Wiz Nordberg is the founder and CEO of Treet.tv, a virtual television company in Second Life. I recently had the opportunity to meet up with him, shortly after he attended one of the snail races covered by his network, and ask a few questions.Bixyl Shuftan: How did you first find out about Second Life?
Wiz Nordberg: That is becoming harder and harder to remember. I am not much of a gaming person, but I find simulations and "expressive tools" interesting. I think I may have read about it online somewhere. I just don't recall anymore. My wife, Texas Timtam, and I used (Second Life) for about 8 months to a year before ever considering the idea of doing something "serious" in here. It was just for fun.
Bixyl Shuftan: How did that first year go?
Wiz Nordberg: Oh, it was a revelation. The main attraction to me was the "empty slate" of Second Life and the fact that everything everywhere was the creation of a resident. That was remarkably energizing to us. We met some great people, long time SL users, and made some great friends. They helped us to know what to do and what was interesting. Of course that was almost 4 years ago, there were far fewer people here, and the ones who were here were dedicated. The influx of "the curious" had not yet begun.
Bixyl Shuftan: How did Treet.tv come about?
Wiz Nordberg: Unexpectedly. (smile) It is a long story, but let me see if I can shorten it. My wife Texas has worked with the music industry a lot. In 2007, she convinced the Australian government to sponsor an inworld music event to coincide with South-by-Southwest. It was called the Texas Aussie Music Party. Because of our history in the music webcast business (we have done some very large commercial ones for record labels), it seemed obvious to me to try to "film it" somehow. Since we had a lot of experience with that, it was a fun experiment.
But... Unexpectedly, while I was testing I set up a screen in a club that we went to with some friends of ours. Just to get some of the settings right. The people in the club, when they saw themselves on the screen.... well... they almost acted like a group of pre-technology natives that had just seen a telephone for the first time! They started dancing and having fun, and couldn't stop. It was amazing to see their reaction at "seeing themselves".
Within minutes, literally, we were over at “godaddy” and called it the Second Life Cable Network (SLCN). That really is how it all started, with that moment.
Bixyl Shuftan: So it was a spur of the moment decision?
Wiz Nordberg: Yes, we did not intend to start a business. It was just an extension of the fun we were already having. It took months before we started to believe it was something we should take seriously. We did an experimental show called “That S'Life,” we did it ourselves just to prove that the "idea" of television could be transported successfully here. Then we began meeting people who wanted to do shows.
The first was Paisley Beebe, who had performed at the Texas Aussie Music party. To my surprise she didn't want to do a music show, she wanted to do a talk show. When Tonight Live aired, we finally decided that "this was a business" and started planning everything else from there.
Bixyl Shuftan: What would you say have been the more successful shows?
Wiz Nordberg: There have been many. Of the regular shows, Metanomics and Tonight Live had had the largest communities and viewership. But, part of it is because those are also very long running shows. It takes time to gain a loyal audience. Both of those are nearing or exceeding 100 episodes. Shows like the 1st Question and Designing Worlds are catching up.
As far as individual shows, there have been some big successes too. Of course when we had Bruce Willis on, as well as the Transformers Cast with Michael Bay, there were huge numbers for those. But other shows, such as when Paisley interviewed Mark Kingdon and Philip at the Linden Lab offices in San Francisco. That special show did very well. And, inworld, our music shows are at the top of the list always. Our music channel gets almost more viewership than anything else.
Some of the business shows do really well because they have a very interested tech audience. ISTE Eduverse, for example, may really be the biggest show right now in web viewership. They have done a lot to really push that show out to people. I could go on ... about shows. You need to rope me in. (smile)
Bixyl Shuftan: There do seem to be quite a lot of them, talk shows, game shows, sports
Wiz Nordberg: Yes, I didn't even mention all our sports shows! We have done almost 3000 episodes so far. My mouse fingers hurt just thinking about that. :-)
Bixyl Shuftan: Sounds like some shows were a challenge to cover
Wiz Nordberg: Anything worth doing right is challenging. We do shows in a different way than most anybody else, it has its own special problems but also tremendous benefits. As a rule, things go very very smoothly. Our show producers just put in a tremendous amount of work. It's mind boggling sometimes.
Bixyl Shuftan: Maybe I should have brought this up earlier, you mentioned you had experience in the music webcast business?
