- and now you know!

New Media / Revision3 / People from Ryan Kenward on Vimeo.

Now, first of all – I am completely understanding of the current economic slump but its entirely too easy to point the blame at that being the cause of poor business strategy. Rev3 never should have become that reliant on corporate sponsor’s cash in the first place.

Defend that statement you probably are thinking —- Well okay here’s a few points to defend it.

—What really went wrong
1.) Inflated spending on show production.
I can’t really give an accurate estimate on how much money Rev3 spends on creating each episode of (Insert Show Here) – but I imagine it’s wayyyy too much. Let’s look at how this all began, the broken. Was that a super expensive uber corporate looking “would-be TV show”? No, and that was a lot of its appeal. The reason that the whole IP TV had any real potential at all was the same reason Cable TV did when it first came out, freedom! The ability to be creative and do whatever one wants without being stifled by ‘the man’ – now look what it’s becoming. These uber processed/produced shows plain suck (ouch truth). I can hardly watch most the shows on here anymore, it seems like people quickly have become full of themselves and egocentric not realizing the entire purpose is to create content for people by being a person of the people. Not be being an elitist jerk. Overall the cost per episode to the actual listener numbers are disproportionate IMHO. End of story. No one cares about lame ass animations that cost way too much to create anyway – or blue screens. Aside from poor management something I like to call “George Lucas Syndrome” has gripped Revision3 – I doubt I’ll need to explain that.

2.) Trying to be “the google” of VidCasts
Instead of trying to pick up any mildly successful show (often just to ruin them anyway) – it would have made more sense to focus on the shows that you do have. Quality over quantity will always yield the best results.

Now, all this being said – I do not personally think Revision3 is a bad company by any means. I think there is room for mistakes as they are trying to pioneer this whole new media thing, which is cool but being frugal and cautious rather than being over the top would have served much better. It’s something you learn from experience, and I feel Revision3 will recover from this. It’s just too bad good people had to lose their jobs and good shows had to go while there are several other shows on (that I won’t call out) that are simply crap.

So what are other people’s thoughts?  Agree, disagree, don’t care?  Talk to me people.

- Ryan