Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Great resource for students of Television

If you have any intentions of working in the TV industry, you'll be happy to know that uncut interviews with many of the founders and current leaders of the television industry are available on the Google Video web site. This is truly an amazing resource. Here's what Steve Mosko, President of Sony Pictures Television had to say about it...

One of the things that absolutely blew me away when I came on board last year as chairman of the Television Academy Foundation was the Archive of American Television, which is an unequaled collection of videotaped interviews with TV legends.

It's a fantastic resource, and so it drove me crazy that the Archive had over 450 interviews -- but no one could view them if they weren’t actually in Southern California. If a student at a school in Cincinnati or Bangkok wanted to learn more about the history of creative or business aspects of the American television industry, these interviews were just not accessible. So I made it a personal goal to find a way to get the Archive online.

And starting today, anyone in the world can go to Google Video and watch complete and uncut Archive interviews and learn directly from the legends and pioneers on how it all happened. How cool is that?

It’s been 30 years since I was in college, but I can honestly say that if I were just starting out in this business, I would be all over the Archive. I’m such a fan of television that I can’t wait to be able to watch some of the interviews on Google Video – with the men and women who inspired me, and continue to inspire me. One of the Archive legends now online is former NBC head Grant Tinker. Grant helped create “Must See TV” on Thursday nights! There’s also Norman Lear, Ted Turner, Steven Bochco, and so many more. The Archive was created to educate, entertain, and inspire future generations. I challenge you to look up your favorite TV show, learn about a favorite star, or discover more about some of the most important news events of the 20th century. I’m thrilled that the Foundation is finally able to introduce some of these interviews to the world, using the world’s most powerful delivery system – Google. Enjoy!
If you find a particularly interesting interview, please reply to this post with your recommendation.

4 comments:

pueblosam said...

Wait, there's more...

FROM FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON'S magnetic orations to columnist Thomas Friedman's discourse on foreign affairs, search engine blinkx today is expected to add hundreds of hours of academic lectures and events to its video stores following non-exclusive partnerships with top U.S. and foreign universities. The announcement comes as Google, Yahoo!, and Amazon struggle to make the public and copyrighted archives of various libraries searchable in the future.

Blinkx's efforts were assisted by a partnership with the University Channel project, an initiative of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs that aims to make academic video content available to the public. Just a few of the University Channel's existing partners include Columbia University, Harvard University and Harvard Law, and Princeton University.

Starting today, blinkx users should be able to search the school's video archives by specific keywords.

Donna Liu, executive director of the University Channel, said there are no plans to monetize the project's content. "We don't want the public discourse to be 'brought to you' by anybody other than the University," she said. "Our goal is to provide this material as a public service."

In early October, Yahoo! announced plans to make the archives of various libraries searchable after partnering with several groups, including the Internet Archive, Adobe Systems Inc., HP Labs, and the University of California. The newly formed Open Content Alliance is running the venture. Google also is scanning in books from major universities.

Anonymous said...

This is absolutely fantastic! I went in and visited some of my personal favorites. Sometimes it's hard to hear the interviewer ask the questions, so you kind of have to guess what the question is when you hear the answer. But perhaps that was just on a couple of the interviews I checked out.

Hey students, even if you're not familar with some of these names, your parents and grandparents might get a kick out of visiting the site!

Thanks to Google, there's no excuse for not being an interested, knowledgeable, and interestING person anymore!

Anonymous said...

The availability of archived interviews is a wonderful idea because it allows a viewer to be selective about what they want to watch. The viewer can choose from all of the interviews and select only those of personal interest. And view them without commercials. This is a wonderful way to edit out the “fluff” of television. I went to the Google video website that was mentioned & it was not w/o commercials. That would be the only improvement on the service.

Anonymous said...

The availability of archived interviews is a wonderful idea because it allows a viewer to be selective about what they want to watch. The viewer can choose from all of the interviews and select only those of personal interest. And view them without commercials. This is a wonderful way to edit out the “fluff” of television. I went to the Google video website that was mentioned & it was not w/o commercials. That would be the only improvement on the service. The blinkx.com search site was an even more useful site for finding international stories from international sources, world videos, etc. It’s a great site for anyone away from home.