SimonTV Broadcasting Formats and New Show
Different versions for different platforms
It was a good broadcast tonight. I was a little flat but I had an interesting guest to speak with and quite a large audience, at least for me. Though I won’t have firm numbers for a couple of hours around 800 tuned into the livestream across the various platforms, another few hundred will watch the replay. It’s great that so many people are watching and even better that many are participating either by commenting in the chat (which I’m struggling to keep up with) or by jumping into the green room to speak to me on air.
And it was great this week to integrate LinkedIn for the first time, to the existing broadcast mix of 𝕏, Rumble, Instagram, Telegram, Rumble and Twitch.
But man, catering to the platforms and audience preferences is a chore.
Some platforms prefer portrait to landscape, some consider remixing copyrighted content to be fair use, others don’t. Some people like to watch on a computer, others prefer a phone. Some enjoy my taste in music, others would rather listen to their own in the background.
I’ve come up with a solution to keep everyone (and everything) happy. It’s a work in progress but it worked quite well tonight. The short story is if you don’t want to listen to the music, watch SimonTV in portrait. For the full noise SimonTV experience as I intend it, watch in landscape.
It’s precisely the same content except without music, it’s just arranged differently. Consider these two screenshots:
This scene contains four elements.
The interviewee, Ms. Dunstan
The interviewer, Me
The audience text chat
Ms. Dunstan’s company logo
All four elements are presented in both the landscape and portrait views. The audience on 𝕏, Rumble, Telegram and Twitch see the elements in landscape and listen to the music interludes, the audience on Youtube, Instagram and LinkedIn see the same elements a bit messily and listen to silent interludes.
I think I’ll need to alter the portrait arrangement, maybe reposition the text chat so it’s not occluding my face quite as much in this scene. In other scenes such as when it’s just me or I’m presenting a video or an article in a web browser it’s less of an issue.
I think this is the path forward. Portrait for those who prefer their own music and for the platforms that whine about fair use, Landscape for the full experience. I’m open to suggestions though on how I can make both formats attractive and always, advise on how I can improve the content.
As I mentioned Liberty Itch in Australia are expanding beyond the written word into multimedia content and approached me to co-host their weekly podcast. I’m working through the details of what that might look like but I expect it will be more formal and I think I’ll need to be less strident and more circumspect than I am on SimonTV.
The project sounds like great fun as there are some very smart people within Liberty Itch and in its orbit. I’m expecting round-table discussions of current events, interviews with interesting and prominent people, and writers defending their columns. It won’t be the madcap SimonTV but I hope those who’ve been asking for me to do more episodes and extend the duration might enjoy this instead. I’ll make an announcement (as I’m sure Liberty Itch will) if the project eventuates. I hope it will.
Thanks again for tuning in everyone, sorry I was a bit flat this evening.
-SRA. 17/xi 2024.