Mr. Media Interviews by Bob Andelman
Sunday, November 04, 2007
George Gray, "What's With That House?" HGTV host: Mr. Media Interview, Part 1
George Gray is having way too much fun on his HGTV show, “What’s With That House?”
The show, now in its second season, is kind of a goof on the proliferation of shelter TV shows, where viewers are taken into fabulous homes and mansions and led around by announcers in hushed, respectful tones. There’s no respect in Gray’s tone -- and rightfully so.
If you haven’t seen the show, I absolutely insist you pause this interview and set your DVR, Tivo, or VCR to record the show. It’s on HGTV every Wednesday at 11:30 PM Eastern or Pacific. You won’t be sorry. (You could also sample it by watching this clip...)
Back now? Okay.
If Gray seems familiar, it means you probably saw him in ESPN’s sports fantasy reality series “I’d Do Anything” or the syndicated version of “The Weakest Link.”
BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: George, welcome to Mr. Media.
GEORGE GRAY: I am so excited to be here. Actually, you were talking fitness. I’ve been doing Kegels the whole time I’ve been listening to you.
ANDELMAN: Well, I hope whoever you’re with next appreciates that I gave you the opportunity to do that.
GRAY: And you used the word proliferation. You gotta slowly ramp up to a word like proliferation, which is nice.
ANDELMAN: Well, I thought this was kind of a nuclear moment.
GRAY: Makes me sound way heavier than I really am. So glad to be here.
ANDELMAN: Well, that is quite a head you’ve got on your shoulders, if you’re gonna make that reference.
GRAY: It’s just the ego.
ANDELMAN: What color is that hair?
GRAY: Actually, it’s funny because my hair…you achieve that kind of blond by sticking your head in a bucket of Clorox about every five days. And so it’s very natural. But, actually, now that the show is on hiatus right now, my hair sort of looks like I got whacked with a carrot. I seem to go to extremes.
ANDELMAN: What is the natural color of your hair?
GRAY: Oh, when I was doing “The Weakest Link,” that was pretty close, although the lights were so dark in the room, it looked darker than it was. Kind of a dark blond, I think. Dirty, dirty blond, something like that. I don’t even know. Who knows? I started growing the soul patch. I did a show called “Junkyard Wars” before “Weakest Link,” and I grew the soul patch that I have now worn for years as a joke. Not a lot of guys were wearing them at the time, not that I was the first to ever do it, but they really weren’t in vogue. And I really did it as a joke, and I thought it looked so silly and stupid that I just decided to wear it for a couple of weeks. Then I booked “Junkyard Wars” and just left it. And so that’s been on my face. So I sort of do things, I don’t know, just out of sheer stupidity.
ANDELMAN: This is way off topic, but as a guy who’s worn a beard for way too long, how do you trim that soul patch thing so it always looks the same? Do you ever slip with the razor or the electric?
GRAY: No, I’m a Braun man. I don’t really pay that much attention to it. My mother hates it. She wishes that I would slip with the razor by accident. A beard would drive me nuts. I couldn’t do that. I don’t know how you do it. You got a really long one, do ya?
ANDELMAN: No, no. It’s not too long, but my wife refuses to let me cut it. She says I look about 10 years old without it, which, as I’m pushing my way up to 50, I guess maybe that might be a good thing. I don’t know.
GRAY: Maybe she’s got a Santa Claus fetish. “C’mon, go gray baby, go gray.”
ANDELMAN: I’ll try that little red hat on tonight. So what’s this, you got a TV show? I don’t remember what we’re here for.
GRAY: TV, shmevee. Very nice words, by the way. Thank you for telling everybody that they should tune in to watch. “What’s With That House?” is a guilty pleasure show. It really is slamming on your brakes – a “What the hell is that?” kind of show.
ANDELMAN: It’s funny. It was brought to my attention and, for Mr. Media, I really focus on things that I like, and I want to share with other people. And this was something that was brought to my attention. I was surprised I hadn’t heard of it before, and I watched it, and it was just…it’s really funny. We watch so many reality-type shows or home shows or cooking shows, and this was just so left-of-center. It’s a fun show. People really should give it a try.
GRAY: Leftist? Are you saying it’s a Democratic show?
ANDELMAN: I don’t know if it’s a blue state/red state show.
GRAY: I try to run a strict Libertarian ship there on the show.
ANDELMAN: One of the moments in watching the show that made me literally laugh out loud, and now I’m gonna repeat it, and maybe it won’t be that funny. Maybe if you put it in context, but you told a couple -- and looked at the camera -- you said, “Thank you for showing me your toilet.”
GRAY: That sounds like something classy that I’d say.
ANDELMAN: Do you remember that in particular?
GRAY: No, I don’t. If you could get to see me in the voice-over booth which, for anybody that doesn’t know, you shoot a show, the editors cut the show, the network approves of the show, then they write a script of the show -- which is kind of a backwards way to do it -- and then you go into a booth and you say words that they lay in on top of the show to kind of fill in all the thoughts. And when I go to do voice-over stuff, I don’t have a script for “What’s With That House?” so I just say whatever I want. I just say whatever comes to my mind. And they only use a portion of it, and a lot of the stuff I say isn’t for air. I just say it to amuse myself or the editors or the homeowners or whoever, so everything’s from risqué to whatever just pops out of my mouth. And sometimes I’ll say something, and I would swear it’s somebody else that said it, and it’ll make me laugh. I’m like, “Wow, that was funny.”
ANDELMAN: I wondered how much might be scripted before or after, and how much is not.
GRAY: Zero.
ANDELMAN: Do you spend any time with the homeowner before taping begins, or is that mostly a production issue?
GRAY: The only thing that I do is I show up and say, “Hello,” and introduce myself. I usually walk into the house and yell, “Hi honey, I’m home!” But I have time to relax, and it’s fun that I have no script, that there are no rules. A lot of people aren’t very savvy with TV. They get that whole deer-in-the-headlights-Richard-Nixon-during-the-Kennedy-debate look on their face, and it’s not pleasant. It’s really beads of sweat and the big eyes. And I just say, “Everything’s gonna be fine.” Everybody gets comfortable, and then we just roll, and that’s it. It’s very, very natural and just whatever comes out of it. I, personally, hate fake reality TV, and there’s so much of it these days. It’s just one of those things. You watch those shows where you just know that they’re reading from a script. It’s an MTV show: “Hi, my name’s Dan, and I’m here to rock it because I’m from Detroit.” It’s like, “Oh, wow, they just told you to say that.”
ANDELMAN: You see the writers listed at the end of some of the reality shows if you check the credits, and you think, “That explains a lot.”
GRAY: Exactly. I just think reality TV should be reality, which is just let it go, and we’ll see what happens. With “What’s With That House?” the premise behind it is it’s all those houses all across the country where you slam on the brakes and wonder what the homeowner was smoking. And we’ve all seen those houses. Every single person in every single state, city, and small town has one of those houses near them, and they know which one it is. And it’s probably nicknamed like “The Mushroom House” or “The Witch’s Hat House” because of what it looks like. And so many people just love to tour those houses, and we finally get to, so that’s why the show’s a lot of fun.
ANDELMAN: We have one that went up about a block from us that they refer to it as “The Italian Prison.” It’s a neighborhood of nice houses, and then this house goes up that eats up the entire piece of property, and it is two stories tall. It is one big rectangle, flat walls, every window is the exact same tiny size. So when I saw this show, I immediately thought of that, and I could equate to it completely. In one of the episodes I saw, you were in Oakland Park, Florida. And every neighborhood, it seems like, has one of these most bizarre, curious houses.
GRAY: And it’s great that you’ve nicknamed it “The Italian Prison.” I guarantee there’ll be like five or six names out there that people have for it, each one funnier than the last one. And it really polarizes everybody in these neighborhoods. I guarantee, if I went through the neighborhood, which we do, and we say “Hey, excuse me, Bob, you live on this street, what do you think of that place and what do you call it?” You’d say, “I call it ‘The Italian Prison. I think it’s ugly.” We’ll talk to another neighbor who will say, “I think it is a beautiful, post-modernism statement about architecture.” And they’ll love it. And it’s hysterical that you get some people that just absolutely think that whatever this house is is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and some people think it’s just moldy.
ANDELMAN: Do you have any great moments with neighbors that you really loved what they said, but you couldn’t possible use?
GRAY: Well, HGTV is definitely a more family values, conservative type of network, and so it’s a little on the squeakier, cleaner side, but I’m very impressed with them. They did air something one time that was very, very, very, very funny. We went to this house and saw all the neighbors. The problem is, when neighbors live close by, they’re probably friends with the people so we don’t want to say anything bad about the house. And so I was asking neighbors, “What do you think of this house?” “Oh, it’s fine. It’s fine.” “It’s fine” is the only thing. “It’s fine. It’s fine.” Well, c’mon, is it good, is it bad, what do you think? “Oh, it’s fine. It’s fine.” And, finally, I asked some guy who happened to live about six blocks away, and he didn’t know the people. I said, “Can I ask you on camera what you think about the house?” And he said sure. So I said so tell me, what do you think of the house? I didn’t even finish the sentence, and he said, “It looks like crap.” And I started laughing because it was so funny the way he said it. And he wasn’t being angry. He was just being very honest. And I said “No, really, just what do…” And he just again cut me off and repeated it, and it just made me laugh so hard. It was so funny to just see that kind of honesty. And they actually aired it. So it was great.
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©2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
George Gray is having way too much fun on his HGTV show, “What’s With That House?”
The show, now in its second season, is kind of a goof on the proliferation of shelter TV shows, where viewers are taken into fabulous homes and mansions and led around by announcers in hushed, respectful tones. There’s no respect in Gray’s tone -- and rightfully so.
If you haven’t seen the show, I absolutely insist you pause this interview and set your DVR, Tivo, or VCR to record the show. It’s on HGTV every Wednesday at 11:30 PM Eastern or Pacific. You won’t be sorry. (You could also sample it by watching this clip...)