Wiz Nordberg: Yes, Texas and I owned a business here in Australia which was the number one web provider to the music industry for about nine years. As part of that, we did some of the largest webcasts ever done here, some with 40-50 crew members. We did the main websites for BMG and Warner Music for many years, plus many many others that were single promotions or webcast-only sites. We still run the Paramount Home Entertainment site in Australia. During that time, we learned a great deal from some amazing video professionals we were fortunate enough to work with or have working for us.
Bixyl Shuftan: Did Treet.tv attract any attention from any of those businesses?
Wiz Nordberg: No, I think what we are doing with Treet is off the radar for most traditional media companies. I am not speaking specifically of our clients, but they have a job they are focusing on and the MMO and gaming industry doesn't overlap a lot into their space. Understanding this and seeing the future opportunities takes a leap of faith and a lot of people don't use the same crystal ball we do.
When we worked with Fox and Paramount on the Bruce Willis and Transformers shows, it was with their USA offices. I don't even think we spoke to anybody in Australia at that time, or ever, about what we do. Those deals were really the work of a visionary guy who worked for a company called Picture Production Company. While our entertainment background helped convince them we were the people to work with, they took some amazing risks to create such crossover opportunity and it was great to be in the middle of that.
Bixyl Shuftan: I was told by the staff at one show they managed to get some of their footage onto TV off the Internet, New York City
Wiz Nordberg: Yes I think that might have been the people that work with Pookie at the 1st Question.
Bixyl Shuftan: It was ... Do you see more of that happening, attracting the attention of "real" television?
Wiz Nordberg: I think "real" television has some "real" problems that won't be solved by looking to networks like ours. More than likely, we will start competing with them in alternative television environments like Boxee. That is where the future traction will be. If crossover happens back to cable, it will be fueled by that. Terrible sentence, but you get the gist.
Real television requires enormous markets to function. Markets of 50,000 viewers just won't help them. Our footage has been on TV, both ABC news and BBC as well as Australian Television, but it has been more of a "curiosity" or "human interest story." To get this kind of stuff to happen in mainstream delivery markets, many changes need to occur and it will take a few years. We do, however, think that some shows can "break though" to mainstream market interest. It is one of the things we also are gambling on a bit.
Bixyl Shuftan: There have been some stories about more people relying on the Internet for television. Might this be one of the changes?
Wiz Nordberg: Yes, there is a huge move of interest away from television toward the Internet. We see this unstoppable, and it is not a matter of "if" the internet will replace conventional television, but "when".
Bixyl Shuftan: Any plans for the future you'd like to share?
Wiz Nordberg: Our biggest plan for the future is to extend our reach beyond Second Life viewers and beyond Second Life content. That doesn't mean we are downplaying Second Life, far from it. But, we feel it is essential that our shows can be watched by everybody. Part of that is our new website.
For the first two years, we really did not consider the web our "primary viewership market,” but that has changed in our minds. We see the web now as being as important to delivery as inworld viewing has been. The new website is more exciting, it is more oriented toward discovering things rather than "searching for what you know is there", and it invites people to join in. The old website didn't even allow comments on shows.
When we designed the first website, we figured maybe we would have "100 or so" episodes. The fact that it has held up as thousands of episodes have been produced is a miracle! But, one major difference is the new website focuses primarily on Shows. We care a lot more that people like the show pages than our home page, and we have given our producers control over their sections, as well as done some nerdy things like published our show pages at a higher priority to Google than our other pages. We also designed our own viral player, which is actually scalable to millions of embeds. As the next year evolves we expect to see our player all over the web. It has already been embedded in over 1000 different locations, and it has only been live for 2 months.
There are probably 20 other things I could shout out about, but I'll hold back. Suffice it to say that we see the new website as the first actual step in creating a large online presence. Up until now, everything we have done has been "small" by comparison.
Bixyl Shuftan: If anyone was interested in doing a show, how hard would it be to get on treet.tv
Wiz Nordberg: Well, we accept pitches all the time! We are very receptive. But, one thing that everybody should think about.... we rarely are concerned if people can do the 1st or 2nd show. We believe that is easy. Lots of people have the energy to create a few shows. The big thing we want to know is that they will be able to do the 50th show. So we ask a lot of hard questions about their team, their ability, and their commitment. But we also like to help people we believe are "close" to being able to do it, and just need a push And now and then, we just take a chance on something nutty. (smile)
It was at this point Wiz had to head to a meeting, and so we parted ways.
Bixyl Shuftan
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