I attended a conference run by the Australia Council and the ABC today called Revealing the Arts. OK, there’s a long way to go here, but it didn’t really come together and you got the feeling by the end of the day that the gap between the ‘geeks’ and the ‘luvvies’ is here to stay. Rights clearances, making money online, and paying for producing ancilliary content were discussed a lot at the expense of much thinking outside the square.  There was some lively discussion and one of the most salient points for me was ” if it doesn’t exist online it doesn’t exist”. While this comment obviously came from a geek (sorry it’s unattributed – I know it was a guy from Wikimedia who said it) it underlines the challenge that many institutions have in remaining relevant in a world where we increasingly rely on online services to keep us informed and connected at every moment.  There are huge challenges for national institutions and too often the focus is parochial rather than global. There are no easy answers but there is no excuse for burying our heads in the sand.

And while we’re nit picking, one extra-ordinary statement that got through without any challenge at all was ‘that you can’t make money on YouTube’. This isn’t an ad for Google but the YouTube Partnership program pays a percentage of advertising revenue to content creators and this scheme is well established. You can see YouTube’s top partners here. Well known YouTube directors such as Smosh and Fred have in excess of 300 million views of content on their channels and it is estimated they have each earned 6 figure sums from YouTube advertising income (actual amounts confidential under the partnership agreement). The ‘Will Video for Food’ blog has several citations which support this here. There are many business models if that’s what you’re looking for. But if you just want to get your stuff out there so people know you exist (and maybe then buy a ticket to your show or order your online merchandise) then you have to start giving something away. If you want to read any of the twitter discussion from today’s conference see #rtarts.

Late addition to this post:  I just picked up an email from a young guy I met at the SPAA Fringe Conference called Nick Carlton who has just posted this : You are not a filmmaker. Nick is one of Australia’s most successful online video entrepeneurs and at the age of 19 has garnered a large online audience for his Ozgirl property. Like the discussion today at Revealing the Arts he’s not hung up about being a ‘filmmaker’ or an ‘artist’ he just gets on with doing it. I for one admire that.

I’ve got to admit it, like a lot of iPhone and ipod Touch owners, I’m totally addicted to Flight Control. Like many addicts I can rationalise my addiction easily because this is an Australian game developed by Melbourne company Firemint.  I’m not wasting time, I’m just supporting good old Australian digital media know-how. I’m also locked in brutal competition with my 12 year old son and every day I fall a bit further behind. I’ve at least moved from being a ‘passenger’ to ‘cabin crew’ and I’m not far away from the flight deck now.  I’ve had a lot of fun playing this game and it’s helped pass the hours while sitting on a real international plane flight. Just thank the lord that I’m not in charge of real air traffic control.

Yesterday I attended the opening of Screen Worlds, a new exhibition space at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne. A massive crowd assembled to hear Ms Blanchett launch the show along with Victorian Premiere John Brumby. It’s a spectacular exhibition that profiles the development of film and television, games and interactive media with a big focus on Australian work. It’s an overdue refresh of the ACMI space at the Flinders St level which never really worked for me. The old space always looked empty and the technology tired and exhibits a bit long in the tooth. ACMI needs to be renewed pretty regularly as its design incorporates so many screens and technologies -with the pace of technological change it’s amost as if the building has a built in obsolesce. Screen Worlds does well in refreshing the invigorating the space and is brimming with the latest technologies, touch interface interactive video tables, screens of all shapes and sizes. It’s a very creatively put together show which somehow manages to incorporate the wizz bangery but focus on the content, the artistry and the fun of the business. Well worth getting along to see it if you’re in central Melbourne.