Back now? Okay.
If Gray seems familiar, it means you probably saw him in ESPN’s sports fantasy reality series “I’d Do Anything” or the syndicated version of “The Weakest Link.”
ALSO AVAILABLE AS A PODCAST ON iTUNES.
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BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: George, welcome to Mr. Media.
GEORGE GRAY: I am so excited to be here. Actually, you were talking fitness. I’ve been doing Kegels the whole time I’ve been listening to you.
ANDELMAN: Well, I hope whoever you’re with next appreciates that I gave you the opportunity to do that.
GRAY: And you used the word proliferation. You gotta slowly ramp up to a word like proliferation, which is nice.
ANDELMAN: Well, I thought this was kind of a nuclear moment.
GRAY: Makes me sound way heavier than I really am. So glad to be here.
ANDELMAN: Well, that is quite a head you’ve got on your shoulders, if you’re gonna make that reference.
GRAY: It’s just the ego.
ANDELMAN: What color is that hair?
GRAY: Actually, it’s funny because my hair…you achieve that kind of blond by sticking your head in a bucket of Clorox about every five days. And so it’s very natural. But, actually, now that the show is on hiatus right now, my hair sort of looks like I got whacked with a carrot. I seem to go to extremes.
ANDELMAN: What is the natural color of your hair?
GRAY: Oh, when I was doing “The Weakest Link,” that was pretty close, although the lights were so dark in the room, it looked darker than it was. Kind of a dark blond, I think. Dirty, dirty blond, something like that. I don’t even know. Who knows? I started growing the soul patch. I did a show called “Junkyard Wars” before “Weakest Link,” and I grew the soul patch that I have now worn for years as a joke. Not a lot of guys were wearing them at the time, not that I was the first to ever do it, but they really weren’t in vogue. And I really did it as a joke, and I thought it looked so silly and stupid that I just decided to wear it for a couple of weeks. Then I booked “Junkyard Wars” and just left it. And so that’s been on my face. So I sort of do things, I don’t know, just out of sheer stupidity.
ANDELMAN: This is way off topic, but as a guy who’s worn a beard for way too long, how do you trim that soul patch thing so it always looks the same? Do you ever slip with the razor or the electric?
GRAY: No, I’m a Braun man. I don’t really pay that much attention to it. My mother hates it. She wishes that I would slip with the razor by accident. A beard would drive me nuts. I couldn’t do that. I don’t know how you do it. You got a really long one, do ya?
ANDELMAN: No, no. It’s not too long, but my wife refuses to let me cut it. She says I look about 10 years old without it, which, as I’m pushing my way up to 50, I guess maybe that might be a good thing. I don’t know.
GRAY: Maybe she’s got a Santa Claus fetish. “C’mon, go gray baby, go gray.”
ANDELMAN: I’ll try that little red hat on tonight. So what’s this, you got a TV show? I don’t remember what we’re here for.
GRAY: TV, shmevee. Very nice words, by the way. Thank you for telling everybody that they should tune in to watch. “What’s With That House?” is a guilty pleasure show. It really is slamming on your brakes – a “What the hell is that?” kind of show.
ANDELMAN: It’s funny. It was brought to my attention and, for Mr. Media, I really focus on things that I like, and I want to share with other people. And this was something that was brought to my attention. I was surprised I hadn’t heard of it before, and I watched it, and it was just…it’s really funny. We watch so many reality-type shows or home shows or cooking shows, and this was just so left-of-center. It’s a fun show. People really should give it a try.
GRAY: Leftist? Are you saying it’s a Democratic show?
ANDELMAN: I don’t know if it’s a blue state/red state show.
GRAY: I try to run a strict Libertarian ship there on the show.
ANDELMAN: One of the moments in watching the show that made me literally laugh out loud, and now I’m gonna repeat it, and maybe it won’t be that funny. Maybe if you put it in context, but you told a couple -- and looked at the camera -- you said, “Thank you for showing me your toilet.”
GRAY: That sounds like something classy that I’d say.
ANDELMAN: Do you remember that in particular?
GRAY: No, I don’t. If you could get to see me in the voice-over booth which, for anybody that doesn’t know, you shoot a show, the editors cut the show, the network approves of the show, then they write a script of the show -- which is kind of a backwards way to do it -- and then you go into a booth and you say words that they lay in on top of the show to kind of fill in all the thoughts. And when I go to do voice-over stuff, I don’t have a script for “What’s With That House?” so I just say whatever I want. I just say whatever comes to my mind. And they only use a portion of it, and a lot of the stuff I say isn’t for air. I just say it to amuse myself or the editors or the homeowners or whoever, so everything’s from risqué to whatever just pops out of my mouth. And sometimes I’ll say something, and I would swear it’s somebody else that said it, and it’ll make me laugh. I’m like, “Wow, that was funny.”
ANDELMAN: I wondered how much might be scripted before or after, and how much is not.
GRAY: Zero.
ANDELMAN: Do you spend any time with the homeowner before taping begins, or is that mostly a production issue?
GRAY: The only thing that I do is I show up and say, “Hello,” and introduce myself. I usually walk into the house and yell, “Hi honey, I’m home!” But I have time to relax, and it’s fun that I have no script, that there are no rules. A lot of people aren’t very savvy with TV. They get that whole deer-in-the-headlights-Richard-Nixon-during-the-Kennedy-debate look on their face, and it’s not pleasant. It’s really beads of sweat and the big eyes. And I just say, “Everything’s gonna be fine.” Everybody gets comfortable, and then we just roll, and that’s it. It’s very, very natural and just whatever comes out of it. I, personally, hate fake reality TV, and there’s so much of it these days. It’s just one of those things. You watch those shows where you just know that they’re reading from a script. It’s an MTV show: “Hi, my name’s Dan, and I’m here to rock it because I’m from Detroit.” It’s like, “Oh, wow, they just told you to say that.”
ANDELMAN: You see the writers listed at the end of some of the reality shows if you check the credits, and you think, “That explains a lot.”
GRAY: Exactly. I just think reality TV should be reality, which is just let it go, and we’ll see what happens. With “What’s With That House?” the premise behind it is it’s all those houses all across the country where you slam on the brakes and wonder what the homeowner was smoking. And we’ve all seen those houses. Every single person in every single state, city, and small town has one of those houses near them, and they know which one it is. And it’s probably nicknamed like “The Mushroom House” or “The Witch’s Hat House” because of what it looks like. And so many people just love to tour those houses, and we finally get to, so that’s why the show’s a lot of fun.
ANDELMAN: We have one that went up about a block from us that they refer to it as “The Italian Prison.” It’s a neighborhood of nice houses, and then this house goes up that eats up the entire piece of property, and it is two stories tall. It is one big rectangle, flat walls, every window is the exact same tiny size. So when I saw this show, I immediately thought of that, and I could equate to it completely. In one of the episodes I saw, you were in Oakland Park, Florida. And every neighborhood, it seems like, has one of these most bizarre, curious houses.
GRAY: And it’s great that you’ve nicknamed it “The Italian Prison.” I guarantee there’ll be like five or six names out there that people have for it, each one funnier than the last one. And it really polarizes everybody in these neighborhoods. I guarantee, if I went through the neighborhood, which we do, and we say “Hey, excuse me, Bob, you live on this street, what do you think of that place and what do you call it?” You’d say, “I call it ‘The Italian Prison. I think it’s ugly.” We’ll talk to another neighbor who will say, “I think it is a beautiful, post-modernism statement about architecture.” And they’ll love it. And it’s hysterical that you get some people that just absolutely think that whatever this house is is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and some people think it’s just moldy.
ANDELMAN: Do you have any great moments with neighbors that you really loved what they said, but you couldn’t possible use?
GRAY: Well, HGTV is definitely a more family values, conservative type of network, and so it’s a little on the squeakier, cleaner side, but I’m very impressed with them. They did air something one time that was very, very, very, very funny. We went to this house and saw all the neighbors. The problem is, when neighbors live close by, they’re probably friends with the people so we don’t want to say anything bad about the house. And so I was asking neighbors, “What do you think of this house?” “Oh, it’s fine. It’s fine.” “It’s fine” is the only thing. “It’s fine. It’s fine.” Well, c’mon, is it good, is it bad, what do you think? “Oh, it’s fine. It’s fine.” And, finally, I asked some guy who happened to live about six blocks away, and he didn’t know the people. I said, “Can I ask you on camera what you think about the house?” And he said sure. So I said so tell me, what do you think of the house? I didn’t even finish the sentence, and he said, “It looks like crap.” And I started laughing because it was so funny the way he said it. And he wasn’t being angry. He was just being very honest. And I said “No, really, just what do…” And he just again cut me off and repeated it, and it just made me laugh so hard. It was so funny to just see that kind of honesty. And they actually aired it. So it was great.
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©2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
Labels: George Gray, HGTV, Junkyard Wars, Kegels, shelter, The Weakest Link, What's With That House
¶ 8:21 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Sunday, October 21, 2007
George Gray, "What's With That House?" HGTV host: The Mr. Media Interview, Part 2
(Return to Part 1)
BOB ANDELMAN: You say that HGTV is kind of conservative. Of course, they do air the show 11:30 at night. And the humor on the show would fit in primetime on any network, but yeah, I can see that it might be a little offbeat for them.
GEORGE GRAY: Let’s just say, yeah, we caused a bit of a scare when we first joined ranks with them, but they knew who I was, and they were happy to have me aboard. They said they wanted to try something a little crazier, a little more fun, not so much khaki. HGTV has been really, really great to me. There’s a woman named Beth Burke… At every network, there’s always kind of some network suit goon that oversees the show, and she’s the network goon. And she’s just been our biggest savior. She likes for us to get away with all sorts of stuff. We’ll try to slip in these jokes in editing, and she will roll her eyes and then go try to talk to the powers-that-be. But, yes, they like to run me a little more late-night cause I think they see me as like the Dave Chappelle of HGTV. And Senator, I know Dave Chappelle, and you’re no Dave Chappelle.
