Is there a need to classify web video the way we classify TV content (e.g. shows, series, specials, dramas, comedies, etc.)?
No.*
Ok, let me elaborate a little. Drew Keller put to us students in the MCDM’s Summer Web Storytelling class the same question, after being inspired by an article about the subject from Tod Sacerdoti at the Online Video Insider. In his post, Sacerdoti explored the question: what is the most-watched show on the Internet? What even defines a “show” online? Drew also pointed us to an article in the New York Times discussing the growing popularity of longer-form videos on the web. The TV business has after decades established standard terms for categorizing and classifying its content – serials, series, dramas, sitcoms, sports, primetime, latenight, and so on and so forth. This serves many purposes, the most notable of which is to help measure viewership by timeslots and types of programs and sell advertising accordingly. This doesn’t really work on the web, with a major exception (see asterisk below).
Content prepared specifically for the web is inherently different than TV content. And I don’t care whether your videos are two minutes or two hours. We don’t have a lot of official terms floating around for web video, and we don’t really need them – people tend to refer to a web video as just a “video” (or “clip”, maybe) unless informed by the content provider otherwise. Sometimes you’ll hear that aging term “vodcast”, referring to one particularity in the web world. But, generally, people use the term “video” when referring to a web video, unless they’ve been told it’s an “episode” of something, in which case they’ll say “episode”. Or if the provider calls their series of videos a “video diary”, for instance, they’ll say “video diary” or “diary entry”, or “post”, or something along those lines. You call your video series a “webcast”, people will call it a “webcast”. Basically, viewers will call videos by whatever terms the videos call themselves. If you make an “online show”, fans will probably call your “online show” an “online show”. “Did you see that web show?”, for example.
But really, 90% of what’s out there are just plain-old videos, and that’s all they need to be termed: videos. People are watching Adobe Flash files (or something very similar) downloaded or streamed relatively quickly to their browsers via YouTube or Vimeo or CNN or Myspace or wherever else. The lengths of videos out there cover the spectrum, too. Nothing is totally standardized, so you can’t apply TV terminology very easily here. These are simply video files. We don’t call them “broadcasts” or “airings” or “programs” or “feeds” (unless they’re actually live web feeds or live web streams of a network/station/channel feed, of course) because they’re not – they’re typically on-demand, user-initiated standalone files. And, we behave differently with them than we might any old-fashioned TV “program”. If we like the video, we share it on Facebook or embed it on a blog or bookmark it for later viewing when our co-worker gets back from lunch. We have much more control. You don’t do that with your cable box (yet, anyway).
And since we don’t need official terms or standard lengths, and we can call our video content whatever we want to, and the whole idea of categorizing by format (ex.: hour-long drama, half-hour local newscast, sitcom, etc.) is generally pointless, then what should we do? Well, what becomes important is categorizing and tagging for search engines. The web is a “search and share” medium. If my video series is about my kids’ little league soccer season, I would categorize this content as “sports” and tag it as “soccer”, depending on the metadata capabilities of the venue I eventually exhibit my content in (YouTube, Blip, self-hosted Quicktime clips embedded in my blog, etc.). Metadata is where the real classification really takes place. This is where advertisers will look: in addition to whatever metrics they can get on number of views, metadata helps target their advertising. Things online are too messy to relegate to any TV-style categorizations. Timeslots are moot when a video goes viral at 2pm in the afternoon. The term “show” altogether is moot here (unless you call your video a “show” – but that’s a matter of preference).
There will never be the same kind of categorizing, labelling, and classifying on the web for video content like we see on TV. The web is a people-powered medium and the people will decide how to label their content. Sacerdoti wants to call a web video a “show” if it’s any kind of periodically produced content. Well, when the Emmys start handing out the “Best Sobbing Emo Kid in an Online Video Diary Series” award, I’ll subscribe to that idea. Until then, whatever you call your content is what it is. A video posted online is just that – a video, until proven otherwise.
*TV shows from the actual broadcast world, when viewed online, still keep their categorizations and classifications from their initial medium – that’s how they’re organized to begin with. One episode of ‘House M.D.’ on Hulu is still an episode of an “hour-long drama series”, just like when it’s on TV, so I wouldn’t call it something else when I watch it online. While I control when I view it, it doesn’t suddenly become something different when it’s viewed on my computer screen.
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Tags: new media, online tv, online video, vodcast, web show, web tv, web video, webcast