Do you want to run a television network for your community? (That might be a local community around you, or a community that is separated by geography and united by a common cause.)
We're looking at getting our network on local cable, and once that's accomplished I'll update the book with info on how we did it.
We're also looking at establishing other #NETV affiliates. You wouldn't be #NewEllijayTelevision, but you'd have access to the #NewEllijayTV videos and archives in exchange for offering the same to us for things you produce, and using some NETV affiliate branding (Like your local NBC or CBS affiliate does.)
I started reading a book on "cult" cinema written by people who worked for TCM Underground and it is just making me sad.
So much is out of print, not on streaming, and barely or not at all available through illicit means.
And these are films that people are writing Books about. What hope does a film that didn't catch the attention of a critic have? (Often, the answer is none!)
The reason I get so hung up on this stuff is because I've personally watched a ton of early US television just disappear.
I digitize episodes of old TV shows. Usually, I can get to them before they curl up and separate or turn to dust. Sometimes I can't.
For a lot of TV programs pre-1960, they haven't been digitized or preserved at all. I do most of my work on Space Patrol. Space Patrol aired 5-6 days a week from March of 1950 through some time in 1955. Way less than half of the produced episodes survive.
I've digitized a few dozen myself, and preserved some of the associated merchandise. I have one of the original costumes, and several screen used props. There's me and a few other folks trying to track this stuff down, and most of the rest of the people involved aren't sharing.
If you're looking for a labor of love style passion project that will consume and ruin your life, might I suggest building an amatuer theme park in the north GA mountains, populated by mediocre animatronic space aliens?
It's a "no copyright" station in that I only play music I have personally negotiated rights to, cc stuff, or stuff from local bands.
Moving it to a peertube stream (powered by the same stuff that powers #netv) would afford me more or less the same level of flexibility I currently have, and also way more fine grained control, while saving me $40/month.
It's on New Ellijay Television, but it was preserved by the library of congress.
It's a silent film about a WWI vet returning home to his job as the house detective for a rail station. It is notable today mostly for having an all Black cast a time when racism meant that was a rare thing to find.
I think I have seen this film once before, several years ago, but I don't really remember it. It's possible that I did not watch it, and only planned to watch it? Or perhaps that I started it and was interrupted.
I stumbled back across it a few days ago, and stuck it up on #NETV but I'm watching it now and I have big thoughts and feelings.
First of all, it's really beautifully shot. The angles are great, the costumes are great. It's remarkably well preserved, and Kino and the LoC did a great job with the transfer and whatever restoration work they did.
The score is a bit disappointing, just kind of boring, but it does the job.
@ajroach42 I suppose it would depend on what purpose it would serve.
For microblogging I would still go with #Hometown for being a mild Masto variant with a couple extra nice features and a maintainer who is more on my wavelength than Eugen. Apart from that maybe try #Akkoma for being a bit lighter but I am still wary if the dev community behind it... #Miskey and its derivatives are neat but seem to me to place more stress on the browser than any other front end (it makes my #pinephone run VERY hot lol)
#Peertube is still the go-to for video but IMO it does little on its own to "foster community" if that makes any sense...but you probably know what it takes to do that with #NETV
#Pixelfed looks compelling for picture/media sharing...might try that one out since it's #MadeInAlberta :blobcheeky:
Perhaps #WriteFreely for long form blogging but like Peertube it seems difficult to get traction for some reason.
Ultimately though given unlimited time I would probably make my own BBS/fourm style fedi app!
If you are personally aware of any public domain Christmas or other winter/festive themed short films or feature films that we should add to the holiday rotation for #NETV let me know!
I'm pretty well versed in researching this stuff, so if you're considering giving me tips on where to look, or what kinds of things to consider, perhaps don't instead.
After digging through that thread from yesterday from 2017 I have been going through a bunch of old project notes and docs and stuff from before I started my last day job.
It's interesting, and kind of curious, how much Overlap there is between the things I was working on then and the things I'm planning and thinking about and working on now.
I've refined and sharpened a lot of the concepts I was working on, but there are hints there of what would become communitymedia.network and there are hints there of what would become #NETV
But there's some interesting ideas here that I left behind and I'm picking back up.
