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Viodi View Newsletter - October 18th, 2006

Click here to learn more about Viodi's Local Content Workshop

Emotions, Expectations & Win-Win-Win

By Ken Pyle
ken.pyle at viodi.com

Win-Win-Win was a common theme of the speakers at the Technology of Local Content Workshop, which preceded OPASTCO’s Tech Symposium. Both Mary Wilder and Tim Mahoney of Mahoney Media emphasized the importance of finding ways that a particular content production will benefit potential sponsors, talent and filming partners (e.g. site locations). They stressed the importance of flexibility and creativity gave examples of how they were able to create partnerships that allowed a production to move forward by removing budget and other roadblocks, creating a win-win for all parties.

My expectations were certainly exceeded by the speakers at Viodi’s Technology of Local Content Workshop, which preceded OPASTCO’s Tech Symposium. Mary Wilder, General Manager for HBC Productions, called upon telcos to exceed the expectations of all of their customers. Mary said that local content was about emotions; connecting with the consumer at an emotional level is the key to local content success.

I was especially lucky, as I got to spend extra time with Mary and her colleagues - Harry Kline and Matt Sperling - learning the secret to their success – part of it may be spelled D-I-S-N-E-Y (see OPASTCO’s Winter Convention Agenda for insight on the Disney Institute).

The other part of their success is that they have found great people, who are passionate about creating content and are excellent team members. The HBC team provided some great tips on leveraging themselves by finding community members who want to contribute to HBC’s video efforts, while doing so in a very cost effective manner. They also showed the typical scrappiness of an independent telco by creating low cost studio elements.

Another speaker who greatly exceeded expectations was Tim Mahoney of Mahoney Media. As an independent content producer, Tim understands the challenges of working on limited budgets. He provided an interesting take on one of the topics we often brainstorm at the Local Content Workshop, which is the idea of finding a sponsor or, as Tim called it, a channel partner.

He also provided some real world examples from his production experience, as he talked about a recent documentary which he sold to TBN and many others called, Jesus – Divine or DaVinci. The interesting thing about this documentary was that he was able to sell it based on the title alone. He talked about the importance of understanding your audience and producing content that the audience wants to see.

I was probably the only one who didn’t exceed expectations, as we needed more time for the agenda, which was already limited compared to our normal full day events. As a result, by the time we got to Roger Bindl, a few people had already ducked out to OPASTCO’s Tech Symposium and missed Roger Bindl’s excellent presentation on low cost animation. Animation has a number of advantages over film, as there are fewer releases required and you do not necessarily have to deal with actors, lighting, sets and all of the other things that makes video production challenging.

Some archived articles at Club Viodi include:

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