New and Old Media

Well, we’re waiting for the Winter Storm of the Decade to arrive. The kids are still asleep.  The husband is not yet driving nurses all over the county in scary weather.  And I’m not prepping for class because i’m pretty sure the University is going to be closed tomorrow.  Sounds like a prime opportunity to take advantage of the time to update my academic blog.

During the build up to this storm, I’ve become a big fan of Brad Panovich’s Facebook page.  And I am not the only one.  A few days ago, he even updated his status expressing amazement about all his new “likes” had come from and could they explain how they got there.

I have my own ideas about why he is so popular.

1)  He’s funny.  He has great graphics about when it’s time to buy bread and milk and when it’s time to buy a sled.  We in the South raid the grocery store for bread and milk at 1″ of snow. It’s funny.  He even introduced a new graphic about how many loaves one should buy to weather this storm.

2)  He’s informative.  The graphs are cute, but I think he’s figured out the formula of using Facebook to inform us about the weather and promote his “real job” as head meteorologist at the local NBC affiliate.  He posts youtube videos about his interpretation of the weather models.  And he does from home early in the morning, at night before he goes to bed, and yesterday in between TV broadcasts.  In these, he briefly talks about his family and going to pre-school parent-teacher conferences and then he teaches us about what he sees in the variety of models he uses to make his decisions.  I feel like a student.  And like a student, sometimes I have no idea what the hell he is talking about.  But when I do get it, I feel like an insider on the weather forecast. He even explains why his forecast is different from others and it  makes sense to me.

3) He makes the audience feel like an insider.  Academically, this is interesting to me.  I refer to him now as “Brad” around the house.  (The husband* is confused.)  It feels intimate for him to be explaining to *me* about the weather and tiny insights about his family. He wears a t-shirt on YouTube and a suit on TV.  I recognize his voice before I recognize his appearance.  I prefer his t-shirts to his suits.  His jokes are funny feel like insider jokes between him and me.  Between him, a couple of 20,000 other people, and me.

I think this could be one path to the future with traditional and new media.  I have started watching the TV broadcast this week because of him.  That said, I’m COMPLETELY prefer his videos.  But I am watching the TV.  (I never watch TV during the day and never local broadcasts, I suppose that is saying something.  Well, it also says the kids are home and the Olympics are on)  I’m wondering whether and how other traditional media could use this.  It could be that his example only generalizes to particular developing news topics. I love Kathleen Purvis’ column and blog on The Charlotte Observer, but I don’t know how she could incorporate a video into her weekly news.  That said, if she did sit down and video tape her thoughts about food and cooking every week, I’d totally watch it.

I’m going to ponder this.  And I’d love to hear your thoughts about the intimacy of videos. I’m sure there’s been research on these media with Hollywood celebrities.  That bores me.  But old media become new media celebrities:  that sounds interesting.

*Yes, I do realize it’s sexist to call my husband “The Husband” and I could use the abbreviation “DH” for Dear Husband, but that seems too precious for an academic post.  Plus, it’s kind of funny.