see more content purposely made for online. Television won’t be completely gone for quite a while yet.

Patrick Gillett
(The image of the cameraman in licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license and attributable to me)