Caterpillar Cowboy

mdfsmash:

“Like MTV in its heyday, Next New is proudly hit or miss. Viewers don’t go to it for any one video; they tune in for a sensibility, a lifestyle. The scene at Next New is techy, of course, but it’s also wholesome and nostalgic and low key and inventive and whimsical and frugal and enterprising.”

-Virginia Heffernan in a NY Times article explaining what we at Next New Networks do. She also further coins the term “Midtail,” and makes me feel all giddy about the company I call home.

More about “Midtail” here and here. I will never argue or propose that “Midtail” content will replace television. I’ve said it before, but TV didn’t exactly kill film, it only offered another alternative to being entertained. To quote Chris Anderson, “In a Long Tail world many top-down hits get smaller, but even more bottom-up hits get bigger. It’s not the end of the hit - it’s the rise of a new kind of hit.”

I admit to reading her column in the sunday times magazine, even though occasionally it’s garbage. Sometimes, though, she says something smart. I like the term “midtail” and how it describes the bubbling up of hits.

I’m sure someone’s going to say “make me a midtail hit” just like they say “make me something viral”. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. You have to employ the shotgun technique: you put out a whole bunch of stuff, and play the probabilities game that something will stick. You can read Duncan Watts on this one - you can’t predict hits.