ANDELMAN: You’re just gonna head that one off right now right by yourself, huh?
GRAY: Exactly. It’s very flattering that they think that but not even close.
ANDELMAN: Have you gotten any feedback from any of the other HGTV hosts? Do any of them have a problem with this being there?
GRAY: With HGTV? No. As a matter of fact, when I get to see the other hosts, they always say, “Man, you get away with murder. They don’t even let me…” It’s always a fun complaint. I guess I’m the naughty child that they just sort of let be bad.
ANDELMAN: How does a house get on the show?
GRAY: I think mostly bribery or threats. But barring that, there’s a crack production team out in Los Angeles, and they scour the country. It’s everything from looking in news stories and clippings for crazy houses that’ve been covered in the local newspaper to people -- once we got on the air and got popular -- sending in emails to HGTV saying, “Hey, I got a weird house in my neighborhood!”
I don’t get to go to every house that we show. I go to most of them. I go to about 80 percent of the homes. But sometimes, we’re shooting two at the same time. I just can’t be at two places at one time. And a really super-nice guy…it was a modern type of home in a very kind of traditional home area. And he sent in his stuff, huge fan of the show, huge fan of HGTV. They said. “Great, we’re gonna do your house.” They set it up, and they said, “Look, we’re not sure if George could come to your house,” and that was a deal-breaker. I was very, very flattered. He said, “I won’t do the show unless George can make it to my house.”
ANDELMAN: Yes, I want to be insulted in person. I don’t want to be insulted long-range.
GRAY: He was just the nicest guy. And it really made me feel good ‘cause you get out there, and you work. You don’t get in touch with a lot of people that are watching your show, and it was neat to have him say, “No, no, I really love the show and wanted you to be here.” And we had a great time. As the show’s become a lot more known and been on for a while, people, when I show up to the house, it’s like seeing an old friend. So that’s really nice.
ANDELMAN: Have you had any problems with any homeowners who didn’t quite get you, and maybe you couldn’t even use the tape?
GRAY: There’ve been a couple of times when I’m probably more liquored-up than I should be, a little touchy-feely, but…No, no. Actually, I think before we’d ever aired, which would’ve been maybe a year and a half ago, we were shooting the beginning of the series, but people didn’t have anything to relate to it. And I really took the time, I think, to tell people what it is. Kind of what I would always say to homeowners, and now people watch it. They know I’m coming to their house. They always TiVo it even if they’ve never seen the series and watch it for five minutes to get the general vibe of it.
I would always say that the show is fun and funny, but it’s not insulting. It’s never about making fun of you or your house. That’s not the point of the show, and it never will be. So it’s about having fun, not making fun. And I really want to always stress that. I think, once you say that to somebody, then you’re okay cause even when I did “Weakest Link, I always thought that when Anne Robinson did “Weakest Link” that she would just go for people’s jugular and like shoot out their kneecaps for no reason. Whereas I sort of saw it as these are all my children, and I love my children, but when your children get out of line, you thunk them on the head. You don’t really ultimately want to hurt your children, but sometimes you gotta smack them on the ass pretty hard. I think you look at it that way. When your friend slips on a banana peel, you’re gonna laugh and point, but you don’t want your friend to be hurt. And you will dust them off and help them up. And so that’s the way I approached “Weakest Link,” and I think with “What’s With That House?” I decided I want to have fun but not make fun. And, c’mon, if you live in a house that’s covered with shag carpeting, including the exterior of it, you can’t be taking yourself too seriously.
ANDELMAN: Now, I wanted you to finish that, but there was an episode, if we can call it an episode, where you’re talking to a guy who has signs all over his house, and he’s showing you a stop sign that he stole from a busy intersection. And then he was bragging about the quality of his compost. And while he’s doing that, you turn to the camera, rolled your index finger by the side of your head, which, of course, is the international symbol for “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” So let’s not be too benign about this.
GRAY: Well, you know what, though? In that kind of instance, if I thought the person was really crazy, I would’ve never done that. So if I know he’s just kind of a goofy guy that I’m having a good time with… You know the deal. If you’re next to one of your friends who’s being a goofball, you would absolutely do that.
ANDELMAN: Right.
GRAY: If you’re next to somebody who you think has a mental disorder, I think you would find that pretty insulting.
ANDELMAN: That would be true.
GRAY: So you always gauge your audience. And, definitely, some homeowners are a little more serious than the others, but everybody really enjoys living in their homes and has fun with them. And they understand what the show is about. It’s about enjoying the diversity of weird homes.
ANDELMAN: There was another one I liked. I think the family had a castle, and the parents were just so proud. And then you asked the teenage boy about it, if he was really proud about it, and he was like, “No, no. I’m not happy to be living here at all.”
GRAY: It’s so funny that you would think that a 13 or 14-year-old kid would hate to live in a normal house but be thrilled to live in a castle. But the true axiom of the world is 14-year-olds hate everything.
ANDELMAN: True.
GRAY: That’s just the way it works. So you get to see that if you’re talking to a 14-year-old, they’re not happy. Best thing is put out some food, some water, and a video game and leave them alone until they’re about 19.
ANDELMAN: Now, Mr. Gray, I understand that there’s a call for you. Department of Children and Families is calling in a little concerned about some of your child-rearing techniques.
GRAY: Well, you notice anytime I’m called Mr. Gray, I’m generally in court.
ANDELMAN: Now, I’ve told you a couple of the episodes that I’ve really liked. Do you have some favorites of your own from either the homes or the homeowners?
GRAY: Oh, gosh, there’re so many. I’ve probably been to almost a couple hundred houses, and each one, there’s something great about it. There really has never been a house where I haven’t found some little gem.
One of my favorites is a woman in Austin who -- her first name escapes me right now -- just the sweetest, sweetest woman, a fairly well-known and very respected local artist. And Austin is a very funky place to live. If anybody’s from Austin right now or ever been there, it’s definitely eclectic. And she had a normal house. It was probably a home built in the late ‘20s maybe early ‘30s. She put art on every single square inch of her house, every single square inch. And she was very good at it. She did a lot of Day of the Dead kind of stuff, a lot of heavy, heavy thick oils and paints. But she would paint something and then drape something on top of that and drape something on top of that. And when you went through her whole house, she actually…you opened her oven, and her oven was like a diorama. It had art in the oven. Every single square inch of her home was art, including her toilet seat. Everything. And she was just the neatest, craziest person I’ve ever met, and I had such a great time with her.
And then there’s a house that I went to that was made by a guy in the sixties as a UFO. And it actually had a dropping drawbridge that you walked up into. The home itself was pretty much, if a UFO’s gonna land, this is what it would look like. The home was, I guess what, 12 feet off the ground on three stilts that stuck out like the 1950’s kind of saucer. And you walked up into it, and it was a freakin’ flying saucer -- except it was a flying saucer built in like 1969, 1970. It had shag carpeting. They were pimpin’ space aliens. It was great. So those are just fun. There was one in Arizona near Bisbee -- I have a house in Bisbee. I love Bisbee. Great, great town. They had actually blasted with mining caps a 3,000-square-foot home completely into the mountainside. Like when you looked at the face of the home, it looked like a tiny little shack. Well, that was actually the front porch. It was about a 10-foot front porch, and you think, oh, wow, it’s a tiny little shack sitting here. Three-thousand square feet, which is huge, straight into the mountain. I mean really gorgeous, absolutely a gorgeous, gorgeous home. So neat, so weird.
ANDELMAN: Wow. You really are exposed to so many things. You think maybe you’ve seen it all, especially I’m in Florida. I was pretty sure I’d seen it all until I’ve seen some of the houses that you’ve been to on the show.
GRAY: Right.
ANDELMAN: You mentioned when we started talking about doing the voice-overs, going to the studio after the episode’s been taped and doing the voice-overs. The other thing that’s really interesting about the show is the use of the pop-ups, very similar to…I was trying to remember what it’s called. VH1 used to have this show that started doing this “Pop-up Video, I think it was.
GRAY: Yeah, “Pop-up Video.” Sure.
ANDELMAN: And when you read them, I can actually hear George Gray in my head, although I was wondering, do you contribute to those, or are those done by the production staff?
GRAY: Those actually are not me. And a lot of times I think they’re generated through the editors. There’s a woman named Karen, a guy named Aaron, basically anybody that has a rhyming name gets a job there automatically. And they’ll come up with funny little bits. They’re great. I think some of it might stem from something I’ve said that they can’t use. Some of it’s just something that they think is really goofy. Everybody that works on the show and around the show has a great, great sense of humor. I love some of those. They’re not really pop-ups so much as like an arrow will come flying in or something.
ANDELMAN: Right. Right.
GRAY: Yeah, they make me laugh because I’ve never seen them. And I think it’s really funny what they’re able to do with them. It just adds an extra little tidbit of information or something.
ANDELMAN: I guess a family had made, I don’t know if it was the wall or if it was a piece of art that had the bottoms of wine bottles. And the wife was saying that her husband actually had to drink all the wine, poor guy, to get to the point where they could cut off the bottoms. And then the pop-up was pointing out what each brand of bottle was. It’s that extra little detail. It’s like the old Spy magazine, the stuff in the margins.
GRAY: I love that stuff. It’s fun!
ANDELMAN: It shows somebody’s putting a little extra effort in.
GRAY: I’ve been having a great time with the show. It’s really a hoot. It really is. And we’ve got a Christmas special that’s gonna be just tons and tons of fun to get to see all the homes, including some in Florida, where people just, if you put up one strand of lights, that must be great so then ten-thousand strands of lights must be better.
ANDELMAN: I think I know the house you’re talking about, actually. There’s one in my mother-in-law’s old neighborhood that drew thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people. I think that they moved some of their lights to Disney, but then they started all over again.
