Claudine Ebeid, Radio Boston producer, originally uploaded by WBUR.
It was back in December ‘06, when I first uploaded a video to YouTube, a brief interview with an ICA curator that I shot on my Cannon Camcorder and edited using Apple’s iMovie. A modest, rushed little effort, it has, to date, garnered a modest 774 views.
As I type this the account now stands at 69 videos that have accrued 158,706 views. Nothing to crow about compared to those traffic-generating monsters on Youtube. Still, crow I will, as our results reflect that a video camera has become standard issue in some of our reporters’ tool kits.
Yes, we have indeed come a long way since 2006.
True, production values haven’t graphed as dramatically upwards in the intervening year and a half as I had originally anticipated they would. As it turned out, expediency and limited resources require us to forgo all the spit and polish at times. But, often these fuzzy, grainy, quick “one-offs” do surprisingly well. Could it be that content trumps production values after all?
As I spent this week thinking about video on the Web, it would be helpful to hear from you our listeners, users—and now viewers. Do you enjoy a little video garnish to go along with your WBUR stories? What video content resonates with a public radio audience? National? Local? Video that takes you inside 90.9?
And if you haven’t yet already, please check out our efforts over on YouTube. I think you will find the subjects delightfully eclectic and unexpected. To paraphrase that movie’s titular village idiot: “You never know what you’re going to get.”