I'm thinking more and more about #SpaceLARPCafe within the context of the universe of the Space Explorer's Field Guide (wiki) ( #sefgw ) and how those two ideas could co-exist.
For those who are new to these topics, #SpaceLARPCafe is an idea I had a long time ago to bolt a starship bridge simulator like Space Nerds in Space or Empty Epsilon on to the basic idea of an escape room or a haunted house, and then to stick all of that in the back room of a cafe, complete with flight simulators.
It's an interactive, multiplayer space exploration game + a real world space to tie the game world together + star tours.
The Space Explorer's Field Guide (wiki) is a TV show we're slowly working on for New Ellijay Television #NETV and probably my favorite of the several series we have in various stages of production and preproduction. The basic premise goes:
The year is 2030. 5 years ago, someone uploaded plans for a DIY interstellar engine to hacker news, and ... It worked. It could be assembled for peanuts.
The american empire has collapsed. The world is in chaos. Interstellar flight is possible, easy, cheap, not remotely safe.
It's a vast, nearly infinite cosmos. All of it is basically uncharted.
A weird combination of hardcore nerds and long haul hikers are out there documenting it and contributing back to the wiki.
Imagine every weird little instance of the fediverse as a guild of space explorers and you'll be most of the way to what I'm envisioning here.
In light of the fact that major broadcasters are lobbying the FCC to force encryption/subscriptions in to standard OTA broadcasts, now is a good time to talk about #DIYTV
If you don't have anything better to do this morning, we've got Saturday Morning cartoons and Saturday afternoon Adventure Movies on New Ellijay Television.
I haven't talked a lot about the writer's strike recently (mostly because I've been dealing with small implosions within my little community, as relationships have ended and people have drawn battle lines, and I've had to come to the defense of people I previously believed unassailable. So it goes.)
But I've been thinking about the writer's strike a lot, both because I care deeply about workers issues and because the outcome of the writers strike will directly impact the success of the company I am joining on Monday.
Yesterday, there were a lot of stories about the studios plans to drag the strike on as long as possible, in order to hurt the striking writers, and these were reported on uncritically as if it was some surprise.
I found this frustrating and naïve, and I'd like to talk about it a bit in between other things today.
Now, I don't have any inside track on the studios, and I don't currently work in the media industry, beyond the work I'm doing to destroy it with the power of community media production re: #NewEllijayTelevision#netv.
I don't know that the studios are scared, running out of money, and so desperate for the writers to take a deal that they would do basically anything, and that they are attempting to shift the narrative to make it seem like that is not the case in order to bluff at least some of the writers in to accepting a bad deal and returning to the table.
I don't Know that, but I strongly suspect it, and I've played poker often enough to know the kinds of hunches I can trust.
I've seen the clip of just the song on archive.org. it looks like a century old music video! You can see how she earned the "Queen of the Blues" title.
:hearthands:
9:00:00 New Ellijay News
9:20:00 The Battle of the Century
9:40:00 The Pirates of 1920
10:00:00 New Ellijay News
10:20:00 First Spaceship on Venus
11:40:00 Yongary
1:00:00 New Ellijay News
1:15:00 Expedition Sasquatch S01E01
1:45:00 The Slowest Gun in the West
2:40:00 The Indestructible Man
3:50:00 Rocky Jones Space Ranger - Crash of Moons
5:05:00 Colonel Bleep - S01E10 - Scratch and the Sea Serpent
5:10:00 Space Angel - The Light Barrier - S01E08
5:20:00 Colonel Bleep - S01E12 - Test of Friendship
5:25:00 Colonel Bleep - S01E13 - Shadows of Suspicion
5:30:00 Space Patrol - S03E24 - The Man Who Stole a City
6:00:00 Men with Steel Faces
7:05:00 Jupiter's Ghost s01e01
7:30:00 The Magic Sword
9:55:00 The Phantom Planet
10:15:00 Dark Mistresses Midnight Movie presents Cat Women of the Moon
11:25:00 Little Shop of Horrors
After lots of fighting with various pieces of software that did almost what I want, but missed some fundamental element (or allegedly did exactly what I want but were broken in some fundamental way) I decided that traditional broadcast automation software was too big of a headache for me.