GRAY: Wow.
ANDELMAN: George, if we were invited into your home, what would we see, and what would embarrass you?
GRAY: I have the Matthew McConaughey “Clothes are for suckers” kind of rule. So that is a little awkward to begin with. You know what? My house, actually, was featured on “What’s With That House?” We did a really funny tongue-in-cheek bit where I’m up in the Hollywood Hills: “Look at all these funky cars around this house,” and somebody’s working on the car. Nobody works on their cars in the Hollywood Hills. And I walk up, and the guy from under the hood pops up, and it’s me. And we did an old, like they did in “Bewitched,” the old split-screen.
ANDELMAN: Right.
GRAY: We had somebody double me. A friend of mine doubled me from the back. And then, when we were face-to-face, it’s all split-screen. And it actually came out really, really, really, really good and funny. And so I interview myself, and the host on HGTV, he’s a little too dorky, a little too eager puppy, and a little too obnoxious. And then the celebrity George Gray from “Junkyard Wars,” “Weakest Link,” et al. is a B-lister sliding to the F-scale who thinks he’s way more important than he really is and just kind of an egotistical idiot. I played those two different characters and walked through the house. I have a bar called “Stinky’s Bar and Cigar Lounge” so we actually got to do some funny bits in Stinky’s, which is kind of everything’s 1930s, 1940s, 50s, vintage pinball machines and slot machines and Coke machines and old Rat Pack pictures and just tons of fun. We had a blast doing that one. So if you walk into my house, you get an eyeful.
ANDELMAN: And what did your neighbors say?
GRAY: Actually, it’s great because I interviewed my neighbors as if I was asking about, “What’s it like to live next to that George Gray.” And it was great. They played along fabulously. My one neighbor, Joy, I said, “What’s it like living next to a big television star like George Gray?” She said, “He has a job? I just thought he sat around all day. I didn’t know he did anything.” So she was very funny and making fun of me. And then my next-door neighbor, John, also made fun of me so it was great. It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
ANDELMAN: Now, people can go to the HGTV website and look up “What’s With That House?” and it lists the episodes by the nicknames of the house. So how would we find your house on the list?
GRAY: Ooh, that’s a good question. Does it list every episode?
ANDELMAN: Yeah, it does.
GRAY: Wow.
ANDELMAN: Gotta go to your website, George, c’mon.
GRAY: That’s amazing. Well, you can go to georgegray.com, and you can see what Stinky’s looks like, but we don’t have the episode in it.
ANDELMAN: Okay.
GRAY: That’s just my personal website. So you can catch a view of Stinky’s, but yeah, to see that bit, it might say Stinky’s Bar and Cigar Lounge. It might say George Gray’s house. It’s probably one or the other.
ANDELMAN: Okay. So you didn’t have…it wasn’t a particular nickname? Okay.
GRAY: I would say Stinky’s. I would go with that because the bar is named after my 17-pound cat.
ANDELMAN: I got in a plug for the website there, too, so there we go.
GRAY: That’s bad.
ANDELMAN: George, thank you so much for joining us today on Mr. Media. It’s been a lot of fun.
GRAY: I’ve had a blast, Bob. I really have, and you got yourself a great show. And keep spreading the word.
ANDELMAN: On that note, remember “What’s With That House?” is broadcast every Wednesday on HGTV at 11:30 PM Eastern or Pacific.
© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
BOB ANDELMAN: You say that HGTV is kind of conservative. Of course, they do air the show 11:30 at night. And the humor on the show would fit in primetime on any network, but yeah, I can see that it might be a little offbeat for them.
GEORGE GRAY: Let’s just say, yeah, we caused a bit of a scare when we first joined ranks with them, but they knew who I was, and they were happy to have me aboard. They said they wanted to try something a little crazier, a little more fun, not so much khaki. HGTV has been really, really great to me. There’s a woman named Beth Burke… At every network, there’s always kind of some network suit goon that oversees the show, and she’s the network goon. And she’s just been our biggest savior. She likes for us to get away with all sorts of stuff. We’ll try to slip in these jokes in editing, and she will roll her eyes and then go try to talk to the powers-that-be. But, yes, they like to run me a little more late-night cause I think they see me as like the Dave Chappelle of HGTV. And Senator, I know Dave Chappelle, and you’re no Dave Chappelle.
ANDELMAN: You’re just gonna head that one off right now right by yourself, huh?
GRAY: Exactly. It’s very flattering that they think that but not even close.
ANDELMAN: Have you gotten any feedback from any of the other HGTV hosts? Do any of them have a problem with this being there?
GRAY: With HGTV? No. As a matter of fact, when I get to see the other hosts, they always say, “Man, you get away with murder. They don’t even let me…” It’s always a fun complaint. I guess I’m the naughty child that they just sort of let be bad.
ANDELMAN: How does a house get on the show?
GRAY: I think mostly bribery or threats. But barring that, there’s a crack production team out in Los Angeles, and they scour the country. It’s everything from looking in news stories and clippings for crazy houses that’ve been covered in the local newspaper to people -- once we got on the air and got popular -- sending in emails to HGTV saying, “Hey, I got a weird house in my neighborhood!”
I don’t get to go to every house that we show. I go to most of them. I go to about 80 percent of the homes. But sometimes, we’re shooting two at the same time. I just can’t be at two places at one time. And a really super-nice guy…it was a modern type of home in a very kind of traditional home area. And he sent in his stuff, huge fan of the show, huge fan of HGTV. They said. “Great, we’re gonna do your house.” They set it up, and they said, “Look, we’re not sure if George could come to your house,” and that was a deal-breaker. I was very, very flattered. He said, “I won’t do the show unless George can make it to my house.”
ANDELMAN: Yes, I want to be insulted in person. I don’t want to be insulted long-range.
GRAY: He was just the nicest guy. And it really made me feel good ‘cause you get out there, and you work. You don’t get in touch with a lot of people that are watching your show, and it was neat to have him say, “No, no, I really love the show and wanted you to be here.” And we had a great time. As the show’s become a lot more known and been on for a while, people, when I show up to the house, it’s like seeing an old friend. So that’s really nice.
ANDELMAN: Have you had any problems with any homeowners who didn’t quite get you, and maybe you couldn’t even use the tape?
GRAY: There’ve been a couple of times when I’m probably more liquored-up than I should be, a little touchy-feely, but…No, no. Actually, I think before we’d ever aired, which would’ve been maybe a year and a half ago, we were shooting the beginning of the series, but people didn’t have anything to relate to it. And I really took the time, I think, to tell people what it is. Kind of what I would always say to homeowners, and now people watch it. They know I’m coming to their house. They always TiVo it even if they’ve never seen the series and watch it for five minutes to get the general vibe of it.
I would always say that the show is fun and funny, but it’s not insulting. It’s never about making fun of you or your house. That’s not the point of the show, and it never will be. So it’s about having fun, not making fun. And I really want to always stress that. I think, once you say that to somebody, then you’re okay cause even when I did “Weakest Link, I always thought that when Anne Robinson did “Weakest Link” that she would just go for people’s jugular and like shoot out their kneecaps for no reason. Whereas I sort of saw it as these are all my children, and I love my children, but when your children get out of line, you thunk them on the head. You don’t really ultimately want to hurt your children, but sometimes you gotta smack them on the ass pretty hard. I think you look at it that way. When your friend slips on a banana peel, you’re gonna laugh and point, but you don’t want your friend to be hurt. And you will dust them off and help them up. And so that’s the way I approached “Weakest Link,” and I think with “What’s With That House?” I decided I want to have fun but not make fun. And, c’mon, if you live in a house that’s covered with shag carpeting, including the exterior of it, you can’t be taking yourself too seriously.
ANDELMAN: Now, I wanted you to finish that, but there was an episode, if we can call it an episode, where you’re talking to a guy who has signs all over his house, and he’s showing you a stop sign that he stole from a busy intersection. And then he was bragging about the quality of his compost. And while he’s doing that, you turn to the camera, rolled your index finger by the side of your head, which, of course, is the international symbol for “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” So let’s not be too benign about this.
GRAY: Well, you know what, though? In that kind of instance, if I thought the person was really crazy, I would’ve never done that. So if I know he’s just kind of a goofy guy that I’m having a good time with… You know the deal. If you’re next to one of your friends who’s being a goofball, you would absolutely do that.
ANDELMAN: Right.
GRAY: If you’re next to somebody who you think has a mental disorder, I think you would find that pretty insulting.
ANDELMAN: That would be true.
GRAY: So you always gauge your audience. And, definitely, some homeowners are a little more serious than the others, but everybody really enjoys living in their homes and has fun with them. And they understand what the show is about. It’s about enjoying the diversity of weird homes.
ANDELMAN: There was another one I liked. I think the family had a castle, and the parents were just so proud. And then you asked the teenage boy about it, if he was really proud about it, and he was like, “No, no. I’m not happy to be living here at all.”
GRAY: It’s so funny that you would think that a 13 or 14-year-old kid would hate to live in a normal house but be thrilled to live in a castle. But the true axiom of the world is 14-year-olds hate everything.
ANDELMAN: True.
GRAY: That’s just the way it works. So you get to see that if you’re talking to a 14-year-old, they’re not happy. Best thing is put out some food, some water, and a video game and leave them alone until they’re about 19.
ANDELMAN: Now, Mr. Gray, I understand that there’s a call for you. Department of Children and Families is calling in a little concerned about some of your child-rearing techniques.
GRAY: Well, you notice anytime I’m called Mr. Gray, I’m generally in court.
ANDELMAN: Now, I’ve told you a couple of the episodes that I’ve really liked. Do you have some favorites of your own from either the homes or the homeowners?
GRAY: Oh, gosh, there’re so many. I’ve probably been to almost a couple hundred houses, and each one, there’s something great about it. There really has never been a house where I haven’t found some little gem.
