CONVIVIUM
Table Talk with Food, Wine & Spirits Professionals
presented by Colangelo & Partners Public Relations
Gallery
|
Archive for the ‘digital media’ CategoryEvery week I get the latest issue of TIME magazine and flip the pages while riding the subway on my way to work, looking for interesting articles that grab my attention. And this morning I came across a very interesting piece by Joel Stein, usually author of the fully-humoristic “Awesome Column” in the last page of the magazine, but this time “special” to the Food section. “The Other Cooking Channel” is the title (sorry but you need to have a paid subscription to check this out online) and Joel writes about how in the digital era we’re living nowadays, everybody can be a host of a cooking show. Yes, because video storage sites like YouTube, online foodie communities like iFood.tv or streaming video platforms like USstream (waiting for Google+ cooking classes), allow everybody with an internet connection and a webcam (quality of the hardware doesn’t really matter) to be on air or record shows where they can show their culinary talent or “funny” entertainment. So it happens to see a heavy-metal chef in Kiss-like make up cooking vegan recipes (yes vegan, with nothing derived by animals) while listening to heavy metal songs. This guy just posted three videos so far but the first one attracted nearly 1.5 million views. Or again you might see a former instructor of the Culinary Academy in San Francisco having 118,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel. His secret? A crappy camera duct-taped to a spice rack while cooking onion rings. But all of this is not just driven by fame and popularity desire, it’s also and mostly about money. As Joel Stein points out, “Hundreds of people who have been accepted into YouTube’s Partner Program are now making more than $100,000 a year for letting the site run ads along the bottom of their videos, and many of these new partners have channels that involve food”. And of course YouTube is more than happy to satisfy these online celebrities, selling targeted ads to targeted audiences. So who’s the potential loser in this game? TV, I guess.
Brian Manowitz, The Vegan Black Metal Chef
 No related posts. Posted in: digital media , Food | Comments Off |
