My meeting at here! turned out to be less of the pitchfest (or even the “give us all your ideas for free” landgrab) than I expected, and more of a job interview - for a job that doesn’t exist. I was speaking with someone in marketing and someone in development, neither of whom had direct control over the website or digital media strategy. Had I been more prepared to pitch original content ideas, that might have been an appropriate audience, but after I discovered that the author of Boy Meets Boy didn’t want it adapted[1], I didn’t have any prepared concepts.

After my meeting, tho, I was just as unsure about here! as I am about CBS. They seem to “get it” more, but are similarly unmotivated to do anything about it. There seems to be a disconnect in big media even amongst those who can see the coming storm - they don’t seem to realize just how bad it will be for them, and that in order to mitigate damage, they must start innovating as rapidly as possible. Get ahead of the innovation curve, not two steps behind the leader. The guys at here! were citing storage space on their server and staffing as a reason why there isn’t more video content online and why they can’t podcast what is there. Storage is a commodity for individuals at this point (I could probably host all their content on my $80/year account), and RSS feeds, after a few hours of setup, should run themselves. No, there is no excuse except a lack of motivation.

So, maybe it wasn’t so bad that I didn’t give them my whole “here’s how to drag your TV channel into the 21st century” speil. Chances are, they wouldn’t have listened, not really. But if they did, I’m not sure they’d deserve it.

My notes for the meeting coming soon…

[1] His reasons aren’t as selfish as you might think, or at least he would like you to think: his gay teen romantic comedy already exists out there in the world, and he thinks it would be better if there are more gay teen romantic comedies, rather than just many versions of the same one. It makes sense, I think, and I can at least respect it, even if I do think it would make a bloody good online show.