One of my favorites is a woman in Austin who -- her first name escapes me right now -- just the sweetest, sweetest woman, a fairly well-known and very respected local artist. And Austin is a very funky place to live. If anybody’s from Austin right now or ever been there, it’s definitely eclectic. And she had a normal house. It was probably a home built in the late ‘20s maybe early ‘30s. She put art on every single square inch of her house, every single square inch. And she was very good at it. She did a lot of Day of the Dead kind of stuff, a lot of heavy, heavy thick oils and paints. But she would paint something and then drape something on top of that and drape something on top of that. And when you went through her whole house, she actually…you opened her oven, and her oven was like a diorama. It had art in the oven. Every single square inch of her home was art, including her toilet seat. Everything. And she was just the neatest, craziest person I’ve ever met, and I had such a great time with her.
And then there’s a house that I went to that was made by a guy in the sixties as a UFO. And it actually had a dropping drawbridge that you walked up into. The home itself was pretty much, if a UFO’s gonna land, this is what it would look like. The home was, I guess what, 12 feet off the ground on three stilts that stuck out like the 1950’s kind of saucer. And you walked up into it, and it was a freakin’ flying saucer -- except it was a flying saucer built in like 1969, 1970. It had shag carpeting. They were pimpin’ space aliens. It was great. So those are just fun. There was one in Arizona near Bisbee -- I have a house in Bisbee. I love Bisbee. Great, great town. They had actually blasted with mining caps a 3,000-square-foot home completely into the mountainside. Like when you looked at the face of the home, it looked like a tiny little shack. Well, that was actually the front porch. It was about a 10-foot front porch, and you think, oh, wow, it’s a tiny little shack sitting here. Three-thousand square feet, which is huge, straight into the mountain. I mean really gorgeous, absolutely a gorgeous, gorgeous home. So neat, so weird.
ANDELMAN: Wow. You really are exposed to so many things. You think maybe you’ve seen it all, especially I’m in Florida. I was pretty sure I’d seen it all until I’ve seen some of the houses that you’ve been to on the show.
GRAY: Right.
ANDELMAN: You mentioned when we started talking about doing the voice-overs, going to the studio after the episode’s been taped and doing the voice-overs. The other thing that’s really interesting about the show is the use of the pop-ups, very similar to…I was trying to remember what it’s called. VH1 used to have this show that started doing this “Pop-up Video, I think it was.
GRAY: Yeah, “Pop-up Video.” Sure.
ANDELMAN: And when you read them, I can actually hear George Gray in my head, although I was wondering, do you contribute to those, or are those done by the production staff?
GRAY: Those actually are not me. And a lot of times I think they’re generated through the editors. There’s a woman named Karen, a guy named Aaron, basically anybody that has a rhyming name gets a job there automatically. And they’ll come up with funny little bits. They’re great. I think some of it might stem from something I’ve said that they can’t use. Some of it’s just something that they think is really goofy. Everybody that works on the show and around the show has a great, great sense of humor. I love some of those. They’re not really pop-ups so much as like an arrow will come flying in or something.
ANDELMAN: Right. Right.
GRAY: Yeah, they make me laugh because I’ve never seen them. And I think it’s really funny what they’re able to do with them. It just adds an extra little tidbit of information or something.
ANDELMAN: I guess a family had made, I don’t know if it was the wall or if it was a piece of art that had the bottoms of wine bottles. And the wife was saying that her husband actually had to drink all the wine, poor guy, to get to the point where they could cut off the bottoms. And then the pop-up was pointing out what each brand of bottle was. It’s that extra little detail. It’s like the old Spy magazine, the stuff in the margins.
GRAY: I love that stuff. It’s fun!
ANDELMAN: It shows somebody’s putting a little extra effort in.
GRAY: I’ve been having a great time with the show. It’s really a hoot. It really is. And we’ve got a Christmas special that’s gonna be just tons and tons of fun to get to see all the homes, including some in Florida, where people just, if you put up one strand of lights, that must be great so then ten-thousand strands of lights must be better.
ANDELMAN: I think I know the house you’re talking about, actually. There’s one in my mother-in-law’s old neighborhood that drew thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people. I think that they moved some of their lights to Disney, but then they started all over again.
GRAY: Wow.
ANDELMAN: George, if we were invited into your home, what would we see, and what would embarrass you?
GRAY: I have the Matthew McConaughey “Clothes are for suckers” kind of rule. So that is a little awkward to begin with. You know what? My house, actually, was featured on “What’s With That House?” We did a really funny tongue-in-cheek bit where I’m up in the Hollywood Hills: “Look at all these funky cars around this house,” and somebody’s working on the car. Nobody works on their cars in the Hollywood Hills. And I walk up, and the guy from under the hood pops up, and it’s me. And we did an old, like they did in “Bewitched,” the old split-screen.
ANDELMAN: Right.
GRAY: We had somebody double me. A friend of mine doubled me from the back. And then, when we were face-to-face, it’s all split-screen. And it actually came out really, really, really, really good and funny. And so I interview myself, and the host on HGTV, he’s a little too dorky, a little too eager puppy, and a little too obnoxious. And then the celebrity George Gray from “Junkyard Wars,” “Weakest Link,” et al. is a B-lister sliding to the F-scale who thinks he’s way more important than he really is and just kind of an egotistical idiot. I played those two different characters and walked through the house. I have a bar called “Stinky’s Bar and Cigar Lounge” so we actually got to do some funny bits in Stinky’s, which is kind of everything’s 1930s, 1940s, 50s, vintage pinball machines and slot machines and Coke machines and old Rat Pack pictures and just tons of fun. We had a blast doing that one. So if you walk into my house, you get an eyeful.
ANDELMAN: And what did your neighbors say?
GRAY: Actually, it’s great because I interviewed my neighbors as if I was asking about, “What’s it like to live next to that George Gray.” And it was great. They played along fabulously. My one neighbor, Joy, I said, “What’s it like living next to a big television star like George Gray?” She said, “He has a job? I just thought he sat around all day. I didn’t know he did anything.” So she was very funny and making fun of me. And then my next-door neighbor, John, also made fun of me so it was great. It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
ANDELMAN: Now, people can go to the HGTV website and look up “What’s With That House?” and it lists the episodes by the nicknames of the house. So how would we find your house on the list?
GRAY: Ooh, that’s a good question. Does it list every episode?
ANDELMAN: Yeah, it does.
GRAY: Wow.
ANDELMAN: Gotta go to your website, George, c’mon.
GRAY: That’s amazing. Well, you can go to georgegray.com, and you can see what Stinky’s looks like, but we don’t have the episode in it.
ANDELMAN: Okay.
GRAY: That’s just my personal website. So you can catch a view of Stinky’s, but yeah, to see that bit, it might say Stinky’s Bar and Cigar Lounge. It might say George Gray’s house. It’s probably one or the other.
ANDELMAN: Okay. So you didn’t have…it wasn’t a particular nickname? Okay.
GRAY: I would say Stinky’s. I would go with that because the bar is named after my 17-pound cat.
ANDELMAN: I got in a plug for the website there, too, so there we go.
GRAY: That’s bad.
ANDELMAN: George, thank you so much for joining us today on Mr. Media. It’s been a lot of fun.
GRAY: I’ve had a blast, Bob. I really have, and you got yourself a great show. And keep spreading the word.
ANDELMAN: On that note, remember “What’s With That House?” is broadcast every Wednesday on HGTV at 11:30 PM Eastern or Pacific.
© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
Labels: Beth Burke, Dave Chappelle, George Gray, HGTV, Junkyard Wars, Kegels, shelter, The Weakest Link, What's With That House
¶ 8:20 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
Thursday, June 28, 2007
David Bankston, "Neighborhood America" chief technology officer: Mr. Media Interview, Pt. 1
Today’s media newsmaker interview is a little different. I don’t expect many people will know either my guest, David Bankston, or the company he represents, Neighborhood America.
It’s very likely, though, that you may have already encountered a Neighborhood America program and not even realized it. The Naples, Florida, based company does enterprise-social networks for CBS, Fox, the Scripps Network, and HDTV, among others, and David Bankston is the co-founder and chief technology officer for Neighborhood America, a leading provider of solutions for online engagement and interaction via all forms of content.
Specializing in software integration and technical innovation, David has devoted much of his career to creating next-generation technologies specifically designed to solve real-world business problems.
Under his leadership, Neighborhood America’s solutions have been successfully adopted nationwide by various organizations, and media companies are turning to Neighborhood America in order to harness the power of the Web to effectively engage audiences. Prior to Neighborhood America, David’s technology career included fifteen years at Lexis/Nexis, where he was responsible for many innovations that are still in use today.
DOWNLOAD THE MP3;
LISTEN HERE.
ALSO AVAILABLE AS A PODCAST
ON iTUNES.
BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: David, I suspect a lot of people are scratching their heads right now. Enterprise social networks? What the hell are you talking about?
DAVID BANKSTON: Basically, an enterprise social network is a network that is really focused to the enterprise. Now, let’s break that “social network” apart. I think people have pretty well got that figured out. It’s the MySpaces, it’s the YouTubes, even some of the photo-sharing sites, like Flickr and so forth. The term social network now has become, it’s almost ubiquitous. It’s almost anything that lets you get together and share content and start to meet others and have profiles and discuss your issues. It’s a way to bring together people who are interested in a specific community, and it’s a community of interest. We’ve really been working at this over seven years, we have taken that social network premise and focused it and built a platform, a net made of software as a service solution that tailors a social network to the enterprise, the enterprise being a business in the public sector, a government organization or an agency, and of course, in the media sector, a network. We have many networks, some of which you’ve mentioned, so these are communities that are purpose-built to create a new source of revenue for these individual businesses. Then specifically in the case of the public, it may be to be engage the public in a conversation, the equivalent of the old public comment ways. This is the new way to do public comment. So that is what an enterprise social network is.
