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Will YouTube kill the MBC project?

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It may be a vast overestimation, but the Sun-Times has an interesting article today about the future of the Museum of Broadcast Communications…

Development plans for the Museum of Broadcast Communications have been on hiatus for more than a year while CEO Bruce DuMont fights to save the 20-year-old institution from fading to black. According to the original script, the MBC was to move to a state-of-the-art facility at State and Kinzie this year after leaving its previous home at the Chicago Cultural Center at the end of 2003. After Gov. Blagojevich reneged on promised financial support, however, construction plans halted, and DuMont is now trying to sell naming rights to bridge a $10 million gap.

While DuMont understandably blames Gov. Blagojevich for the quagmire, the real culprits may be Steve Jobs, YouTube CEO Chad Hurley and any of us who download and view television on the Internet .

Largely due to its 85,000 hours of archived programming, for years the MBC ranked among the city’s top tourist destinations. Yet the value of presenting those archives diminishes as more programming becomes accessible online, and viewers can go to iTunes to watch reruns of “Lost” and YouTube for vintage episodes of “The Mike Ditka Show.” Given that more than 90 million Americans have viewed video on the Web to date, is a broadcast museum today even necessary?

“The world has changed dramatically since we planned to build the museum,” acknowledged DuMont, a television journalist and producer whose uncle founded the DuMont Television Network. He added that more resources are being put into the MBC Web site, found at www.museum.tv, as the museum continues to court financiers.

Again, I’m not sure that YouTube and similar sites will deal the museum it’s ultimate death blow, but I’m wondering what you think about all of this, since many of you are hardcore Internet users.

posted by Rich Miller
Monday, Jun 18, 07 @ 8:53 am

Comments

I’m a big fan of the Museum of Broadcast Communications, although I’ve never used their archive. I do watch, for entertainment, stuff on Youtube and similar video sharing sites. But the quality is poor, and the selection may be huge but it is not comprehensive. If I had to do some serious research or work involving broadcasting, I would use the museum’s archives rather than the internet.

MBC is necessary because it is a repository of an important piece of cultural history. Nothing defines the 20th century as much as radio and television. MBC is an academic asset for Chicago, and it’s worthy of receiving state government support.

Besides, shame on Blagojevich for making Garfield Goose homeless!

Comment by the Other Anonymous Monday, Jun 18, 07 @ 9:00 am
I can go online and see a Da Vinci. But it’s just not the same as seeing it in person.
Websites are great for some things or for people who are too busy or lazy.
Some things you just need to see, feel and touch.

Comment by Lula May Monday, Jun 18, 07 @ 9:15 am
I am very familiar with the museum over the past 20 years. My father loved it, and it was a regular stop every four months until I left Chicago to raise a family in Springfield.

That said, it is a very passive museum, oddly non-interactive and challenging for groups and families to enjoy. Like an internet cafe, the Museum’s experience is best on an individual level. The best the Museum has to offer is individual in nature. Why go there with your family or in groups?

The physical presentation is underwhelming. Radio celebrities are long gone. Sure, Jack Benny, Fibber McGee & Molly, and other radio superstars were great entertainers, however seeing them 80 years removed from their greatness diminishes visitor’s interests.

Television stars have an ever shorter shelf life. There are very few TV superstars capable of generating interest beyond a particular generation. Were you raised on Bozo, or He-Man? Kukla, Fran and Ollie or The Smurfs? Even kiddie shows cannot bring diverse groups together enough to make the Museum a gathering place.

We watch TV and listen to radio individually or in small groups. To build a museum around that personal experience is obviously a challenge. That is why the Museum is finding it difficult to generate visitor traffic. Deciding to spend an hour watching kiddie shows from the 1970s is very self-indulgent when your family wants to experience something as a unit.

The Museum never expected to find itself in a world where their target market could easily experience historical broadcasts free at home. With the ending of “mass” communication over the past 20 years, communities do not share TV or radio as a group. Consequentially, they do not have a strong interest in viewing this media as a community.

While these are challenges, there are possible ways of working around them. I wish Mr. DuMont the best of luck in finding a way to make the Museum work.

Comment by VanillaMan Monday, Jun 18, 07 @ 9:47 am
Never been there. What does MBS offer that is interesting and fun to visit? The Mike Ditka show may be vital viewing, but not likely enough to bring a crowd. How did TV evolve? Can I leave with a DVD of Johnny Carson introducing me as I walk out from behind the NBC curtain? Got actual vintage sets complete with cameras and lights? Without context, YouTube wins. The Lincoln Museum would be pretty boring if it just displayed the stovepipe hat. How are special effects done now compared to 30 years ago? How did Bozo’s hair stay up like that? Personally, I want to see and touch the real stuff like the Rock and Roll HOF. Video storage may be important for history and scholars, but the bucks are in drawing in the customer even though Wolfgang’s Vault seems to be doing pretty well in selling old concerts. Sounds like MBS’s biggest problem was a reneging and PR.

Comment by zatoichi Monday, Jun 18, 07 @ 9:50 am
I’ve never been to the museum, although I would like to visit at some point.

Frankly, I think they’re becoming irrelevant though. Now that Google’s backing YouTube and in the business of archiving and search they’re better placed to preserve broadcast history. A static museum only is accessable to those who physically visit. It makes more sense to put everything online and searchable.

Plus, I’d argue it gets more exposure that way. People blog about it, send links to friends of their favorite clips and user activity goes up.

The idea of making video a utility for Internet users is what made YouTube a success and continues to drive it forward. The founders realized that archiving isn’t enough, you have to let people interact with the content. People want to blog it, put it in their MySpace profiles and leave comments.

