I’m awake at 3 am, there’s nothing good on TV or cable, so I thought that I’d spend some time watching Razor TV – picked out one Point Blank video on Exercise Wallaby.
What’s Point Blank?
From what I can understand from the Razor TV site, “Point Blank” is a series under their Local News category (the other categories being Razor Top 5, Net Noise and Paper Cut).
Point Blank probably deals with what I would consider more “serious” topics, for example:
National Development Minister on Foreign Workers
The Good
- No lag – streaming beautifully
- Able to comment/rate
- Easy to embed, share and email
- Great quality video
But…
- What are they trying to achieve? I’m actually confused as to what Razor TV is trying to accomplish with Point Blank. First of all, I guess that it is after all, another avenue of news from the Singapore Press Holdings group of channels. However, my personal view is that Razor TV’s just taking videos which could’ve been shown on terrestrial TV and putting it online. Of course, the quality is quite raw, as compared to the slick editing and motion graphics we now have on terrestrial TV or cable. Not sure whether the “raw-ness” is a deliberate action or just a matter of budget constraints. So what is it that Razor TV is trying to achieve?
- Yawn. I hate to say this, but the video I watched turned something which could have been extremely interesting into something extremely boring. I only watched it to the end because of my desire to write something about it, and also some vested interests *wink*. At first, when I saw that they had over 8000 views (8406 at the point where I watched it), I was quite impressed. However, when you compare this number to the number of views on Parts 2 and 3 (378 and 290 respectively), it can be argued that Part 1 has that number of views mainly because it’s one of the three “editor’s pick” videos on the Razor TV homepage.
- Presenters – They’re not fantastic and sometimes, I feel that they’re not really interested in what they’re presenting.
- Audio clipping. Sound is too loud sometimes, and the audio clips.
So How?
As Kurt Anderson put it in his column on New York Magazine,
“Don’t do Web video if you don’t have anything interesting to show, and don’t compete with TV unless you can do something they can’t or won’t. In other words, use the medium.”
Perhaps what Razor TV needs to do is to go back to basics about what they are trying to do. Are they competing with TV? (I think they shouldn’t). What does the online medium offer that TV can’t?
- Breaking News/Citizen Journalism. Hmm… maybe… although TV also has this capability. Instead, could Razor TV encourage more user generated content – thereby turning ordinary citizens into their additional eyes, arms and legs? See CNN’s iReport
- User-selected multiple camera views, multiple audio channels. In normal TV, well at least in Singapore, what you see is what they give. Perhaps allowing users to choose what they want to see and hear is something they want to do? Mash this idea up with the citizen journalism idea above… different points of view, different opinions?
- Video on demand. Offering the videos on demand – users choose when to watch what they wanna watch.
- Capture the Long Tail? TV is for the masses, hence the content is rather generic and aimed at the lowest common denominator (most of the time I guess). Perhaps Razor TV can capture content that would never make it on TV or other mainstream media.
- Intergration with other channels. Cos SPH is a media company, they should look at integrating their other channels. E.g., print story in newspapers with accompanying background video on Razor TV? Razor TV is to their credit relating back to print in their Paper Cut section.
All in all, online video, and specifically online video journalism is new, and I really applaud Razor TV and SPH for just going in, getting dirty and trying things out – which is much better than avoiding online video entirely.
That’s all – time to sleep!
Other links visited while writing this article:
Making a ‘Good’ Newspaper Video: Expert Advice on the Newspaper Association of America website