ANDELMAN: So one example of what you’re doing might be Springboard, which you are doing for CBS, right?
BANKSTON: Yes.
ANDELMAN: The difference here, I want to point this out, because I have actually given this some thought, you tell me if I’m wrong here. MySpace is a social network, and people think of it as they are going in and they are having fun. It’s not enterprise-specific. However, it is certainly generating revenue for Rupert Murdoch and the Fox companies.
BANKSTON: Yes, but how could it generate revenue for CBS, for Johnson & Johnson, or some other brand? The problem with today’s social networks is that they are very much like the Wild West in that you really don’t know what you’re going to see from click to click or from page to page. There is no regulation, there is no moderation, very little, if any, and so when you are a business and you are looking for an ROI, you are looking a way to tap into your customer base, which then equals your social network, so you want to improve on things such as your R&D process, your product release process, your customer loyalty programs, etc., those are things that you want to have control over as you communicate with the social network or with your stakeholders in that social network.
ANDELMAN: It all sounds positive for the enterprise, for the company, but where does the independent user benefit from being part of an enterprise network as opposed to a social network?
BANKSTON: The consumer.
ANDELMAN: The consumer.
BANKSTON: Yes. Well, let’s take the example of like the Chrysler Corporation. Chrysler is looking to build or would love to have a social network built around their products and services, so what are the problems that they are trying to solve? Well, they are trying to improve their market share, they are trying to understand why they keep having so many misses in the market. Today, whatever they are doing isn’t quite working to tap into the new generation of car buyers. By using a social network, they can engage on a very personal level with these individuals who have bought their products in the past, who have an affinity for a Chrysler product, and who desperately want to provide that feedback to Chrysler in a way that it will be constructively listened to and acted upon, and then to have the full circle to actually see that that comment and that feedback was indeed incorporated into the next generation of product. So imagine you are a Chrysler 300 owner, and you are saying, “I really wish this armrest just was a little lower, because I keep bumping into it.” Well, you give that feedback and others like you then potentially give that feedback to Chrysler. The next generation car has a redesigned armrest because the people are then helping the corporation, who has done this in a vacuum in the past, to improve their products and services. Then I’m the consumer, I’m going to go buy another one because Chrysler heard me, and they did something about it, and they care about me, and that’s something I’ve gotten out of it. So that’s just one example.
ANDELMAN: I kind of sidetracked us there, but let’s talk about CBS and Springboard. First of all, what is Springboard?
BANKSTON: Springboard - it was actually a specific initiative. It was a contest, so in the case of CBS, they were looking to find an intern for Katie Couric this summer. They sent out a request to all of the main journalism schools saying, “Go to CBS.com, and you can submit a video of some of your work or a document, a white paper if that’s all you have, and you can have the chance of being considered for Katie Couric’s intern.” That may include on-air spots, that may include all sorts of really career-making opportunity for that individual. Using our social network and platform, they created this place where these journalism students then were able to create an account, submit their own media, and also comment, rate, and rank others’ content, and all of that feedback, then, is managed by our back-end solution again, which is software as a service. We were able to provide very comprehensive reports and actually, using the software you generate your own reports, and so from the data that they got, Katie was able to pick her intern, and they haven’t announced that yet, but they have picked an intern from that particular program.
ANDELMAN: And how many videos were contributed? How many people participated?
BANKSTON: You know, I can’t release that, because it’s CBS’s information.
ANDELMAN: All right, but was there advertising put on these pages?
BANKSTON: No.
ANDELMAN: No advertising?
BANKSTON: Well, there was advertising on the first login page, and then on some of the subsequent pages, there was less advertising until one of the upload pages had no advertising. So that’s a combo answer there.
ANDELMAN: This was not necessarily an effort to earn revenue as to maybe….
BANKSTON: No.
ANDELMAN: Were they more interested in testing it as a medium?
BANKSTON: They were testing it as a medium, number one. Number two, they were putting their toe in for just building social networks around the concept of journalism, and so it was a way to “Hey, can we just sort of put our toe in the water here and look at this concept?”
ANDELMAN: Interesting. Now, you guys did something else with Katie Couric, right?
BANKSTON: Yeah, we’ve done a couple things in the past. When she first took over the “CBS Evening News,” she actually sent out a request on the first evening of her program, she said to America, “I’m looking to figure out what my sign-off should be. Should it be, good night, good luck? Should it be, that’s all, folks?” Whatever it may be. And she played some famous sign-offs from other anchors, and so she asked America, “Well, what should it be?” Well, within really about, it was actually about twenty-four hours, we had over 50,000 responses on what your sign-off should be. Now, that’s one little simple question, and we had 50,000 people giving their comments on what that should be. And what was really interesting is all that was broken up by time zones, so you could see geographic locations of where people were listening and where they were commenting from or watching, and it was very interesting data that was obtained from that.
© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
Today’s media newsmaker interview is a little different. I don’t expect many people will know either my guest, David Bankston, or the company he represents, Neighborhood America.
It’s very likely, though, that you may have already encountered a Neighborhood America program and not even realized it. The Naples, Florida, based company does enterprise-social networks for CBS, Fox, the Scripps Network, and HDTV, among others, and David Bankston is the co-founder and chief technology officer for Neighborhood America, a leading provider of solutions for online engagement and interaction via all forms of content.
Specializing in software integration and technical innovation, David has devoted much of his career to creating next-generation technologies specifically designed to solve real-world business problems.
Under his leadership, Neighborhood America’s solutions have been successfully adopted nationwide by various organizations, and media companies are turning to Neighborhood America in order to harness the power of the Web to effectively engage audiences. Prior to Neighborhood America, David’s technology career included fifteen years at Lexis/Nexis, where he was responsible for many innovations that are still in use today.
LISTEN HERE.
ALSO AVAILABLE AS A PODCAST
ON iTUNES.
DAVID BANKSTON: Basically, an enterprise social network is a network that is really focused to the enterprise. Now, let’s break that “social network” apart. I think people have pretty well got that figured out. It’s the MySpaces, it’s the YouTubes, even some of the photo-sharing sites, like Flickr and so forth. The term social network now has become, it’s almost ubiquitous. It’s almost anything that lets you get together and share content and start to meet others and have profiles and discuss your issues. It’s a way to bring together people who are interested in a specific community, and it’s a community of interest. We’ve really been working at this over seven years, we have taken that social network premise and focused it and built a platform, a net made of software as a service solution that tailors a social network to the enterprise, the enterprise being a business in the public sector, a government organization or an agency, and of course, in the media sector, a network. We have many networks, some of which you’ve mentioned, so these are communities that are purpose-built to create a new source of revenue for these individual businesses. Then specifically in the case of the public, it may be to be engage the public in a conversation, the equivalent of the old public comment ways. This is the new way to do public comment. So that is what an enterprise social network is.
ANDELMAN: So one example of what you’re doing might be Springboard, which you are doing for CBS, right?
BANKSTON: Yes.
ANDELMAN: The difference here, I want to point this out, because I have actually given this some thought, you tell me if I’m wrong here. MySpace is a social network, and people think of it as they are going in and they are having fun. It’s not enterprise-specific. However, it is certainly generating revenue for Rupert Murdoch and the Fox companies.
BANKSTON: Yes, but how could it generate revenue for CBS, for Johnson & Johnson, or some other brand? The problem with today’s social networks is that they are very much like the Wild West in that you really don’t know what you’re going to see from click to click or from page to page. There is no regulation, there is no moderation, very little, if any, and so when you are a business and you are looking for an ROI, you are looking a way to tap into your customer base, which then equals your social network, so you want to improve on things such as your R&D process, your product release process, your customer loyalty programs, etc., those are things that you want to have control over as you communicate with the social network or with your stakeholders in that social network.
ANDELMAN: It all sounds positive for the enterprise, for the company, but where does the independent user benefit from being part of an enterprise network as opposed to a social network?
BANKSTON: The consumer.
ANDELMAN: The consumer.
BANKSTON: Yes. Well, let’s take the example of like the Chrysler Corporation. Chrysler is looking to build or would love to have a social network built around their products and services, so what are the problems that they are trying to solve? Well, they are trying to improve their market share, they are trying to understand why they keep having so many misses in the market. Today, whatever they are doing isn’t quite working to tap into the new generation of car buyers. By using a social network, they can engage on a very personal level with these individuals who have bought their products in the past, who have an affinity for a Chrysler product, and who desperately want to provide that feedback to Chrysler in a way that it will be constructively listened to and acted upon, and then to have the full circle to actually see that that comment and that feedback was indeed incorporated into the next generation of product. So imagine you are a Chrysler 300 owner, and you are saying, “I really wish this armrest just was a little lower, because I keep bumping into it.” Well, you give that feedback and others like you then potentially give that feedback to Chrysler. The next generation car has a redesigned armrest because the people are then helping the corporation, who has done this in a vacuum in the past, to improve their products and services. Then I’m the consumer, I’m going to go buy another one because Chrysler heard me, and they did something about it, and they care about me, and that’s something I’ve gotten out of it. So that’s just one example.
ANDELMAN: I kind of sidetracked us there, but let’s talk about CBS and Springboard. First of all, what is Springboard?
BANKSTON: Springboard - it was actually a specific initiative. It was a contest, so in the case of CBS, they were looking to find an intern for Katie Couric this summer. They sent out a request to all of the main journalism schools saying, “Go to CBS.com, and you can submit a video of some of your work or a document, a white paper if that’s all you have, and you can have the chance of being considered for Katie Couric’s intern.” That may include on-air spots, that may include all sorts of really career-making opportunity for that individual. Using our social network and platform, they created this place where these journalism students then were able to create an account, submit their own media, and also comment, rate, and rank others’ content, and all of that feedback, then, is managed by our back-end solution again, which is software as a service. We were able to provide very comprehensive reports and actually, using the software you generate your own reports, and so from the data that they got, Katie was able to pick her intern, and they haven’t announced that yet, but they have picked an intern from that particular program.
