Last night I saw a program on Network TV that may go down as a landmark program in the evolution in the convergence of all things media. The program was called iCaught and based on what I have just heard today from clients and acquaintances, it opened the eyes of many casual web users to the wonders that can be found on the Internet.

iCaught was essentially a news-magazine-style program similar to 60 minutes or PrimeTime, but it focused on Internet videos and their origins. Other TV shows have tried to capitalize on the popularity of online video, but iCaught is the first to come off as more than a splinter of Americas Funniest Videos. While some of the videos covered on the program were humorous, outrageous and wild, they treated the show in a very serious manner. iCaught featured familiar news magazine personalities to interview those who captured the videos and how the videos became online sensations.

Each story was a great insite into what makes the Internet so appealing to those who use it and so threatening to “old media.”

The lead story which can be seen on the website linked in the first paragraph featured a pack of  lions separating a baby wildabeast from its family. Upon attacking the baby, both the baby and the pack fell into a pond where a crocodile attacked the baby. The struggle then became a tug-o-war between the lions and the croc. The lions won, but that isn’t the end of the video. Next the entire pack of wildabeasts comes back and attacks the lions and rescues the baby.

The video was caught by a businessman on an African tourist safari using a $500 canon camcorder that he barely knew how to operate.

iCaught made the story interesting by interviewing National Geographic photographers about the event. You could almost hear them grit their teeth as they spent what was likely the most TV exposure any of them had ever had explaining what a rare video this amateur had caught. One of the National Geographic reporters said that he had spent years in an area waiting for such an event.

Before I was a computer guy or a talk show co-host I worked in newspapers and magazines. I have wanted to be in journalism since middle school. I gave a lecture about four years ago at a local college about the future of media to college and high school journalists. I explained to them that the future of news reporting will come from the citizen and that the news agencies will only act as organizers.

iCaught was actually a pretty ironic concept for a show. Use a sensational journalism approach to demonstrate how common man is doing their journalism job with more integrity than the program that it is pretending to be.

 

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Tags: exposure, Internet, tour

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 9th, 2007 at 12:32 am and is filed under Riding Shotgun with Adam. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.