Ashton Skypes Oprah, disrupting electronic field TV production

Watch famous people using Skype. Skype quickly fades into the background, focus returning to the people and what they say. But how did they do it? Why use Skype when The Oprah Winfrey Show can rent a team to shoot Ashton Kutcher's side of the segment?

Remote participation via Skype in television production is disruptive technology: vastly more convenient, orders of magnitude cheaper, and lower but tolerable quality than other forms of electronic field production.

• Cost. Today's remote live video shoots might cost $25k+ for satellite time, gear, van, and a crew (camera operator, sound recordist, producer, hair & make-up artist, lighting technician). This is more production value than a field reporter

  On the other hand, let's say it costs $10k for a high-end Mac including free Skype software, webcams, insurance, geek time, mobile Internet, and a mobile phone for the control channel. Spread the cost over twenty guests/interviews, you might spend $500 for a shoot where the guest hooks themselves up in 15 minutes (power into the laptop, plug in the webcam, turn it on, fire up Skype, press the green "Video Call" button). And now guests like Kutcher are Skype-ready; no cost to you.

• Convenience. With broadband in many places, with laptops and webcams benefiting from Moore's Law, you can overnight a Skyped-up laptop with a good webcam and a good microphone, ready to go tomorrow. Or your guest runs out to Best Buy or RadioShack for a webcam and is back and ready in 90 minutes.

• Acceptable Quality. Skype doesn't capture in hi-def and most webcams don't use the widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio. Skype can reproduce 640x480@30fps with high end webcams, good enough for talking heads. You can see that Ashton's end of the show is poorly lit, color balance is off, he's not been through hair or makeup (or wardrobe), his office is badly decorated to get unlicensed art off the wall behind him. Nobody cares.

Skype's dialtone made that show possible without blowing the show's budget, without flying Kutcher from his office at Katalyst Films to Chicago for three days, spending five hours hosting a remote crew at his office, or even three hours to drive to a local television station for fifteen minutes of air time. It was almost as easy as having someone phone in. But with better audio and with live two-way video.

This changes the economics of television production. Don't ration your remote guest spots because they cost too much or take too long to prep. Just Skype them to your studio, enrich your program with live, just-in-time feeds on the cheap.

People are bringing Skype into the workplace. Millions solve problems, lower costs, create new services, work more effectively, and unleash human talent. The O Show is just one of the most visible.

P.S. Here's the second half of the segment.

See also:

• [BBC] Reporters Using Skype, Skype Journal, 2005
• Skype Video for "Live On Location" Television, Skype Journal, 2007
• The Skype - Oprah Feedback Loop - It Works in Strange Ways, Skype Journal, 2008
• Skype product placement: Who Wants to be a Millionaire (US), Skype Journal, January 2009

tags: skype, twitter, productivity, television, production, collaboration, innovation, distruption, disruptive technology, oprah, oprahwinfrey, ashton, ashtonkutcher

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