ANDELMAN: And how many videos were contributed? How many people participated?
BANKSTON: You know, I can’t release that, because it’s CBS’s information.
ANDELMAN: All right, but was there advertising put on these pages?
BANKSTON: No.
ANDELMAN: No advertising?
BANKSTON: Well, there was advertising on the first login page, and then on some of the subsequent pages, there was less advertising until one of the upload pages had no advertising. So that’s a combo answer there.
ANDELMAN: This was not necessarily an effort to earn revenue as to maybe….
BANKSTON: No.
ANDELMAN: Were they more interested in testing it as a medium?
BANKSTON: They were testing it as a medium, number one. Number two, they were putting their toe in for just building social networks around the concept of journalism, and so it was a way to “Hey, can we just sort of put our toe in the water here and look at this concept?”
ANDELMAN: Interesting. Now, you guys did something else with Katie Couric, right?
BANKSTON: Yeah, we’ve done a couple things in the past. When she first took over the “CBS Evening News,” she actually sent out a request on the first evening of her program, she said to America, “I’m looking to figure out what my sign-off should be. Should it be, good night, good luck? Should it be, that’s all, folks?” Whatever it may be. And she played some famous sign-offs from other anchors, and so she asked America, “Well, what should it be?” Well, within really about, it was actually about twenty-four hours, we had over 50,000 responses on what your sign-off should be. Now, that’s one little simple question, and we had 50,000 people giving their comments on what that should be. And what was really interesting is all that was broken up by time zones, so you could see geographic locations of where people were listening and where they were commenting from or watching, and it was very interesting data that was obtained from that.
© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
Labels: ABC News, CBS Evening News, David Bankston, Fox News, HGTV, Katie Couric, Neighborhood America, Rate My Space, Sean Hannity, social enterprise network, Springboard, uReport Be Seen Be Heard
¶ 2:30 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
David Bankston, "Neighborhood America" chief technology officer: Mr. Media Interview, Pt. 2
ANDELMAN: And what kind of feedback have you gotten from CBS about this? What have they liked, what have they wanted to tweak, and where is it going from this point forward?
BANKSTON: Well, I have to be cautious, as we are under NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) with them, but they are very pleased. They were very pleased about the Springboard results, and they are looking to do much more engaging social networks in the future, and that’s really probably as far as I can go on this specific customer.
ANDELMAN: How is this different than on the CBS.com Web site where they might have forums for people to participate? What’s the difference?
BANKSTON: Today’s world on many of the media sites is specifically forums and/or forum post uploads or things like that. It’s not a place that you are really a community member of. In the future, expect to see places where, when you go to a network, and I will speak in generalities here, when you go to a place, you’ll be able then to have your profile, and there will be much more of a two-way conversation between you and that network. So you then are an extension of their staff. You are an extension of their citizens’ journalism network, and so as you then grow in your relationship, then perhaps you get ranked higher than others, and then perhaps your content then, as it becomes newsworthy and becomes relevant and people understand you, then at that point, your content goes to the top of the list and gets reviewed first. It has potential ability to drive a lot of what is going on and what is reported on. So you really have the ability to affect the news.
ANDELMAN: This is kind of like, I’m thinking of e-pinions.
BANKSTON: To some degree, yeah.
ANDELMAN: Or maybe reader reviews on Amazon, that kind of thing.
BANKSTON: Exactly. That was product-based specifically. I read the reader reviews on Amazon to see what others have thought and what others have bought. That is a component of social networking. Social networking doesn’t have to be real-time by any means. It can be the past.
ANDELMAN: Let’s talk about another media client. This is Mr. Media; we have to stick to the media. You’ve done work with Fox as well.
BANKSTON: Yes, Fox News and then HGTV. We are the mechanism which powers the Fox News “uReport.” So if you go to Foxnews.com and you can click around on many of their shows, everything from “Hannity” to “Fox News Now” and so forth, you can click around on all their shows, and on most all of their shows, there is a section dedicated to the uReport. The uReport is a first step at having the public, the viewers, join into their community and affect news and affect what we’re reporting on and comment on what we’re reporting on. As you go to that site, you can even just search on it, and you’ll find that once you are in the uReport, you’ll see that all roads in there lead to Neighborhood America, so you’ll see Neighborhood America branding.
ANDELMAN: Oh, you do have branding on that site?
BANKSTON: Yes, there is.
ANDELMAN: Again, tell me about where is the revenue generation in this?
BANKSTON: In this particular case, it is very much advertising-focused for just the intros, just getting more people to look at the site, which then creates more page news, which creates more revenue opportunity. In this case, it is specifically looking at getting people to come back. It’s okay, you know, like today when you go and you are looking at news, do you constantly pull up Fox as your news channel, or do you pull up CBS, or do you pull up… Who do you pull up? So what they’re trying to do is increase viewer loyalty, and they are looking to say, “You’re a part of our team, and we want to hear what you have to say.” And that then will equate revenue, so as you are getting consistent viewership, that goes into ratings, that goes into revenues, etc. So there are several rows to it.
ANDELMAN: It’s that “stickiness” term.
BANKSTON: Yes.
ANDELMAN: They want more eyeballs, they want you to stick around longer.
BANKSTON: Absolutely. And if you’re uploading your content, you’re sticking around longer.
ANDELMAN: Am I the only one who finds it just kind of amusing that you are doing these things for CBS and Fox?
BANKSTON: It is rather amusing, and then you throw ABC in there, too.
ANDELMAN: Are you doing ABC as well?
BANKSTON: We are.
ANDELMAN: Oh, I didn’t realize that.
BANKSTON: If you go to ABC, we power what they are calling the “Be Seen, Be Heard” program, which is again citizen journalism. So you have the big three there, or the big three out of four, and it’s quite interesting that we are powering them all, and they are very different organizations, as we all know.
ANDELMAN: I imagine there must be a rival out there who’s going, “We’ve got to go after one of these. They shouldn’t have all of those.”
BANKSTON: Yes, and that is the competitive market that we are in. So we have to constantly push the envelope and try to stay ahead.
ANDELMAN: There is one more example, and I love this one in particular because the others are generally news driven. You are doing something for HGTV. I think it’s “Rate My Space.”
BANKSTON: Right.
ANDELMAN: I love this, because it’s consumer friendly, but it’s got a great revenue model, and it’s been very successful, right?
BANKSTON: Absolutely. It’s been extremely successful, and we’ve actually published some white papers on how to build a community from scratch. In this particular case, HGTV’s “Rate My Space” was launched about nine weeks ago, and it was launched with zero members essentially. It was a new community. And within those nine weeks, we’ve got over 40,000 new members, all new, and this is new eyeballs and new page views, etc. We’ve had over 10 million page views, and we’ve have hundreds of thousands of comments from these individuals. On top of that, there’s thousands of rooms and photos and things like that. So it is a fully fledged living, breathing community that launched nine weeks ago and has already created a new source of revenue, and this is where we are going with enterprise social networks again. We create a new source of revenue that you didn’t have before. And I can share this with you, too: Before the launch of “Rate My Space,” HGTV.com was pretty much sold out with inventory for the next few months.
ANDELMAN: On its Web site.
BANKSTON: On it’s Web site, yeah, so they had sold all of their page views, so they couldn’t sell any more ads, so after the launch of this, they now have plenty of inventory, and they’ve done a nice job selling that, and they’ve already made quite a bit of money.
ANDELMAN: It seems like the HGTV is a true win-win. It’s very clear what the revenue model is and that it generates revenue, so that’s the enterprise side. But on the other side of it, the consumer side, it’s a lot of fun. If you have an interest in this, interior design and homes, this is something you are going to go back and go back, and the show may only be only the air for six months a year, but the Web site can go indefinitely.
BANKSTON: Absolutely. And it’s only going to get bigger and better. The Web site is actually creating the show instead of the other way around. Additionally, the Web site now is even being used for things that they hadn’t thought of. For example, if you are a designer and you post some of your rooms on “Rate My Space” and they get ranked very highly, well, what better portfolio can you make for yourself to point your prospective customers to?
ANDELMAN: David, how will these enterprise social networks -- and I’m assuming that people who are listening to this podcast are comfortable with that term now, now that we’ve explained it about as well as could be explained -- how will they continue to evolve the relationship between TV programs and their viewers and TV programs and their Web sites and their viewers?
BANKSTON: Very good question. What we’re seeing is that as you mentioned earlier, the TV program is only on one time a week, generally. Now, there are lots of exceptions, but if you take that premise, that’s one time a week that you are engaging with the people who are your viewers, and we’ll call them stakeholders in that TV program. Why wouldn’t you want to have 24-by-7 engagement in that TV program? And then, once you’ve done that, now the network or the social network that you’ve created has much more interactivity and is fresher than you could ever get in that once a week touch. If you say your TV program is coming on Tuesday, well, then, the social network by Friday, that’s current information which then should drive the Tuesday program of next week. It basically should reverse what has been the traditional way of the TV program, creating the content and then saying, go look at our Web if you want more information or if you want tape two and all that sort of thing. I see it totally reversing the way TV programs and programming is made in general.
ANDELMAN: David, we are having this conversation the early part of summer. For TV, fall is usually when they launch new shows. What’s ahead for Neighborhood America? Do you have new shows that you are attached to? Are there new networks? What’s ahead? What’s your fall preview?
BANKSTON: Well, I can tell you that there are plenty of new shows and plenty of new networks from many of the customers we’ve already talked about. There’s a lot of great stuff coming out this fall, some of which I can’t comment on. One thing actually I can comment on is as of today, a new customer just launched. It’s actually Men’s Health, and I can’t really go much further into it. But if you go to the Men’s Health site, they’ve launched a new community, and it’s powered by Neighborhood America, and so it would be quite interesting. But what you’ll find is, so in addition to on-air, there is also paper media that we’re working with and all forms of really just communication that we’re really digging into. Specifically, we’re focusing on heavy innovations when it comes to what we’re calling a new concept, another one we’re introducing, called Video Comment, and so look for that showing up in some of these customers that we’ve talked about. Really state of the art stuff.
