I'm going to be a TV host
I was recently contacted by an associate who asked if I'd be interested in appearing as a guest on a new TV show pilot; needless to say, I agreed. Yesterday I arrived for the recording.
"How are you feeling?" I was asked.
"Nervous," I admitted.
"Well, you'll be more nervous in a moment."
"Really? Why is that?"
"Well, instead of having you as a guest, we were wondering if you'd like to be a TV host. For the whole season."
Apparently being a TV host is a lot less work than I would have expected, because in a 30 minute episode there's only 24 real minutes of show (the rest are taken up with credits, "words on our sponsors", etc), and after segments and specials and reviews and the like, I'll only be on air for maybe 12 minutes in total. In an eight hour day of recording it's reasonable that we'll get at least 36 minutes worth of decent footage, so we can potentially knock over half-a-season in a weekend. Of course, that's all assuming that as a host all I really need to do is look good in front of the camera.
The show looks like it will be called "The Geek Show", will run on channel 31, and start showing in September. All this is still a little provisional, since there's quite a few hurdles to jump before then, but it's still very exciting!
Flame, who some of my readers may know from his OSDC presentations, is the main driving force and creative talent behind the show. And this isn't the only FOSS-friendly, geeky TV show that I hear is in the works. However I don't know if I can talk about the others.
The ironic part of all this is that my channel 31 reception is awful, so I'll probably have to go visit friends to watch the show each week. ;)
I was going to suggest this cunning plan to get free t-shirts. NTK used to run a special offer - Buy One, Subvert The Mass Media, Get One Free, for which you seemed ideally placed in your new career. However, stock levels there are all 0, and the link to those sold on The Register goes nowhere useful, so it looks like Dave Green et al have left the t-shirt subversion business. Shame.
Given that "profanity is the only language all programmers understand", are you allowed to wear on topic t-shirts with naughty words?
I feel that I should be embarrassed by this, but I think I've purchased exactly one T-shirt in the last ten years; and that was a Perl Mongers T-shirt.
Despite this, I have draws filled to overflowing with T-shirts. I get one per conference, and I attend at least 3-4 conferences per year. Each conference will have sponsors, often I'll get T-shirts from them. I'm usually a speaker, which means speaker swag, and that usually means T-shirts and beer.
My very best conference swag (excluding the beer) have always been things other than T-shirts. I love my Linux.conf.au hats and sunscreen, and last year OSDC gave me an official conference speaker towel (complete with conference branding). I've been really hanging out for official conference socks, but I seem to be the only one who feels they're a good idea.
None of my T-shirts have any naughty words printed on them, and those that have sponsor branding I rarely wear outside the house. So the question of permissions is rendered somewhat moot by the reality of my wardrobe. Perhaps I should start attending conferences on naughty words?
As for this being a neat gimmick to get free T-shirts, the buy-one, subvert the media, get one free only works for subverting the national media, and the show will probably only air in Melbourne for its first season. So even if Dave Green et al were still in the business, I still wouldn't qualify.
So, fame and fortune, yes. Extra T-shirts? Probably not many.
Melbourne?
Ron Savage on 2008-05-26T23:54:57
I'm in Melbourne. Now, if only my old TV could tune in to channel 31. I'll have to investigate.
Don't forget to blog us on the screening time.
And if you want a really (cough, cough) handsome guest...Re:Melbourne?
pjf on 2008-05-27T00:20:54
I think if the show was about beauty, I wouldn't be a fixture.
;) Screenings won't happen until September at the earliest, but I'll cheerfully blog about them.
