Review - Boing Boing TV, Pitchfork TV

2 of the most popular and powerful sites for what might be loosely collated into an indie ethic on the web have both launched their own tv sites recently, Boing Boing a while ago, Pitchfork just last week. I took some time to poke at them over the past few days so here’s some thoughts.

Boing Boing TV.

Ok, I like Cory Doctorow’s writing a lot, I like his indie ethic with his science fiction and the fiction itself, and his site Boing Boing is a smart kooky assemblage of things I frequently enjoy, and you know, it’s one of the top sites on the web and he’s Canadian so yay for all that. Boing Boing TV reflects an interest in odd ball comedy (dramatic renditions of spam emails are HILARIOUS) and science fiction (FILK singing on TV at last!). But urg, I gotta say, the new TV site irritates me with the degree of infiltration by advertisers. Well, pretty much just the one advertiser actually, but the BMW branding is too intensely heavy handed for me to let it slide.

I totally get the desire to find one powerful sponsor to pay all the bills, give them as much exposure as they want so long as you don’t have to go through the whole rigamarole of selling ads again and can just just on with making and collecting cool video. I also think it’s fine to stick a little ad into the video you’re showcasing. It’s not the best, from a viewer’s perspective, but it’s not soo bad. In this case though, it seems the same BMW ad interrupts the beginning of every video, to let you know they brought it to you, and then after the 2 minute video, you get a full BMW ad stuck at the end that in most cases is longer then the actual piece. And it’s the same ad every time, and it’s also sitting in the corner of the site, beaming luxury lifestyle choices at you, taking up bandwidth while you try to watch. For me, personally, it’s too tooo much. And in the case of this video below, kinda ironic… maybe that’s what they’re going for..

And then there’s Pitchfork TV.

On Pitchfork TV, right now anyway, there are no corporate ads. There’s a banner across the top advertising the Pitchfork music festival, but that’s it. Not sure how they’re going to pay for all the work they’re doing in the long term, but for now maybe they’re focused on building a site their fans will love, and than they’ll slap us with the American Apparel once we’re hooked. The mission of Pitchfork TV seems more clearly defined as well (though Boing Boing has never claimed or tried to be clearly defined, so that shouldn’t be read as a critique of them, their eclectic mess works happily.) Pitchfork steps up to fill the crucial cracks left empty by music video tv stations who’ve mostly abandoned the art of the music video and music television for asinine reality tv (which should just have it’s own station already - let people who want to watch it find it, and help others to avoid it!) I found Pitchfork TV a little odd to navigate at first, because it’s kind of framsey, with only a subtle subsection of the site changing when you click on the main nav links across the top. Still, I found tons of stuff I wanted to watch, and loved the quality of the videos, and the lack of sense of being slapped silly with capitalism.

Check out this great live footage of High Places, a band Tessa just got me hooked on by sharing her birthday presents. Apparently this is “new primitive” for you…

Both sites have built in their own video applications streaming cool content, and have followed Youtube’s lead in making much stuff sharable, which I think is smart. Yay for embed and the future of independent web television! I think the ad balance will be something to figure out over time, and I have hope that web channels will have to be more responsive to their users likes and dislikes, especially if we’re loud and linky about it… What do you think?