Broadband Media Can Bring New Life to Stodgy Awards Shows With Internet Broadcasting

As award show season approaches, producers, directors, and promoters scramble to get the best hosts, the best acts, and the best content, hoping to attract more viewers than ever before. Their success will directly affect the amount and quality of sponsors they can snag to help pay for the events themselves, with budgets often reaching upward stratospherically into the millions and millions of dollars for a mere several hours on television. Perhaps award shows should broaden their focus to include extra features and abilities that only the Internet and live broadband broadcasting can provide as part of their concerted efforts to attract viewership.

With live Internet broadcasting, award show producers could offer a myriad of exciting interactive features. How many of us remember those funny moments when winners are announced and they are nowhere to be found? Of course, a camera probably can’t and shouldn’t be mounted within the confines of a powder room (for privacy and decency), but the more cameras that are available to internet viewers, being allowed to shuffle between them at will, could offer an interactive and personal experience, allowing for a depth of coverage never before available. The four hour awards shows would not seemingly drag on if you were afforded the ability to switch to camera 8, for example, allowing you the ability to watch your favorite star’s reaction as they won, lost, or ate their soup. The exciting idea would be that each individual viewer could and would have the ability, in a sense, to become both director and viewer of their own, personally experienced award show. Internet viewers would have the ability to skip the boring acceptance speeches of the audio-visual or short animated film winners (boring is, of course relative, for some viewers this might be riveting television) opting to watch instead the goings-on in the backstage lounges setup by corporate and media sponsors. Wouldn’t it be more enjoyable watching your favorite stars “let their hair down” and party backstage amongst their peers after winning or alternately losing their award? Interactivity could be offered by entertainment television with Internet broadcasting, allowing winners of promotions the chance to interview their favorite stars on the red carpet, from the privacy of their home. The possibility of spontaneity could return to live awards shows that have become so terribly scripted and perfectly executed.

Broadband media’s far-reaching abilities are only beginning to be realized, due to the continuing efforts of innovative companies like Whiteblox, that are committed to researching and providing new opportunities to internet users worldwide.

About the Author: Gregory Demetriades is Chief Executive Officer of Whiteblox, a leading provider of integrated broadband video solutions.