But most importantly, people want to feed the beast. It shouldn’t matter who you are, you should be allowed to contribue to a collection. The most successful ‘net ventures right now are those that let users be involved.

You want to be successful online? Open it up and give people the tools to create and contribute.

Going to the MBC site I noticed there’s no place I can leave a comment on a video or upload a submission. What incentive do I have to stick around on their site as a common Internet user? To their credit, the videos they do have include embedding ability, however, there’s no search or tagging, making it difficult to find content.

I think the MBC does good work, but from the perspective of an average Internet user, it’s adapted for an online audience.

Comment by Kiyoshi Martinez Monday, Jun 18, 07 @ 10:05 am
Oops, I meant to say “not adapted.” Welcome to Web 2.0, where people don’t proofread before commenting.

Comment by Kiyoshi Martinez Monday, Jun 18, 07 @ 10:09 am
This whole situation is a shame, but Bruce DuMont has nobody to blame but himself.

He had a modest but successful museum in about the best spot humanly possible. I’ve been there many times as my office is nearby. He hadn’t updated it in a while, probably because he was waiting for the new museum to be built (which is ok). But then he made the colossal mistake of shutting the thing down the old museum more than two years before the new one would have opened even under the best of circumstances. So he took a great spot (Chicago Cultural Center across from Millennium Park) and a solid brand built painstakingly over decades, and you inadvertantly destroy it.

It’s quite an overreach to say, “well it’s all the gov’s fault because he reneged.” I mean that may be true (and knowing Rod it probably is), but snags happen all the time when you’re building a major project like this, especially one that’s dramatically larger and more complex than previous efforts. It’s kind of shocking that after all those decades covering Springfield, DuMont couldn’t find a way to work the system better.

Frankly, his legendary arrogance got the best of him and now he’s paying the price. It’s a shame because the Museum has great stuff and could play a key role in our city.

Personally, I really hope he’s successful in getting the new facility off the ground. But when you embark on such a vast effort, you need great humility, a recognition of what you don’t know and a broad outreach campaign to bring in new people. I know a lot of people in the TV and radio industry, as well as quite a few philanthropists in town. None of them have ever been reached out to by DuMont. That kind of speaks for itself.

Comment by Chicago Cynic Monday, Jun 18, 07 @ 11:30 am
I’d like to see the numbers, compiled by the city or state offices of tourism, that prove that the MBC was one of the top visitor sites in IL. It’s never been one of the 10 “most” destinations according to published lists … a very passive, passe environment, hidden away in the cultural center. It’s a waste of tax dollars to build a new museum, the collection could be donated to the Chicago History Museum. And besides, they tore down Nana’s restaurant (a great Italian place) to build the museum!

Comment by jaundiced eye Monday, Jun 18, 07 @ 11:35 am
I have a lot of respect for DuMont and the museum as well. My take is, the best place to house the physical collection of props and antique gear would be in an addition to the Museum of Science & Industry. Seems a natural fit, with lots of synergy to work on shared exhibits with other things at the museum.

As to making the viewing experiences more of a group thing, one thing you can do is set up a large video wall that can display up to 50 pictures all at once. These are fed by a central server. When you walk up to this screen you have a few keyboards in front of it. Using them, you type in what you want to see, and it plays in one of the 50 windows. Each person’s request plays in it’s own window, but everyone can see what everyone else is watching. A row of earphone jacks with selector knobs lets you listen to any particular screen. If more than 10 screens show the same thing, the server plays that program audio over a loudspeaker so that becomes the audible sound for the room. This adds interactivity to a passive experience and also mirrors the shifting tastes of the public. It also has that magic of the “encyclopedia effect”: you find stuff you never knew to look for, on the way to looking up the original word you wanted. In this same way, people can exchange examples of what they like and broaden each other’s knowledge of what the museum has.

YouTube video quality is okay for one-time “disposable” viewing, but my guess is for some dedicated fan of a certain program or star, they would want something better and longer, worth keeping in their home. If the legal rights could be worked out, they could subscribe to a higher quality streamed feed or pay for a DVD by mail and this might help offset some costs. This kind of museum though is going to have to be heavily subsidized to make it’s way; just the electric bills alone will outstrip what a ticket fee would take in. If I was United Airlines, I would kick in some money to make sure all of my companies commercials could play there on an infinite loop in one corner display.

Comment by Son of a son of a Svenghoulie Monday, Jun 18, 07 @ 11:55 am
Son of a son of a Svenghoulie: I like your concept. I’d also argue for a few consoles with keyboards and a small flat screen that pops up wiki-like entries on the current item being watched and links to other related videos. If some sort of tagging system were set up, you could cruise along to different subjects, videos, personalities, etc. Also, others would be able to do the same thing on their consoles. “What others are viewing, related content to their video.”

Comment by Kiyoshi Martinez Monday, Jun 18, 07 @ 1:34 pm
Chicago Cynic said it well. This museum will never get built. As much as I’d like to say that the Governor is at fault, he’s really not it’s really DuMont’s fault for the bad decisions he made.

Comment by Napoleon has left the building Monday, Jun 18, 07 @ 2:46 pm
I also agree that Chicago Cynic’s and Napoleon’s remarks are right on target. The only good decision DuMont made was to marry Kathy Osterman.

Comment by jaundiced eye Monday, Jun 18, 07 @ 5:24 pm
The Governor reneges on a 6 million dollar pledge, but it’s somehow Dumont’s fault? For wanting to build a nice museum? Would it have been built with the 6 million Rod promised two years ago? Most likely.

Comment by Dumont Defender Monday, Jun 18, 07 @ 6:49 pm