After several months of what I would now describe as both being pissed about with and pissing about myself it saddens me to say the Spainful Films Video Podcast is now officially over and dead.

Attached to the body of this blog post, is a copy of the email which I sent to Neil Dixon, from BTpodshow - the network which hosted and promoted my podcasts(s).

A big thank you to those of you who have supported my work since early 2006, the fifty of you who are still currently subscribed and especially those of you who have actively engaged with the media by either writing to me of Dave or doing all the other fun things that audiences do these days. (A Frappr map for people who give a shit will be coming soon!)

Dear Neil,

Please initiate the formal procedure to cancel any and all agreements between us (myself and DK Cavey) and yourselves at BTPodshow.

Under the terms of the NDA I understand that we are bound not to disclose any pertinent information publicly for a period of three years - which of course we shall honour. Likewise we have nothing but respect for both you personally and everyone we have met at Podshow - in short this is by no means a personal decision but rather a business one.

Please forward this correspondence to any podshow employees who would be made aware of the situation - such as those in charge of the Go Daddy campaign in the US podshow offices.

Again thank you, Neil for your support personally and professionally of the Spainful Films Video Podcast and please pass on these thanks to everyone else whom it may concern at podshow.

Also the ‘delete show’ appears to be disabled/broken on the btposhow.com website and there also does not appear to be the option of deleting a login account. There please could you ensure that you do both of these within the next few days.

yours sincerely
Conrad Slater

All video and audio media will very soon be offline so download anything you missed now as it probably will not be there by tomorrow.

And if you are reading this why not leave a comment.

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This is a very long article and if you are a in hurry I’d suggest skimming the introductory chapters - the real meat is in the second half

I’m just back from the National Student Television Association conference (including award ceremony) and despite it only being a weekend long event I feel totally exhausted and as if I’ve been there for a month. As with all these things on this blog my posting here should be NOT read as any kind of authoritative account of events but rather a brief and anecdotal personal account from an outsiders point of view.

For up until a few week ago I’d never heard of the Nastas and hadn’t really given the matter of student TV much thought at all. Let’s also not forget that I’m not even studying television at college. My lot - the film students on the whole hate television for the principle reason that they will probably end up working in it. Of course this is a generalisation, a few of my friends watch TV comedy - in some detail - and a few people even watch X Factor and Big Brother.

But of course I never consider myself one of those ‘them‘ lot anyway. (There are lots of reasons why - ranging from my own sense of ineptness when surround by so many very talented film makers to a sense that my own talent has not only been ignored but in fact discouraged in favour of what I call technology fetishism). So when I discovered that the university next door had it’s own student TV station I thought I’d go along and see how thing were done their way.

And it was after this (I think I wrote about it at the time) that I ended up being nominated for this award thingy. So this meant I got a free trip to Coventry where this years event was taking place. That’s all I knew.

I also knew that my good friends Matt and Ian from Buff TV would be there representing their own "station". I use inverted comma because Buff TV is of course a web streaming show - a bit like a podcasts really but live and very very long (30mins!).

And here the politics began.

For it turns out that Nerve TV - the Bournemouth student union run station (whom I was there to represent) weren’t willing to support Matt and Ian - despite their talent - hence them thinking "Bugger it! We’ll do it ourselves" (sound familiar?). The intention was clear. Two guys, operating from their student flat registered themselves at Nasta principally but not solely of course to win more awards than Nerve TV! Brilliant.

But what’s more brilliant is the extent that they worked. For the awards themselves of course had many categories, and Matt and Ian put themselves forward for them all. We’re talking details - eg. taking a digital photograph of a woman next door - broadcasting the still image and then submitting her for best female on screen award.

Naturally a good few were wise to the game but, all told, no one at Nerve battered an eye lid. I’ll explain why in a second.

So - I turn up in at Warwick University at the start of the conference and quickly take stock. The place is HUGE by the way, you almost need a bus just to get round it. It quickly become obvious that both the Nastas and student TV in general is big thing. Tons of stations, tons of students, all very impressive. So of course no one really know what’s going on. Someone forgets to book a room and there are 300 delegates waiting outside in the rain. There are talks going on apparently but no one knows in which building and it would take half an hour to walk there anyway.

I see a ton - 33 in fact, students all wearing the same T-shirt with whatever TV station they are from all over it - a single station and 33 delegates. Nerve TV has 3 - me and two other guys (of which only one of us actually gives a fuck). And this is from a station that is made by students who are actually studying television production.

