During my ~30 years in broadcasting I had numerous occasions to recruit and hire reporters. Because our newsrooms were small (3 or 4 people), reporters also anchored our reports. Which meant they had to be good journalists AND have good on-air delivery. A tough compromise at times.
I wonder if technology like 11ElevenLabs’ speech synthesis will (is) changing this. The audio below is a CNN story “read” by one of their voices. (see previous post for more on this technology)
Bad Lip Reading has an informative Wikipedia page but it doesn’t answer one of my most burning questions. The dialogue/monologue has to be funny nonsense. And it invariably is. But the words always match the lip movement. I’m inclined to believe the funny comes first but the perfect sync seems equally important.
Bad Lip Reading is the creation of Kennedy Unthank: “Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics and hermeneutics. He doesn’t think the ending of Lost was “that bad.”
First, a bit of history: Google Video was a free video hosting service launched on January 25, 2005. It allowed video clips to be hosted on Google servers and embedded on other websites. I seem to recall putting videos online before that but they were nasty little things about the size of a matchbook and took hours to create and upload. (Google Video made it SO much easier.) YouTube launched in February 2005 and was acquired by Google in October of 2006 ($1.65 billion in stock). Google shut down Google Videos in 2009.
I uploaded my first video to YouTube in February of 2006. In the ensuing 16 years I’ve uploaded 551 videos. It never occurred to me to “monetize” my videos so I’ve never paid much attention to the analytical data YouTube sends me every month. YouTube was just an easy way to stream videos using their embed code on my blog.
Today they sent my “2022 snapshot.” In the past 12 months my channel has had 53,000 views (50,000 “watch time minutes”). Over the course of the 16 years my videos have been viewed 1,066,666 times. And I’m not even trying (to influence or monetize).
“But I’m going to be okay.”
Ian Bogost writing in The Atlantic: “All at once, billions of people saw themselves as celebrities, pundits, and tastemakers.”
“…people just aren’t meant to talk to one another this much. They shouldn’t have that much to say, they shouldn’t expect to receive such a large audience for that expression, and they shouldn’t suppose a right to comment or rejoinder for every thought or notion either.”
(Wikipedia) Paul Rudnick is an American writer. His plays have been produced both on and off Broadway and around the world. He is also known for having written the screenplays for several movies, including Sister Act, Addams Family Values, Jeffrey, and In & Out.
I’ve been reading his stuff all morning and have yet to find one that wasn’t laugh-out-load funny.
Ivanka says she won’t be joining her Dad’s campaign to focus on:
