ZeD fulfilling expectations of interactivity, sees renewal for second season on CBC

After almost 110 episodes in its inaugural season on CBC, ZeD TV is exceeding the expectations of its executive producer (CNM, Nov. 29/01). McLean Mashingaidze-Greaves gave attendees of a Canadian New Media Awards workshop June 2 in Toronto a snapshot of the cutting-edge show and related web site, surprising many with numbers showing heavy participation by young people across the country. Since its inception, the web site has registered over 14,000 users and received over 12,000 uploads by viewers of such content as short films, music and videos, dance and other artistic and performance expressions. Of those, the show has aired 900 of the items in addition to buying 301 short films during the season and 100 shorts during the show’s pilot phase. On average, the producers have been paying about $200 for each short aired. The balance of ZeD’s content has come from in-house production, including from a team of videographers in most large and medium cities across the country. Audiences have responded and the show boasts an average of 130,000 viewers per episode and the show’s integral web site reports half a million page views and 10,000 unique visitors per month. The show has been conceived from the start to be a highly interactive vehicle to showcase the works of young Canadians. A two-month pilot aired during the 2002 Winter Olympics and the full season launched in October 2002. Though Mashingaidze-Greaves doesn’t expect an increase in budget in a reduced Canadian Television Fund environment, he does say the network supports the project and that it has been confirmed for a second season. Show a "petri dish""I’m not expecting any more money at all, but I know that the network prioritizes us - takes us seriously," Mashingaidze-Greaves tells Canadian NEW MEDIA. "They know that we represent a lot of the important things in English-language television right now. We represent the future in terms of technology. We represent the audience in terms of the multiculture that we have. In many ways, we’re a petri dish for CBC and even the people behind the scenes. We’re the future executives at CBC. The corporation recognizes the importance of that and that’s why we’re getting another season." Since Mashingaidze-Greaves last spoke with CNM in November 2001, the show has expanded to include the aforementioned videographers creating original content, as well as efforts by the show’s producers to be an important force in the arts scenes the show covers. For example, he says, unsigned bands featured on the show such as The Snitches and Hidden Cameras have won record deals - with Universal Music Canada and Rough Trade, respectively. Another band, Girl Nobody, is expected to sign with Dreamworks soon, he says. "What we do is try to find unknown bands but good solid bands. We put them on television but we don’t just put them on and say, ‘here - lights, camera, roll.’ We package the whole thing as kind of a little music video in the sense of how it looks. That allows the record company to get a sense of, ‘if we invest a lot of money in this band, how are they going to be packaged?’ "So far, it seems to be working…I think they’re starting to figure out more and more that we’re almost an extension of their A&R departments." For its first season, the show has built its own content repository on the Linux platform, something Mashingaidze-Greaves says could feature more prominently in the show itself. He noted to the CNMA workshop participants, for example, that in the interests of interactivity, the progression of submitted works could be tracked online. Since the beginning, he has called the show "open-source programming."

ZeD fulfilling expectations of interactivity, sees renewal for second season on CBC

News | 06/13/2003 4:00 am EDT

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