This has been a familiar refrain around my house all year and now I get it from my four year old after he’s blown a few tunes on the Ocarina and Tap Tapped out a few more on my iphone. It all started last November with a concerted campaign by my eleven year old to secure an ipod touch for Christmas. Santa held out this year and believe me there were tears. “It’s not fair, all of my friends have got one” was the next line of attack and when I consulted with other parents I found out it was all true. I didn’t buckle at the knees all at once, in fact I held out until his birthday in July which is a relatively tough stand given the life cycle of technological gadgetry. The ipod Touch is certainly a popular device and many hours are wiled away playing games, listening to music, watching videos and endlessly customising it’s look and feel. Needless to say it was jailbroken fairly early in its life cycle.

So Steve Job’s presentation this week bore few surprises for me about the success of the Touch as a games device. When I did my ring around of other parents earlier this year and found out how many local 11 and 12 year olds owned their own Touch I knew something was going on. The pace of this growth is pretty astounding as you can see in the statistics quoted in this Venturebeat article.

There are more than 50 million iPhones and iPod Touches in the market. That is within spitting distance of the 51 million Sony PSPs sold, which explains why Sony is launching the PSP Go model — a new and improved handheld game system with flash memory instead of a proprietary drive. And though the Apple platform is only two years old, it is more than half way to Nintendo’s 100 million-plus installed base of DS handhelds, which have reached that number after almost six years on the market.

And the sheer numbers of games and apps available for the Touch also blow Nintendo and Sony out of the water. By making the platform so open to independent developers they’ve ensured there are a huge range of apps available and some of them you even want to play.  The jury’s out to see if this new version of Genius makes it any easier to find good ones.

I have found myself getting particularly bored and irritated with evening television lately. Maybe I’m stating the obvious here but it’s not really getting any better is it? Is endlessly repeated programming meant to be so familiar it’s soothing and relaxing (snore!) or is it just designed so you have a better chance of programming the PVR? With the decline in TV advertising revenue this trend is probably only going to get worse as networks struggle to buy new content.  So, I’ve been going back to YouTube again in search of rivetting entertainment, careful of course to wear headphones so I don’t disturb TV addicts in the room. But I’ve been a bit disruptive since I discovered Channel 101 which tends to put me into fits of hysterical laughter.  The channel, which claims to be the ‘the unavoidable future of entertainment’, operates like a festival calling for submissions of short TV pilots (under 5 mins) every month which are then curated and screened to a live audience. The audience votes whether to make a show ‘prime time’, and if so, a second episode is greenlit. No extravagant claims of new business models for filmmakers I’m afraid. This is how they put it on their website:

For the creatives that participate, Channel 101 is where the rubber meets the road. The deadlines are unreasonable, the time limit is impossible, the pay is non existent and the judgment is blunt. The amount of ego and sense of entitlement with which you enter is exactly proportional to the amount of pain you’ll experience before you leave. Channel 101 is where you learn three things: How to fail, how to succeed, and finally, how there is no difference between the two. After all, the only thing as bad as being told your pilot failed is being told that your third episode was worse than your second. And the only thing as good as having the number one show is having a chance to come back with something new.

So what are the TV series worth checking out?  I must admit to being addicted to Ikea Heights, a soap which features characters who live out torrid lives totally within an Ikea warehouse store. There’s also a great restaurant saga, The Food, which gives Gordon Ramsay a run for his money and without nearly as much swearing. Channel 101 is a great concept and a fantastic example of audience filtered and selected content really working.

Gary Maddox in a recent article in Spectrum pointed to the continuing need to shift Australian filmmakers and screen agencies to a better appreciation of the audience.  Maybe an Australian Channel 101 is long overdue with filmmakers given the opportunity to get direct feedback from audiences on their ideas. Could we go further and scrap the bureaucracies altogether and institute regular screenings and online festivals which select the most audience friendly projects? But maybe this is a bad idea, maybe our bureaucracies are a rich source of creative material.  My idea for a Channel 101 pilot is not to set it within Ikea but within the hallowed halls of an Australian screen bureaucracy. Characters suffer daily angst as they struggle to interpret the intent of obscure policies, maintaining transparency and financial accountability at all times while deciding what it is an audience really needs. If it weren’t so true to life it might be funny.