I discover quickly that hardly any of these students even have a TV studio to work in. I spoke with one station manager (who incidentally happened to gorgeous) and discovered that of the more than 30 students involved they share 2 cameras, one tripod and a mic. Surely their work is shit then, right? Oh but hang on - that’s the same amount of gear that I’ve got for spainful. But of course I don’t have 30 people working for/with me.

And after a day of just tiresomely atrocious event management, the awards ceremony starts. And the event moves up a gear. Really classy stuff. All the guys in suits, the girls in ball gowns and dress and those big round tables with candles and big stage with a podium. Low lighting of course but with tv screens doted around the place in case you can’t see the stage too well. I wore my black pin striped suit and a blue shirt and scarf - which has found it’s way into being something a default look (skin?) for me.

After warm up man, a really appalling stand up comedian who fatally thought "they’re students - I’ll just use all my liberal material" - big mistake - the compare himself begin, as did all the clips of the nominations and we had begin.

First one up and Matt and Ian win highly commended (second prize) - fantastic. Same again a few later. No sign of Nerve TV though. Maybe I won’t get to go up and make a speech for someone else’s show. But as I watch the clips I realise how fucking great some many of these things are. I was expecting the sort of dross you see at film festivals. And whilst there was a few bits and pieces that was clearing executed by those with a retro sensitivity (the industrial revolution took a few years so it stands to reason the DV one will take a while too) they was clearly a lot of real talent in the room.

Remember I mentioned the 30 people with no technology for them to come all over - every clip I saw of their’s was brilliant. (But they ended winning shit all!)

And then comes my category. On come the clips - with one significant absence.

You guessed it - I’d been UNnominated. A bit of last minute pruning it seems - the winner was clearly far more talented than me anyway so I was glad about that - but what about my fucking CLIP! Let’s also not forget that when an award was won it usually meant a big cheer but at least one entire tables worth of delegates. On average I’d say each station was represented by 12 people - and there were three of us. Apart from being intimated I felt more like ‘the little guy’ than I had for ages.

For this was Spainful free zone - no one had even heard of podcasting here!

Where was I? Oh yes - what about my fucking clip!?

Fuck ‘em - as my good friend Craig would wisely advice me. "drink their beer - eat they’re food and go home - that’s all there is to it". So I went to the bar had a big sulk and a small cry.

So let’s fast forward to the next day and the Annual General Meeting. A huge lecture theatre and again all these young talented television people who no doubt will go some way towards shaping ‘proper’ television over the next few decades. And it here came my second big disappointment. For there was something very wrong at play here. Something very wrong indeed.

For example: any mention of ‘the internet’ was met with heavy resistance. Matt suggested recognition for website design in the awards section; at which a chorus rang out of ‘we make TELEVSION not websites’. It was like the internet didn’t exist to these people. Do a google search ot these TV stations and not only do you realise that none of the have updated their sites for years but it seem no one even thought to blog this event apart from me.

For you see it seem that these people in fact exist in a tiny bubble - the outside world doesn’t really matter that much to them. And here’s the frightening thing - in the case of Nerve TV - the AUDEINCE doesn’t matter that much. For it terms out that no one really ever saw the (un)nominated Top of the Pile.* If anyone did they were a student and certainly not someone from that internet thingy.

Not only is this very is very sad it’s really really fucking stupid. Not only are these people failing to promote themselves and their work to potential employers but they isolating themselves from new technology and they’re audeince. For IPTV and all the other variants of media-on-demand will change not only the form of delivery but how audiences consume media. The impact of which will utterly change how television is made and what the content is. Look to podcasting to see what the future holds and how that has already altered the radio industry.

And so the real winner of course were Matt ad Ian with buff TV; Whose audience online vastly outnumbers Nerve TV’s audience and whose content is more original, inivative and exciting then anything I saw at the Nastas. People, who despite their talent are clearly condemning themselves to antiquation - and entering an industry which despite being backward itself isn’t slow to see that if someone doesn’t know how to deal with the technology they will quickly be replaced by someone who does.

It was a delight to sit along side Matt and Ian and as they were constantly approached by genuine ‘fans’ of their show (a unique circumstance it seemed) I was proud to bare witness two guys who deserve to shape the future of television much more that the hoards (armies) there who believed that student TV is solely for students rather than actual people.

*Top of the Pile actually won Best Live Show - but that would ruin the dramatic impact of my story and I was in the bar anyway so it didn’t technoically happen in my universe.

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