ANDELMAN: We talked about enterprise social networks in terms of branding. Does Neighborhood America have to be careful to keep its name out there as a brand on some of these networks in some subtle way so that people know that there is a company behind it so you keep getting this business?
BANKSTON: Yes. That’s the short answer to that. We want to keep our branding out in a subtle way. We are not by any means looking to steal the show in any type of form, but we do want to let people that this isn’t an in-house solution. We are selling a net-native software as a service solution. So as you buy the software, it is essentially plugged into your existing Web site, and it’s on; it’s on quickly. We turn social networks on in a matter of a week, even, and so it’s really a very, the next generation of how software is getting sold and just generally acquired.
© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
ANDELMAN: And what kind of feedback have you gotten from CBS about this? What have they liked, what have they wanted to tweak, and where is it going from this point forward?
BANKSTON: Well, I have to be cautious, as we are under NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) with them, but they are very pleased. They were very pleased about the Springboard results, and they are looking to do much more engaging social networks in the future, and that’s really probably as far as I can go on this specific customer.
ANDELMAN: How is this different than on the CBS.com Web site where they might have forums for people to participate? What’s the difference?
BANKSTON: Today’s world on many of the media sites is specifically forums and/or forum post uploads or things like that. It’s not a place that you are really a community member of. In the future, expect to see places where, when you go to a network, and I will speak in generalities here, when you go to a place, you’ll be able then to have your profile, and there will be much more of a two-way conversation between you and that network. So you then are an extension of their staff. You are an extension of their citizens’ journalism network, and so as you then grow in your relationship, then perhaps you get ranked higher than others, and then perhaps your content then, as it becomes newsworthy and becomes relevant and people understand you, then at that point, your content goes to the top of the list and gets reviewed first. It has potential ability to drive a lot of what is going on and what is reported on. So you really have the ability to affect the news.
ANDELMAN: This is kind of like, I’m thinking of e-pinions.
BANKSTON: To some degree, yeah.
ANDELMAN: Or maybe reader reviews on Amazon, that kind of thing.
BANKSTON: Exactly. That was product-based specifically. I read the reader reviews on Amazon to see what others have thought and what others have bought. That is a component of social networking. Social networking doesn’t have to be real-time by any means. It can be the past.
ANDELMAN: Let’s talk about another media client. This is Mr. Media; we have to stick to the media. You’ve done work with Fox as well.
BANKSTON: Yes, Fox News and then HGTV. We are the mechanism which powers the Fox News “uReport.” So if you go to Foxnews.com and you can click around on many of their shows, everything from “Hannity” to “Fox News Now” and so forth, you can click around on all their shows, and on most all of their shows, there is a section dedicated to the uReport. The uReport is a first step at having the public, the viewers, join into their community and affect news and affect what we’re reporting on and comment on what we’re reporting on. As you go to that site, you can even just search on it, and you’ll find that once you are in the uReport, you’ll see that all roads in there lead to Neighborhood America, so you’ll see Neighborhood America branding.
ANDELMAN: Oh, you do have branding on that site?
BANKSTON: Yes, there is.
ANDELMAN: Again, tell me about where is the revenue generation in this?
BANKSTON: In this particular case, it is very much advertising-focused for just the intros, just getting more people to look at the site, which then creates more page news, which creates more revenue opportunity. In this case, it is specifically looking at getting people to come back. It’s okay, you know, like today when you go and you are looking at news, do you constantly pull up Fox as your news channel, or do you pull up CBS, or do you pull up… Who do you pull up? So what they’re trying to do is increase viewer loyalty, and they are looking to say, “You’re a part of our team, and we want to hear what you have to say.” And that then will equate revenue, so as you are getting consistent viewership, that goes into ratings, that goes into revenues, etc. So there are several rows to it.
ANDELMAN: It’s that “stickiness” term.
BANKSTON: Yes.
ANDELMAN: They want more eyeballs, they want you to stick around longer.
BANKSTON: Absolutely. And if you’re uploading your content, you’re sticking around longer.
ANDELMAN: Am I the only one who finds it just kind of amusing that you are doing these things for CBS and Fox?
BANKSTON: It is rather amusing, and then you throw ABC in there, too.
ANDELMAN: Are you doing ABC as well?
BANKSTON: We are.
ANDELMAN: Oh, I didn’t realize that.
BANKSTON: If you go to ABC, we power what they are calling the “Be Seen, Be Heard” program, which is again citizen journalism. So you have the big three there, or the big three out of four, and it’s quite interesting that we are powering them all, and they are very different organizations, as we all know.
ANDELMAN: I imagine there must be a rival out there who’s going, “We’ve got to go after one of these. They shouldn’t have all of those.”
BANKSTON: Yes, and that is the competitive market that we are in. So we have to constantly push the envelope and try to stay ahead.
ANDELMAN: There is one more example, and I love this one in particular because the others are generally news driven. You are doing something for HGTV. I think it’s “Rate My Space.”
BANKSTON: Right.
ANDELMAN: I love this, because it’s consumer friendly, but it’s got a great revenue model, and it’s been very successful, right?
BANKSTON: Absolutely. It’s been extremely successful, and we’ve actually published some white papers on how to build a community from scratch. In this particular case, HGTV’s “Rate My Space” was launched about nine weeks ago, and it was launched with zero members essentially. It was a new community. And within those nine weeks, we’ve got over 40,000 new members, all new, and this is new eyeballs and new page views, etc. We’ve had over 10 million page views, and we’ve have hundreds of thousands of comments from these individuals. On top of that, there’s thousands of rooms and photos and things like that. So it is a fully fledged living, breathing community that launched nine weeks ago and has already created a new source of revenue, and this is where we are going with enterprise social networks again. We create a new source of revenue that you didn’t have before. And I can share this with you, too: Before the launch of “Rate My Space,” HGTV.com was pretty much sold out with inventory for the next few months.
ANDELMAN: On its Web site.
BANKSTON: On it’s Web site, yeah, so they had sold all of their page views, so they couldn’t sell any more ads, so after the launch of this, they now have plenty of inventory, and they’ve done a nice job selling that, and they’ve already made quite a bit of money.
ANDELMAN: It seems like the HGTV is a true win-win. It’s very clear what the revenue model is and that it generates revenue, so that’s the enterprise side. But on the other side of it, the consumer side, it’s a lot of fun. If you have an interest in this, interior design and homes, this is something you are going to go back and go back, and the show may only be only the air for six months a year, but the Web site can go indefinitely.
BANKSTON: Absolutely. And it’s only going to get bigger and better. The Web site is actually creating the show instead of the other way around. Additionally, the Web site now is even being used for things that they hadn’t thought of. For example, if you are a designer and you post some of your rooms on “Rate My Space” and they get ranked very highly, well, what better portfolio can you make for yourself to point your prospective customers to?
ANDELMAN: David, how will these enterprise social networks -- and I’m assuming that people who are listening to this podcast are comfortable with that term now, now that we’ve explained it about as well as could be explained -- how will they continue to evolve the relationship between TV programs and their viewers and TV programs and their Web sites and their viewers?
BANKSTON: Very good question. What we’re seeing is that as you mentioned earlier, the TV program is only on one time a week, generally. Now, there are lots of exceptions, but if you take that premise, that’s one time a week that you are engaging with the people who are your viewers, and we’ll call them stakeholders in that TV program. Why wouldn’t you want to have 24-by-7 engagement in that TV program? And then, once you’ve done that, now the network or the social network that you’ve created has much more interactivity and is fresher than you could ever get in that once a week touch. If you say your TV program is coming on Tuesday, well, then, the social network by Friday, that’s current information which then should drive the Tuesday program of next week. It basically should reverse what has been the traditional way of the TV program, creating the content and then saying, go look at our Web if you want more information or if you want tape two and all that sort of thing. I see it totally reversing the way TV programs and programming is made in general.
ANDELMAN: David, we are having this conversation the early part of summer. For TV, fall is usually when they launch new shows. What’s ahead for Neighborhood America? Do you have new shows that you are attached to? Are there new networks? What’s ahead? What’s your fall preview?
BANKSTON: Well, I can tell you that there are plenty of new shows and plenty of new networks from many of the customers we’ve already talked about. There’s a lot of great stuff coming out this fall, some of which I can’t comment on. One thing actually I can comment on is as of today, a new customer just launched. It’s actually Men’s Health, and I can’t really go much further into it. But if you go to the Men’s Health site, they’ve launched a new community, and it’s powered by Neighborhood America, and so it would be quite interesting. But what you’ll find is, so in addition to on-air, there is also paper media that we’re working with and all forms of really just communication that we’re really digging into. Specifically, we’re focusing on heavy innovations when it comes to what we’re calling a new concept, another one we’re introducing, called Video Comment, and so look for that showing up in some of these customers that we’ve talked about. Really state of the art stuff.
ANDELMAN: We talked about enterprise social networks in terms of branding. Does Neighborhood America have to be careful to keep its name out there as a brand on some of these networks in some subtle way so that people know that there is a company behind it so you keep getting this business?
BANKSTON: Yes. That’s the short answer to that. We want to keep our branding out in a subtle way. We are not by any means looking to steal the show in any type of form, but we do want to let people that this isn’t an in-house solution. We are selling a net-native software as a service solution. So as you buy the software, it is essentially plugged into your existing Web site, and it’s on; it’s on quickly. We turn social networks on in a matter of a week, even, and so it’s really a very, the next generation of how software is getting sold and just generally acquired.
© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
Labels: ABC News, Be Seen Be Heard, CBS Evening News, David Bankston, Fox News, HGTV, Katie Couric, Neighborhood America, Rate My Space, Sean Hannity, social enterprise network, Springboard, uReport
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